The Dakhamunzu Chronicles: Fate of Queen and Country —Part II

Despite the desperate attempts that were made by a queen of Egypt, with the best intentions at heart; the audacious move to invite a foreigner to marry her and take the throne spelled her doom. It would rest on a succession of pharaohs, from the final years of the Eighteenth Dynasty and beyond, to obliterate the legacy of the Amarna kings and all that they had espoused.

A QUESTION OF CO-REGENCY

“The very fact that Smenkhkare was succeeded as coregent by a woman suggests that Akhenaten’s motivation for appointing a co-ruler in the first place may have been something other than the usual concept of elevating the crown-prince to the throne to guarantee the succession and/or allow him an ‘apprenticeship’ under his father. Rather, one wonders whether circumstances had come to demand that Akhenaten needed to have someone to share the burden of rule. Perhaps his own health was breaking down — or he feared the plague that some have suggested was brought to Egypt by those attending the “durbar” and may have caused the death of Meketaten and Dowager Great Wife Tiye, both of whom died soon afterwards —and he feared for the continuation of his religious revolution if he died leaving just the five-year-old Tutankhaten. With an anointed coregent in place there would be an adult in a position to ensure continuity — and become Tutankhaten’s co-ruler and guardian in turn, if need be,” Dodson explains.