Did an Egyptian queen once beg a foreign enemy to marry her son?
In short: Ankhesenamun, the wife of Tutankhamun, vanished from history after a series of desperate political maneuvers. Following her husband's sudden death, a mysterious letter sent to a Hittite ruler suggests she sought a foreign prince to avoid marrying a subject. Her legacy was later systematically erased by a vengeful successor.
Born as Ankhesenpaaten, the third daughter of Pharaoh Akhenaten and Nefertiti, Ankhesenamun lived through Egypt's radical religious shift toward the sun-god Aten. After her father's death, she married Tutankhamun, and the couple restored traditional deities, adopting names that honored Amun. Their union was marked by tragedy; they likely lost two daughters, whose remains were buried in Tutankhamun's tomb. When the young pharaoh died unexpectedly around age 18, the widowed queen found herself without an heir and facing immense pressure to secure the throne.
A remarkable document from the Hittite capital of Hattusa records a plea from an Egyptian queen, known by the title Dakhamunzu, to the Hittite ruler Suppiluliuma I. She requested one of his sons to marry, fearing she would be forced to take one of her own subjects as a husband. While some scholars identify this queen as Ankhesenamun, others suggest it could be Nefertiti or Meritaten. Regardless of the author, the request was unprecedented, as Egyptians typically viewed foreigners as inferior. Suppiluliuma I eventually sent his son Zannanza, but the prince was murdered en route to Egypt.
Ankhesenamun eventually married the Grand Vizier Ay, a union evidenced by a blue glass ring discovered in 1931. However, this marriage was short-lived, and she disappeared from the historical record soon after. Her memory suffered a final indignity under the reign of Horemheb, the final king of the 18th Dynasty. Seeking to solidify his legitimacy and erase the influence of Ay, Horemheb initiated a campaign of damnatio memoriae, systematically removing Ankhesenamun’s images and inscriptions from monuments. Today, researchers speculate that her remains might be among the mummies found in tomb KV21, though definitive identification remains elusive.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: Ankhesenamun
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