* For the last thirty years Queen Tîi has been the subject of many hypotheses and of much confusion. The scarabasi engraved under Amenôthes III. say explicitly that she was the daughter of two personages, Iûîa and Tûîa, but these names are not accompanied by any of the signs which are characteristic of foreign names, and were considered Egyptian by contemporaries. Hincks was the first who seems to have believed her to be a Syrian; he compares her father’s name with that of Levi, and attributes the religious revolution which followed to the influence of her foreign education. This theory has continued to predominate; some prefer a Libyan origin to the Asiatic one, and latterly there has been an attempt to recognise in Tîi one of the princesses of Mitanni mentioned in the correspondence of Tel el-Amarna. As long ago as 1877, I showed that Tîi was an Egyptian of middle rank, probably of Heliopolitan origin.
Connexions of this kind had been frequently formed by his ancestors, but the Egyptian women of inferior rank whom they had brought into their harems had always remained in the background, and if the sons of these concubines were ever fortunate enough to come to the throne, it was in default of heirs of pure blood. Amenôthes III. married Tîi, gave her for her dowry the town of Zâlû in Lower Egypt, and raised her to the position of queen, in spite of her low extraction. She busied herself in the affairs of State, took precedence of the princesses of the solar family, and appeared at her husband’s side in public ceremonies, and was so figured on the monuments. If, as there is reason to believe, she was born near Heliopolis, it is easy to understand how her influence may have led Amenôthes to pay special honour to a Heliopolitan divinity. He had built, at an early period of his reign, a sanctuary to Atonû at Memphis, and in the Xth year he constructed for him a chapel at Thebes itself,* to the south of the last pylon of ïhûtmosis III., and endowed this deity with property at the expense of Anion.
* This temple seems to have been raised on the site of the
building which is usually attributed to Amenôthes II. and
Amenôthes III. The blocks bearing the name of Amenôthes II.
had been used previously, like most of those which bear the
cartouches of Amenôthes III. The temple of Atonû, which was
demolished by Harmhabî or one of the Ramses, was
subsequently rebuilt with the remains of earlier edifices,
and dedicated to Amon.
He had several sons;* but the one who succeeded him, and who, like him, was named Amenôthes, was the most paradoxical of all the Egyptian sovereigns of ancient times.**
* One of them, Thûtmosis, was high priest of Phtah, and we
possess several monuments erected by him in the temple of
Memphis; another, Tûtonkhamon, subsequently became king. He
also had several daughters by Tîi—Sîtamon.
** The absence of any cartouches of Amenôthes IV. or his
successors in the table of Abydos prevented Champollion and
Rosellini from classifying these sovereigns with any
precision. Nestor L’hôte tried to recognise in the first of
them, whom he called Bakhen-Balchnan, a king belonging to
the very ancient dynasties, perhaps the Hyksôs Apakhnan, but
Lepsius and Hincks showed that he must be placed between
Amenôthes III. and Harmhabî, that he was first called
Amenôthes like his father, but that he afterwards took the
name of Baknaten, which is now read Khûnaten or Khûniaton.
His singular aspect made it difficult to decide at first
whether a man or a woman was represented. Mariette, while
pronouncing him to be a man, thought that he had perhaps
been taken prisoner in the Sudan and mutilated, which would
have explained his effeminate appearance, almost like that
of an eunuch. Recent attempts have been made to prove that
Amenôthes IV. and Khûniaton were two distinct persons, or
that Khûniaton was a queen; but they have hitherto been
rejected by Egyptologists.
He made up for the inferiority of his birth on account of the plebeian origin of his mother Tîî,* by his marriage with Nofrîtîti, a princess of the pure solar race.** Tîi, long accustomed to the management of affairs, exerted her influence over him even more than she had done over her husband. Without officially assuming the rank, she certainly for several years possessed the power, of regent, and gave a definite Oriental impress to her son’s religious policy. No outward changes were made at first; Amenôthes, although showing his preference for Heliopolis by inscribing in his protocol the title of prophet of Harmakhis, which he may, however, have borne before his accession, maintained his residence at Thebes, as his father had done before him, continued to sacrifice to the Theban divinities, and to follow the ancient paths and the conventional practices.***
* The filiation of Amenôthes IV. and Tîi has given rise to
more than one controversy. The Egyptian texts do not define
it explicitly, and the title borne by Tîi has been
considered by some to prove that Amenôthes IV. was her son,
and by others that she was the mother of Queen Nofrîtîti.
The Tel el-Amarna correspondence solves the question,
however, as it gives a letter from Dushratta to Khûniaton,
in which Tîi is called “thy mother.”
** Nofrîtîti, the wife of Amenôthes IV., like all the
princesses of that time, has been supposed to be of Syrian
origin, and to have changed her name on her arrival in
Egypt. The place which she holds beside her husband is the
same as that which belongs to legitimate queens, like
Nofritari, Ahmosis, and Hâtshopsîtû, and the example of
these princesses is enough to show us what was her real
position; she was most probably a daughter of one of the
princesses of the solar blood, perhaps of one of the sisters
of Amenôthes III., and Amenôthes IV. married her so as to
obtain through her the rights which were wanting to him
through his mother Tîi.
*** The tomb of Ramses, governor of Thebes and priest of
Mâît, shows us in one part of it the king, still faithful to
his name of Amenôthes, paying homage to the god Amon, lord
of Karnak, while everywhere else the worship of Atonû
predominates. The cartouches on the tomb of Pari, read by
Bouriant Akhopîrûrî, and by Scheil more correctly
Nofirkhopîrûrî, seem to me to represent a transitional form
of the protocol of Amenôthes IV., and not the name of a new
Pharaoh; the inscription in which they are to be found bears
the date of his third year.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from a photograph of the
scarabaeus preserved at
Gîzeh.