Page 325 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

L137O-13OO B.C.]
A considerable liberty has here been taken with history, in
representing Queen Ankhesenamon as living out the seventy
years of this chapters lifetime. She may have done so, but in fact

she disappears from the pages of history after the death of Ai, and
we do not know what became of her. Up to that point, however
her life and the lives of her family are well authenticated, though
some details are unclear. The cause of the death of Akhenaten is,
for example, as unknown in fact as it is here represented as being

unknown to his daughter. Nor is the date of Nefertiti’s death
known. And the mummies of two stillborn babies in Tutenkh­
amon s tomb are not necessarily those of children of his with

Ankhesenamon, though that is exceedingly likely.
There is some doubt as to whether Queen Nefertiti was a
daughter of Amenhotep III and a sister to Akhenaten; but it was
the practice for Egyptian kings, particularly of this dynasty, to
marry their sisters, and the fact that Nefertiti was accorded all

the honors of co-ruler makes this relationship overwhelmingly
likely. Similarly the precise relationship of Tutenkhamon to
Akhenaten is rather uncertain. He may conceivably have been a
nephew, but he is much more likely to have been a son by a non­

royal marriage, succeeding by reason of his marriage to a daugh­
ter of the royal wife as had occurred twice before in the history
of the dynasty.
Finally, the reference to the children of Israel is completely
unhistorical. The Bible is disappointingly silent about the events

of the sojourn in Egypt. One would have liked to know what a
monotheistic minority in Egypt made of an attempted reforma­
tion at court in the direction of a monotheistic religion. But no
Egyptian document or inscription mentions the children of Israel.
Yet it is generally believed that they were in Egypt during these

years, and if so they should hardly be passed over in silence.