Quick questions on Akhenaten's death, succession and evaluation: HSC Ancient History

<!-- Diagram: Interpretation timeline running from the ancient proscription and hostile memory of Akhenaten, through Breasted's early-twentieth-century idealist reading and Freud's Moses link, to Redford's totalitarian reading, and finally to the modern reinvention traced by Reeves and Montserrat | reviewed 2026-07-01 --> <svg class="fig" viewBox="0 0 393 620" role="img" aria-labelledby="akht-t akht-d"> <title id="akht-t">How Akhenaten has been judged, from ancient enemy to modern debate</title> <desc id="akht-d">A vertical timeline of interpretations of Akhenaten. First, ancient hostile memory, from c. 1320 BC, labelled "the enemy of Akhetaten," erased from king lists. Second, James Henry Breasted, 1905 to 1933, who called him the first individual in history and a religious idealist.

A king's throne name (sometimes paired with the epithet "beloved of Akhenaten" or "beloved of Nefer-kheperu-re") appears on scattered monuments and jar labels from the end of the Amarna period. Many historians argue this was Nefertiti, ruling briefly as a female king after functioning as Akhenaten's close co-regent, following a pattern comparable to Hatshepsut's assumption of kingship generations earlier. Other historians attribute the name instead to Akhenaten's eldest surviving daughter, Meritaten, or her younger sister Meritaten-tasherit.

A second, equally shadowy figure, attested chiefly through a handful of monuments and as the husband of Meritaten. Some historians place Smenkhkare as a brief co-regent overlapping the end of Akhenaten's reign; others place him immediately after Akhenaten's death; a minority have even argued "Neferneferuaten" and "Smenkhkare" were two throne names of the same person. The KV55 mummy was, for decades, proposed as Smenkhkare's before the 2010 study shifted opinion back toward Akhenaten.

Tutankhaten, a son of Akhenaten (his mother is now most plausibly the "Younger Lady" identified by the 2010 DNA study as Akhenaten's full sister, not Nefertiti), became king around 1332 BC at about nine years old, guided by senior officials including Ay and the general Horemheb. He married Ankhesenamun, a daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Early in his reign, both were renamed from the "-aten" to the "-amun" form, publicly signalling the reversal of Atenism, and the Restoration Stela at Karnak records the reopening of temples, the recasting of divine images, and the reappointment of priesthoods.