Teje
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Teje Tjj |
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Teje (* 1398 BC ; † 1338 BC ) was the great royal wife and de facto co-regent of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenophis III. She also played a political role under her son Akhenaten , the extent of which is unclear.
Ascent
There is no doubt that the Great Royal Wife Tiy can be seen as one of the most important figures of the Amarna period , and her life is the story of an unparalleled career. As the daughter of a provincial official, she soon became very influential and eventually rose to be the highest-ranking woman in the empire. Like her husband Amenhotep III. Ultimately, we can no longer understand them today. That Amenhotep III. Broke with the traditions and married a commoner instead of a befitting wife, suggests a love marriage.
Wedding with Amenhotep III.
The marriage of Amenhotep III. with Teje was an outstanding political event. A multitude of elaborate scarabs as a kind of wedding document, on the back of which the names of Amenhotep III. and Teje were engraved throughout Egypt and neighboring countries. Even the names of Teje's parents Juja and Tuja were mentioned on it and thus provide information about their origins. The mention of the civil parents of an Egyptian queen on these so-called “commemorative scarabs” is unique. Whether it was Teje who gave her parents important positions at court, or whether her parents were already known at court and therefore her daughter was made known to the heir to the throne, can no longer be traced due to the limited sources. When her parents died, they were buried with rich grave goods and - which is also extremely unusual - in grave KV46 in the Valley of the Kings .
Political action
All the decrees of Amenhotep III. were issued not only in his name but also in that of his wife. This, too, represents an unusual process that did not occur in Egyptian history until then. There are also a number of extraordinary depictions of this queen in the form of statues and reliefs . A temple in her honor stood at the site of Sedeinga in what is now Sudan. One figure shows her as the goddess Taweret (Thoeris). The Amarna letters also make it clear that Teje was privy to all diplomatic processes like no king's wife before her, took a strong active part in politics and was even able to correspond independently with befriended rulers (EA 26).
Particularly noteworthy and informative are the letters that the Mitanni king Tušratta after the death of Amenophis III. addressed to his son and successor Akhenaten. Tušratta not only refers to the good relations with Akhenaten's father, but also to the role of Teje in diplomatic correspondence:
“All the words I spoke to your father are known to your mother. Nobody else knows them, but you can ask your mother Teje about them. "
This mention not only means that Teje was very well informed about the political situation, but was perhaps the only one who knew all the connections. Some Egyptologists , such as Flinders Petrie , even go so far as to indicate in the text mentions of the Amarna letters that Tiy had a kind of reign for their son after the death of Amenhotep III. to see. In addition to the high rank of Great Royal Wife, Teje was also a proven diplomat.
children
Teje gave birth to at least six children: two sons and four daughters. The first son was the heir to the throne Thutmose , who would have become the fifth pharaoh of that name, but died before his father. The second son was Amenhotep, who ended up as Amenhotep IV (later Akhenaten). ascended the throne. Her daughters are known: Henut-tau-nebu ("mistress of both countries"), Nebet-tah ("mistress of the country"), Iset ( Isis ) and Sitamun ("daughter of Amun"). There are references to other children of Tiy, including the Baketaton ("servant of Atons") mentioned in Achet-Aton . However, so far no evidence has been found that more suspected children than those of the royal couple Amenophis III. and call Teje.
It is also unclear who exactly the mummy known as the Younger Lady from grave KV35 in the Valley of the Kings is, genetically known as the daughter of Amenhotep III. and Teje could be proven. The investigations also revealed that this mummy is closely related to the skeletal remains from grave KV55 and that both are believed to be siblings. Both individuals, of which the one who was buried in KV55 is most likely Akhenaten, could be identified as the parents of Tutankhamun. Teje is therefore Tutankhamun's grandmother , in whose grave ( KV62 ) a lock of hair was found that could be assigned to the mummy known as the Elder Lady (KV35EL).
Teje under Akhenaten
Apparently, after the death of her husband and the founding of the new capital Achet-Aton (Amarna), the Great Royal Wife did not move to the same immediately, but lived for some time in seclusion in the old royal palace of Amenophis III. in Malqata . Eventually she moved to her son's new town, although it is not known whether she still played an important role there.
Until the 14th year of her son Akhenaten's reign, Teje is still mentioned in writing. The next sign of their whereabouts is on a described fragment of a sarcophagus , which was found smashed in the royal tomb of Amarna (No. 26). Akhenaten and Nefertiti are depicted on it, mourning Teje together.
Burial and grave
Presumably Akhenaten ordered the burial in his royal tomb in Amarna after her death , but it is unclear whether this actually took place. Some researchers say yes, as the remains of a sarcophagus from Teje were found in the royal tomb of Amarna. If this was the case, however, she was not reburied in the grave KV55 in the Valley of the Kings until after Akhenaten's death . Her gilded wooden shrine found there suggests that she was temporarily buried there. Akhenaten's successor, Semenchkare, should primarily be the originator of the reburial .
It is possible that KV55 was even created especially for Teje, perhaps under her husband Amenophis III. But this grave was not the queen's final resting place either. A mummy was found there, but not that of a woman, but according to the latest findings that of a man. Nevertheless, there is a possibility that Teje's mummy was preserved: In KV35 , the tomb of Amenhotep II , there is, in addition to other mummies, in an adjoining room that of an elderly woman, the so-called Elder Lady (KV35EL), who was the Egyptologist's guide at the time of Queen Teje ascribe. The DNA analysis as part of the Tutankhamun Family Project has proven the "Elder Lady" to be the daughter of Juja and Tuja and thus identified with practically no doubt as Queen Teje.
Accordingly, Teje's corpse must have come a long way: first from Amarna to KV55, from there probably to the grave of her husband Amenophis III. ( WV22 ), which was originally supposed to be her final resting place. From there, her mummy may have been reburied after KV35. Although Tiy was not a woman on the royal throne like Queen Hatshepsut , she was in no way inferior to this or other male rulers in terms of power and importance.
Today the mummy of Teje is in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo .
literature
- Aidan Dodson , Dyan Hilton: The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. The American University in Cairo Press, London 2004, ISBN 977-424-878-3 , pp. 142-157.
- Bettina Schmitz: Teje A. In: Lexicon of Egyptology. Volume 6, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1986, columns 305-306.
- Joyce Tyldesley : The Queens of Ancient Egypt. From the early dynasties to the death of Cleopatra. Koehler & Amelang, Leipzig 2008, ISBN 978-3-7338-0358-2 , pp. 115-123.
- Toby Wilkinson : Who's Who in Ancient Egypt. Zabern, Mainz 2008, ISBN 978-3-8053-3917-9 , pp. 178-181.
- Christian Bayer: Which delights the gentleman of both countries with its beauty. Teje: an iconographic study (Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection, National Museums in Berlin). Rutzen, Ruhpolding 2014, ISBN 978-3-447-06952-6 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 459.
- ^ Aidan Dodson, Dyan Hinton: The Complete Royals Families of Ancient Egypt. London 2004, p. 157.
- ↑ Carsten Pusch, Albert Zink, Ashraf Selim, Yehia Zakaria and others: Ancestry and Pathology in King Tutankhamun's Family. In: Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Feb. 17, 2010, Volume 303, pp. 638-647.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Teje |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Great royal consort and de facto co-regent of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III. |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 14th century BC Chr. |
| DATE OF DEATH | 14th century BC Chr. |