Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

On reconsideration, I think the blame here should fall not on National 
Geographic for inaccurate reporting, but rather on JAMA for its misleading 
summary/abstract of its findings.  The actual findings are likely very 
accurate, 
but the short summary of the findings in JAMA’s abstract is misleading.
 
1.       Here is a more accurate, though extremely short, summary:
 
“The researchers found that several of the anonymous mummies or those with 
suspected identities were now able to be addressed by name, which included 
KV35EL, who is Tiye, mother of the pharaoh Akhenaten and grandmother of 
Tutankhamun, and the KV55 mummy, who is most probably Akhenaten, father of 
Tutankhamun. This kinship is supported in that several unique anthropological 
features are shared by the 2 mummies and that the blood group of both 
individuals is identical. The researchers identified the KV35YL mummy as 
likely 
Tutankhamun's mother.”
 
Contact: Carsten M. Pusch, Ph.D.
_carsten.pusch AT uni-tuebingen.de_ (mailto:carsten.pusch AT uni-tuebingen.de) 

_JAMA and Archives Journals_ (http://www.jamamedia.org/) 
 
2.       The new biological evidence is consistent with Akhenaten and his 
full-sister Sitamen being Tut’s parents, and the KV55 mummy being Akhenaten.  
But my point is that as far as I can tell, that biological evidence is also 
consistent with Amenhotep III being Tut’s biological father, and KV55 mummy 
being Smenkhkare.
 
What I have never seen so far is any article, whether popular or scholarly, 
stating that the researchers wanted to find out if Amenhotep III could have 
sired Tut by his own daughter, Sitamen, but they concluded that such was 
not possible, or at least was not likely, and that the biological evidence 
suggests that instead Akhenaten was Tut’s father.  Until and unless some 
article compares those two possibilities straight up, these blanket 
statements one 
reads that Akhenaten was Tut’s father have little meaning.  The DNA 
evidence shows that Akhenaten could have been Tut’s father, but to the best 
of my 
knowledge, this DNA testing has not ruled out Smenkhkare or Amenhotep III as 
being Tut’s father.  And on the historical side, we know that Amenhotep III 
married his daughter Sitamen, and bestowed up her the title of full queen of 
Egypt, a title she held simultaneously with her mother, Queen Tiye.  By 
contrast, there is not a scintilla of evidence in the historical record that 
Akhenaten married Sitamen (or another of his full-sisters), much less that 
Akhenaten and Sitamen had a child, Tut, in Year 11.  Since Amarna has been 
more 
closely studied than any other period of ancient history, how could every 
single Egyptologist in the last 100 years have missed that important marriage 
and important childbearing?  To me, that’s unlikely. 
 
3.       To prove the point that nothing is definitive yet, here are the 
initial musings of a true expert on Amarna, Katherine Griffis-Greenberg, 
Oriental Institute, Oriental Studies Doctoral Program [Egyptology], Oxford 
University, Oxford, United Kingdom (who on occasion has gotten more 
exasperated 
with me than anyone on the b-hebrew list, but she knows her stuff):



“[T]he identification of the KV 55 mummy as Akhenaten, from the DNA and 
supposedly "advanced" CT scan which claims the "body is much older" than 20 
years of age, is very vague. In fact, [t]hey were also hedging bets, IMO: The 
wording is that the KV 55 mummy is "most probably Akhenaten," and to be 
blunt, that is not as definitive as I would have expected.”
 
…”Interestingly, the alleles that Princess KV 21A has more in common is 
not with the KV 55 mummy, as would be expected, but with the mummy identified 
as Amenhotep III!  …All I'm saying here is that it's odd that the Princess 
KV 21A who produced two female foetuses with Tutankhamun should share more 
alleles in common with the WV 22 mummy (ostensibly Amenhotep III) rather than 
her putative father, if he is the KV 55 mummy.”
 
4.       The bottom line is:  Stay tuned.  The science may soon figure it 
out.  But to date, I see nothing that prohibits Amenhotep III from being Tut’
s biological father, which is my own theory of the case.
 
If Akhenaten sired Tut by Akhenaten’s full-sister (who would be a very 
important princess and a very important marriage), why then is Akhenaten not 
succeeded by his son Tut, but rather is succeeded by Smenkhkare, who likely 
is 
Akhenaten’s full-brother?  That succession strongly suggests that Akhenaten 
had failed to sire a son as his heir.
 
There is a very close parallel of Amarna to the Patriarchal narratives if 
and only if Akhenaten, like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, had a terrible time 
siring a son by his favorite main wife.  Like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, 
Akhenaten was a younger son who was not his father’s favorite son.  Like 
Isaac, 
Jacob and Judah, Akhenaten became the sole leader of an early generation of 
semi-monotheists in large part because his birth mother was his father’s 
original main wife #1, and he inherited that mantle from his father, even 
though 
he was not his father’s favorite son.  Like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Judah, 
Akhenaten is his father’s only son who voluntarily left his father’s home 
and went off on his own.  Perhaps uniquely in history, Akhenaten and 
Nefertiti, like Abraham and Sarah, both changed their names as religious 
leaders to 
honor their semi-monotheistic/monotheistic deity.  Like Abraham, Akhenaten 
exiled a foreign minor wife (Kiya/Hagar) and her only child (Kiya’s 
daughter/Ishmael).  Like Isaac, Jacob and Judah, Akhenaten had a pushy 
mother, who 
was audaciously aggressive, and such women are greatly honored, not reviled 
(unlike in the rest of the Bible and in most other ancient literature).  Like 
Jacob/“Israel”, Akhenaten was the semi-monotheistic leader of his people in 
Egypt for 17 years/“years”.  Like Abraham, Akhenaten had a good-natured 
nephew (Tut, Lot), who had little individual merit and ordinarily would have 
seemed to be of little importance, but who nevertheless is surprisingly 
prominent in the story of the first historical monotheist.  Like Lot, 
Akhenaten’s 
wife (Nefertiti) became a royal/“salt” statue upon failing to bear him a 
son and heir, and he (Lot/Akhenaten) then impregnated his own young teenage 
or pre-teenage daughters, who righteously wanted to bear him a male heir.   
Like Joseph, Akhenaten had a full-brother who was 10 years younger than him 
(Smenkhkare/Benjamin), who had no individual merit, and who was handed 
everything on a silver platter by his older full-brother, but had no 
gratitude for 
that.  And on and on and on.  Virtually every famous, awkward family 
situation in the Patriarchal narratives has a direct parallel at Amarna.  
That’s 
because the first Hebrew, who composed the Patriarchal narratives in Year 15, 
was trying to convince Akhenaten that despite appearances to the contrary, 
Akhenaten had not done everything wrong in his own family life, and 
Akhenaten should now focus on saving the world from the threat of the 
Hittites just 
north of beloved Canaan -- which was the first Hebrew’s real concern, not 
Akhenaten’s strange religion or Akhenaten’s strange family problems.  That’s 
my own super-controversial, unique theory of the case.  If my northern 
geography theory of the Patriarchal narratives were adopted, then Genesis 14: 
1-11 would be seen as being a pinpoint historically accurate account of the 
onset of the Great Syrian War in Years 13 and 14, when the mighty Hittites 
for 
a very brief moment in time seemed to threaten virtually the entire Near 
East, including the early Hebrews’ beloved Canaan.  The first Hebrews 
credited 
YHWH with having saved Canaan and the Hebrews from being overrun by the 
seemingly unstoppable Hittite war machine.  I see Judaism as historically 
being 
born in Year 15, the year in which the Patriarchal narratives were composed.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois