Hey folks, Harry here and ya know what? Sometimes you people are just the coolest damn folks around. I've been sitting around in the midst of a billion things today, just got back from PRINCESS MONONOKE at the Austin Film Festival... I'm tired and weary, and apparently when I hit the update button a while ago.... my entire front page disappeared into oblivion. Sigh.... Well, hell's bells. Then I get into this world of email and discover this very nicely put together piece on the history and background that should surround any movie based upon the life and times of King Tut. Remember... just because it really happened this way... doesn't mean it'll happen in this movie. So... here ya go...
Hi Harry - I hope this is useful - probably not but as you can see, the events do make a juicy plot for a movie (festival, revolution, death, incest, possible murder, big coronation scene, romance, more murder, baddies falling out and so on. Not many laughs though).
To carry on from the last mail - this is what the plot of the film could include:
Period: Ancient Egypt, New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, approx 1340 - 1320 B.C.
Characters: Prince Tutankhaten (later Pharoah Tutankhamun) is the son of Pharoah Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye.
He is their youngest son, a late addition to the family. Amenhotep is aged about 50, Tiye 45.*
Tutankhaten also has an sister, Baketaten (age approx 5) plus two brothers, Prince Smenkhare (aged 18) and Pharoah Akhenaten (aged 30 and ruling Egypt with his father**).
Other family members who play major parts are Ay (Tiye's younger brother and Vizier), his wife Tey, Queen Nefertiti (Ay's daughter and Akhenaten's wife), Akhensenpaaten (Akhenaten and Nefertiti's daughter, later Queen of Egypt) and Mutnodjmet (Nefertiti's sister and also a later Queen!). Non-family members of importance are Horemheb (an army general and future Pharoah, who later married Mutnodjmet) and Maya (Tutankhamen's friend/tutor/scribe and Horemheb's right hand man during his rule).
Lesser/background characters that could appear are Akhensenpaaten's 5 sisters, Kiya (a lady of the harem) and Maya's assistant Ramose.
Main events: Pharoah Amenhotep III, after 30 years of rule, celebrated a jubilee (great event and public holiday with much feasting etc) during which he was made a "living god". At this event he also promoted his oldest son, also called Amenhotep, so that the succession would be assured and he could learn the ways of statecraft. In essence, as the older Amenhotep had become a god (and may have taken a retirement of sorts), his son became ruler of Egypt. Everyone expected things to continue in the time-honoured fashion, with the older king eventually dying. But it didn't quite work out that way.
As Pharoah, the younger Amenhotep wasted no time exercising his rights as ruler. With his wife Nefertiti he instigated a wide range of changes, culminating in the establishment of a new religion, centred around the sungod Aten, and the formation of a new capital city (in the area called Amarna). He also changed his name to Akhenaten, breaking ties with the name of the god associated with it, Amun. At this stage, with his father as senior monarch, all the other religions were tolerated and the Aten religion was mostly confined to Amarna, but the court and people were restless. Queen Tiye, her husband incapacitated (or simply "retired"), seems to have been in charge of much foreign correspondence and managed to keep the peace between the different factions in the court.*** Tutankhaten was born during this time, the youngest child of the royal family and seldom noted, it was not expected he would rule.
In the 12th or 13th year of Akhenaten's rule, Amenhotep died. Akhenaten and Nefertiti (promoted to co-regent status) now banned all religions except the Aten and took all the wealth of the temples. The army seem to have enforced this ruling, with a consequence that less of the forces were used to patrol the borders of Egypt's empire. The names of all other gods were erased from temple buildings, but secretly it seems, the old ways did not die out.
Queen Tiye died, Tutankhaten was raised by a wetnurse (tomb recently discovered, called Maia) in the company of Akhenaten and Nefertiti's daughters, including Princess Akhensenpaaten (his future wife).
After Tiye and then Nefertiti's death, the vultures begin to circle. Ay, on the surface Akhenaten's biggest supporter, sees that the Aten religion is not a success and plots with army general Horemheb to re-establish the kingship with a more traditional Pharoah. Tutankhaten is their choice, a young boy and easily controlled - his right to rule without question as long as Akhenaten did not produce an heir. But Akhenaten chose his other brother, Smenkhare, as the next ruler, marrying him to his oldest daughter (although some say Akhenaten had a relationship with him too). Smenkhare and Akhenaten seem to have died at around the same time. (no idea how, nobody knows)****
Quickly placed on the throne, Tutankhaten (name changed to Tutankhamun) re-established all the old religions, invests in the army, and was of course totally in the control of Ay and Horemheb. Akhensamun, however, was a few years older and not so easy to deal with. After Tut's premature death (murdered or not?) she attempted to take the crown herself, pleading with a foreign power to send a prince to Egypt as she did not want to take a commoner as her husband. The foreign prince was murdered on the way to Egypt, and when his father complains, the curt and unapolagetic response he receives is from the new Pharoah, Ay.
(due to the vicious defacement meted out to Ay's monuments by Horemheb during his subsequent reign, but the restoration of Tutankhamen's plundered burial, it seems they may have had some arguement between Ay and Horemheb aswell).
* Nobody is 100 percent certain who Tut's parents were, or rather, Egyptologists argue furiously about it but I believe his inscription on a stone lion from Soleb (in the British Museum, London), where he wrote his father was Amenhotep.
**Likewise, the length of the co-regency is much argued over, expect some questions to be raised about that, for which I am ready with the appropriate evidence!
***Luckilly, all agree that Queen Tiye was revered as a lady of power in her lifetime and for many years afterwards.
****Akhenaten's body has not yet been identified. Smenkhare's damaged mummy was found (1905) in a defaced, woman's coffin, his arms in the traditional position of a dead Queen, not a Pharoah
p.s. for even more action, the movie studios should check out the history of Pharoah Hatshepsut - now *her* life story really would make a smashing film!
