The character known to mythology as Queen Scotia, or in her own country, Queen Meritaten, is perhaps most famously linked to her half-brother Pharaoh Tutankhamun, who is probably the most famous ancient Egyptian, since the discovery of his tomb in 1922, by Howard Carter and his team. She is also linked to Moses and Ramses II by Manetho of the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt, writing around 1000 years after her death. But this association is, of course, an expected error, caused by the erasure of Akhenaten, Tutankhamun and Aye II from the Egyptian Kings List, by Horemheb, the final Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty.
Meritaten’s Family and Historical Context
Meritaten is also linked to Nefertiti, the most famous Egyptian queen, although she perhaps shares that title with the Ptolemaic (and final) ruler of Egypt, Cleopatra. Meritaten was the eldest daughter of Nefertiti and her husband Akhenaten, the pharaoh who changed his name from Amenhotep IV, in a startling and unprecedented departure from the Egyptian Polytheism of his own father (Amenhotep III) and all previous rulers of over 1000 years before him.
Akhenaten’s Religious Revolution
It was Akhenaten’s radical actions in raising the ‘Aten’, the solar symbol of the power of the creator to prominence that no doubt led Meritaten to attempt to leave Egypt. One could argue that Akhenaten’s transition from polytheist to henotheist, and finally monotheist was the logical conclusion of a religious progression from his own father’s more than passing interest in the Aten. Not all academics and historians agree that Akhenaten was eventually a monotheist, but like Dr. James K. Hoffmeier, I am convinced that this was ultimately what he became.
Queen Nefertiti iii (Berlin, Neues Museum) by Egisto Sani (public domain)
