Tutankhamun spouse Ankhesenamun
Family
Tutankhamun, whose original name was Tutankhaten or Tutankhuaten, was born during the reign of Akhenaten, during the late Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. Akhenaten's reign was characterized by a dramatic shift in ancient Egyptian religion, known as Atenism, and the relocation of the capital to the site of Amarna, which gave its name to the modern term for this era, the Amarna Period. Toward the end of the Amarna Period, two other pharaohs appear in the record who were apparently Akhenaten's co-regents: Neferneferuaten, a female ruler who may have been Akhenaten's wife Nefertiti or his daughter Meritaten; and Smenkhkare, whom some Egyptologists believe was the same person as Neferneferuaten but most regard as a distinct figure. It is uncertain whether Smenkhkare's reign outlasted Akhenaten's, whereas Neferneferuaten is now thought to have become co-regent shortly before Akhenaten's death and to have reigned for some time after it.An inscription from Hermopolis refers to "Tutankhuaten" as a "king's son", and he is generally thought to have been the son of Akhenaten, although some suggest instead that Smenkhkare was his father. Inscriptions from Tutankhamun's reign treat him as a son of Akhenaten's father, Amenhotep III, but that is only possible if Akhenaten's 17-year reign included a long co-regency with his father, a possibility that many Egyptologists once supported but is now being abandoned.While some suggestions have been made that Tutankhamun's mother was Meketaten, the second daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, based on a relief from the Royal Tomb at Amarna, this possibility has been deemed unlikely given that she was about 10 years old at the time of her death. Another interpretation of the relief names Nefertiti as his mother. Meritaten has also been put forward as his mother based on a re-examination of a box lid and coronation tunic found in his tomb. Tutankhamun was wet nursed by a woman named Maia, known from her tomb at Saqqara.In 2008, genetic analysis was carried out on the mummified remains of Tutankhamun and others thought or known to be New Kingdom royalty by a team from University of Cairo. The results indicated that his father was the mummy from tomb KV55, identified as Akhenaten, and that his mother was the mummy from tomb KV35, known as the "Younger Lady", who was found to be a full sister of her husband. The team reported it was over 99.99 percent certain that Amenhotep III was the father of the individual in KV55, who was in turn the father of Tutankhamun. More recent genetic analysis, published in 2020, revealed Tutankhamun shared his Y-haplogroup with his father, the KV55 mummy (Akhenaten), and grandfather, Amenhotep III, and his mtDNA haplogroup with his mother, The Younger Lady, his grandmother, Tiye, and his great-grandmother, Thuya, upholding the results of the earlier genetic study.The identity of The Younger Lady is unknown but she cannot be Nefertiti, as she was not known to be a sister of Akhenaten. However, researchers such as Marc Gabolde and Aidan Dodson claim that Nefertiti was indeed Tutankhamun's mother. In this interpretation of the DNA results, the genetic closeness is not due to a brother-sister pairing but the result of three generations of first-cousin marriage, making Nefertiti a first cousin of Akhenaten. The validity and reliability of the genetic data from mummified remains has been questioned due to possible degradation due to decay.When Tutankhaten became king, he married Ankhesenpaaten, one of Akhenaten's daughters, who later changed her name to Ankhesenamun. They had two daughters, neither of whom survived infancy. While only an incomplete genetic profile was obtained from the two mummified foetuses, it was enough to confirm that Tutankhamun was their father. Likewise, only partial data for the two female mummies from KV21 has been obtained so far. KV21A has been suggested as the mother of the foetuses but the data is not statistically significant enough to allow her to be securely identified as Ankhesenamun. Computed tomography studies published in 2011 revealed that one daughter was born prematurely at 5–6 months of pregnancy and the other at full-term, 9 months. Tutankhamun's death marked the end of the royal line of the 18th Dynasty.
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