page_title: Meritaten
section_title: Great Royal Wife
hierarchical_section_title: Meritaten / Biography / Great Royal Wife
caption_attribution_description: English: Line drawing of two figures from the tomb of Meryre II in Amarna. The inset (from the original) shows Lepsius drawing of the now missing cartouche sets identifying the figures as Ankhkheperure Smenkhkare Djser Kheperu and his wife Meritaten.
context_page_description: Meritaten, also spelled Merytaten or Meryetaten, was an ancient Egyptian royal woman of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. Her name means "She who is beloved of Aten"; Aten being the sun-deity whom her father, Pharaoh Akhenaten, worshipped. She held several titles, performing official roles for her father and becoming the Great Royal Wife to Pharaoh Smenkhkare, who may have been a brother or son of Akhenaten. Meritaten also may have served as pharaoh in her own right under the name Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten.
context_section_description: Meritaten appears as a Great Royal Wife in the tomb of Meryre II in Amarna. She is depicted alongside her husband, Pharaoh Ankhkheperure Smenkhare-djeserkheperu. The scene shows the royal couple bestowing honors and gifts on Meryre. The scene appears on the wall adjacent to the wall depicting the Durbar of year 12. Smenkhare may have served as a co-regent to Akhenaten. Meritaten was the Great Royal Wife to Smenkhare, while Nefertiti continued as the Great Royal Wife of Akhenaten. Nefertiti still held the Great Royal Wife title in year 16, hence Smenkhare must have been a co-regent at that time, or otherwise ruled with his wife Meritaten sometime after year 16 of Akhenaten.
  Meritaten is mentioned on gold daisies that decorated a garment found in Tutankhamen's tomb. She also is mentioned on a wooden box meant to contain linen garments. The box mentions two kings: Neferkheperure-Waenre (Akhenaten) and Ankhkheperure-mr-waenre, Neferneferuaten-mr-waenre and the Great Royal Wife Meritaten.
  According to some scholars, such as J.P. Allen, Ankhkheperure Smenkhkare ruled together with Meritaten, but in the year following Akhenaten's death, Smenkhkare died. The theory is, that Meritaten was the 'king's daughter' Akenkeres who is recorded in Manetho's Epitome to have assumed the throne next, in her own right as king and bearing the name Neferneferuaten. Neferneferuaten is assigned a reign of two years and one month and is placed in Manetho's account as the immediate predecessor of the king, Rathothis, who is believed to be Tutankhamun, her half-brother by another, unnamed wife of Akhenaten.
  Archaeologist Alaine Zivie asserts that Meritaten also became a foster mother to Tutankhamun, referred to as Maïa in some ancient records. Zivie noted that Thutmose, the sculptor appointed vizier by Akhenaten and who was found to be the creator of the famous bust of Nefertiti also created one of Maïa (Bubasteion I.20), the foster mother of Tutankhamun and who, in fact, was "Merytaten, the elder daughter of Akhenaten", "who sat briefly on the throne".
caption: Smenkhare and Meritaten shown in the tomb of Meryre II
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2013:01:07 08:53:59", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "10374", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "650", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "525"}