El Amarna in Chaos

by

Damien F. Mackey

The good news is that I have retained intact all of the early 18th dynastic sequence with its revised biblical correlations. Namely:

Ahmose (biblical Ahimaaz)

Amenhotep I (biblical King Saul)

Thutmose I (biblical King David)

Thutmose II – {Senenmut} (biblical King Solomon)

Hatshepsut (biblical ‘Queen of Sheba’)

Thutmose III (biblical ‘King Shishak’)

Amenhotep II ….

At this stage, though, I introduce a bit of a fold, with, instead of Thutmose IV coming next, after Amenhotep II, I make Thutmose III and IV (both ‘Menkheperure’) the same person, and IV’s son who pre-deceased him, ‘Aakheperure’, the same as Amenhotep II ‘Aakheperure’.

This means that Amenhotep III ‘the Magnificent’ actually rises to power right after the long reign of Thutmose III.

Now here come the bombshells.

Bombshell One. Amenhotep III is King Asa of Judah, both of approximately 40 years of reign. He comes to the throne of Judah about (and I am following P. Mauro’s biblical chronology here) 15 years after the ‘Shishak’ incident, hence in Year 38 of Thutmose III. In the latter’s Year 43, approximately, which is Year 5 of Amenhotep III (Asa), Pharaoh Thutmose III, whose personally-led Palestinian campaigns had ceased a few years earlier (presumably due to his age), sent his Nubian commander, the biblical “Zerah the Ethiopian”, with a massive army of a million men and 300 chariots, Ethiopians and Libyans, to crush Judah. This was likely the largest army until then ever assembled. King Asa turned to God for help and defeated the enemy host. This was virtually the only major war waged by Asa in his guise as Amenhotep III. He records it on various stelae and he names his ‘vile Kushite’ foe, Ikheny.

Amenhotep III took a massive 30,000 prisoners.

In previous articles I had identified this “Zerah” with Amenhotep II’s Nubian commander (or commander of Nubia), User-tatet; the biblical name “Zerah” having been derived from the name element, User (or Uzer). I think that that identification can still stand, even though I now suspect that Amenhotep II himself was no longer alive (otherwise this warlike man would have led the army himself). I would also suggest in this context that Ikheny was the native name of User-tatet.

Thanks to this massive victory for Judah, King Asa became extremely rich, famous and mighty, just like Amenhotep III, a new King Solomon. And, as Thutmose III’s reign faded out, and with no heirs left to him, Amenhotep ‘the Magnificent’ was able to rule Egypt for about three decades.

Bombshell Two. Amenhotep III married the formidable Queen, Tiy. Nicknames were common at this time, and Tiy is one such, or simply an abbreviation, Egyptologists say, equivalent to the ending of the name Neferti-ti. Well, Tiy, who fades out right at the very time of Akhnaton’s reign as does Nefertiti, around Year 16, is Nefertiti, I now suggest. Tiy’s apparent marriage to Akhnaton, her presumed son, of which Velikovsky had made so much (and justifiably so in his context), is nothing other than Akhnaton’s marriage to Nefertiti.

Bombshell Three. Since it was King Asa who was struck with a disease in his feet (and this is when he turned away from his full dependence on Yawheh), he, and not Akhnaton, may then perhaps be considered for Oedipus (‘swollen feet’). El Amarna's Tushratta (my Ben-Hadad I) is thought to have sent Amenhotep III a statue of Ishtar from Nineveh, in the vain hope of curing him. That is probably what the Bible refers to as ‘physicians’, in relation to Asa, that is, magicians or witchdoctors.

Bombshell Four. There is no need for my previous shunting of Queen Jezebel/Queen Nefertiti, from (i) Ahab of Israel, to (ii) Amenhotep III, and then on to (iii) Akhnaton. For Ahab was Akhnaton. Nefertiti (Tiy) had firstly married Amenhotep III (Asa), and, after he had died, or had lost interest, she had passed on (as apparently was her wont) to Akhnaton (= Ahab - as his wife, Jezebel).

{Nefertiti is almost certainly, too, the legendary Queen Semiramis of that same era, who was said to have ruled both Egypt and Babylon – so this incredible woman must have either found time also to have married an Assyro-Babylonian royal, or, perhaps more likely, one of her husbands already mentioned was also ruling Babylon}.