We’ve been reading about Akhenaten. He was a Pharoah of ancient Egypt, and is considered to probably have been Tutankhamun’s father.
He changed the polytheistic religion of ancient Egypt to a monotheistic religion (Tutankhamun changed it back) and built a new capital city, Akhetaten, which was abandoned shortly after his death.
After Tutankhamun, the 18th Dynasty ended. The new Dynasty referred to Akhenaten as the “enemy,” and “that criminal.” His monuments were dismantled, his statues were destroyed, his name was excluded from lists of Egyptian rulers. Was this just because he changed the religion?
Akhenaten was married to Nefertiti, but contemporary art shows him lovingly touching Smenkhkhare. There is speculation Smenkhkare was Akhenaten’s brother or son, which doesn’t rule out a sexual relationship. With absolutely zero evidence, some Egyptologists decided Akhenaten had two children with his 12 year old daughter.
The “evidence” was the image of a child on her tomb wall, which they decided meant she died in her childbirth, even though no other Egyptian tomb includes a reference to how the person died. And the evidence that the alleged baby (of which there is no evidence) was Akhenaten’s is also zero. Seriously, guys, 0 + 0 does not = 4.
There is another theory that the artwork that depicts Smenkhkare and Akhenaten actually depicts Akhenaten and Nefertiti, but Nefertiti is in drag.
Akhenaten possibly had 1, 2, 3, or 4 wives and possibly one of them crossdressed as male or possibly he had a male lover.
A body has been identified as the father of Tutankhamun, but it hasn’t been identified as Akhenaten, even though he is recorded as Tutankhamun’s father.
A body has been identified as Tutankhamun’s mother, but it has not been identified as Nefertiti, even though Nefertiti is recorded as Tutankhamun’s mother.
The most interesting thing of it all is that Pharoahs were depicted in art as athletically built men, except for Akhenaten. Akhenaten had a “feminine face, wide hips, and breasts.”
Egyptologists have made many theories about this, including that his “androgynous” (read, female) appearance was caused by Froehlich’s syndrome, which would cause a man to have feminine fat distribution. It also causes sterility, and Akhenaten had six kids.
Another new theory is that Akhenaten was intersex which might have been the case.
Or perhaps he was a trans man. He was Pharaoh, his word was law. If his word was that he was a man, who would argue with him? Perhaps the body identified as Tutankhamun’s mother is Akhenaten, and the body identified as Tutankhamun’s father is Smenkhkhare.
This naked statue of Akhenaten shows him without a penis. And to combat the things his father had done (supposedly, with regards to changing the religion) Tutankhamun was mummified with an erection.
Well, we’re not likely to ever know the truth, and that’s not really important.
The point of this isn’t to say if Akhenaten was trans or intersex or married to a crossdressing queen or one of the first ever recorded gay men in world history, it’s to point out that we have no idea.
So if some transphobe is all “when archaeologists dig up your bones, they’ll know your sex,” you can just remember Akhenaten, and know that archaeology is not as simplistic as bigots would like you to believe.