The Royal Family Tree

Tiye’s parents Yuya and Thuya are buried in KV46. The 2010 DNA study identifies Tiye (the “Elder Lady” from KV35) as their daughter.

The 2010 DNA study identifies Tutankhamun’s parents as full siblings, both children of Amenhotep III and Tiye; Marc Gabolde’s cousin-marriages alternative, which Dodson takes up, is discussed in Who Was Neferneferuaten?. The KV55 male (the father) has been claimed for both Akhenaten and Smenkhkare; the series follows the skeletal-age evidence pointing to Smenkhkare. The Younger Lady’s name is not attested; the series identifies her as Pharaoh Neferneferuaten.

Nefertiti’s royal birth is unattested; she holds no “King’s Daughter” title anywhere in the record. Tey’s title as her nurse suggests she was raised in the household of Ay and his wife Tey. Her unprecedented prominence during Akhenaten’s reign is beyond dispute; whether she ruled beside him is debated, and in the series she never rules as pharaoh.

Akhenaten and Nefertiti had six attested daughters and no attested son.

Full-sibling marriage was a reserved privilege of the Egyptian royal house. On the standard reading of the 2010 DNA study, Tut’s parents were full siblings; the identification of specific individuals is where the series’ interpretive choices come in. Smenkhkare’s marriage to Akhenaten’s daughter Meritaten (shown above) was, in the series, the political union of the co-regency; his child with the Younger Lady, his full sister, was the biological line that produced Tutankhamun.

The 2010 DNA study found that the two fetal mummies from Tutankhamun’s tomb “can be” his daughters. Ankhesenamun’s identification as their mother is tentative, based on partial DNA from KV21A.

Scholars disagree about Nefertiti’s relationship to Ay. The majority view identifies him as her father, and Dodson takes him as most probably so, with Iuy, in his reconstruction, as a deceased first wife and Tey as a stepmother whose “Nurse” title reflects that role. The series instead makes its own choice: Ay was Nefertiti’s uncle, brother of a father who died young. Since that father was another son of Yuya — Tiye’s brother — Nefertiti and Akhenaten were maternal first cousins. Tey’s title “Nurse of the Great Royal Wife” is usually read as ruling her out as Nefertiti’s biological mother, though some have taken Ay and Tey for her parents; in the series she raised Nefertiti but did not bear her.

Nakhtmin’s relationship to Ay is also debated. The majority view, argued by Dodson, reads the title “King’s Son” (sā-nsw) as literal paternity: Nakhtmin was Ay’s son and chosen successor. A minority reading, advanced by van Dijk (1996), holds that the title is honorific and that Nakhtmin’s mother was the Songstress Iwj (or Iuy) of Akhmim, his biological father unrecorded. Either way, as Kawai (2010) stresses, the title marked Nakhtmin as Ay’s designated heir, positioned to block Horemheb. The series adopts Dodson’s genealogy, taking Nakhtmin as Ay’s blood son. (See the Horemheb essay.)