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 A plaster study of a young woman wearing large earrings, generally identified as Kiya, currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City | |
| Kiya of Egypt | |
| Great Beloved Wife (hemet mereryt aat) | |
| KV35?, possibly KV63?? | |
| Pharaoh Akhenaten | |
| unnamed daughter, possibly Tutankhamun and Smenkhkare | |
| 18th dynasty of Egypt | |
| Ancient Egyptian religion Worhsipped the Sun Disc Aten | |
Evidence for Kiya's Life
Kiya's existence was unknown until 1959, when her name and titles were noted on a small cosmetic container in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It had been bought almost thirty years previously, without provenance, from Egyptologist Howard Carter.
The British Egyptologists Aidan Dodson and Dyan Hilton wrote:
"Kiya is named and depicted on various blocks originating at Amarna, on vases in London and New York, four fragmentary kohl-tubes in Berlin and London, and a wine-jar docket. She may also be depicted by three uninscribed sculptor's studies. Her coffin and canopic jars were taken over for the burial of a king (probably Smenkhkare), which was ultimately discovered in tomb KV55 in the Valley of the Kings. Almost all of Kiya's monuments were usurped for daughters of Akhenaten, making it fairly certain that she was disgraced some time after Year 11 [of Akhenaten]."
Akhenaten and his family were based in Thebes for the first four years of his reign, establishing the new capital city at Amarna in Year 5. Kiya is not attested during this early period. Only after the move to Amarna does she emerge through inscriptional evidence as one of Akhenaten's wives.
Kiya's name appeared prominently in the temple installation known as the Maru-Aten, at the southern edge of the city, according to epigraphic studies. The inscriptions in the Maru-Aten were eventually recarved to replace the name and titles of Kiya with those of Akhenaten's eldest daughter, Meritaten.
One or more "sunshades" or side-chapels in the city’s largest temple to the Aten, the Per-Aten, also originally bore the name of Kiya. These sunshades were later reinscribed for Meritaten and Ankhesenpaaten, the third daughter of Akhenaten. Some of the recarved inscriptions indicate that Kiya had a daughter, whose name is not preserved. Marc Gabolde proposes that Kiya's daughter was Beketaten, who is more often identified as a daughter of Amenhotep III and Tiye.
The most spectacular of Kiya’s monuments is a gilded wooden coffin of costly and intricate workmanship that was discovered in Tomb KV55 in the Valley of the Kings. The coffin's footboard contains an Atenist prayer that was originally intended for a woman, but was later revised to a refer to a man – with enough grammatical errors to betray the gender of the original speaker.[ The style of the coffin and the language of its surviving inscriptions place its manufacture in the reign of Akhenaten. Scholarly opinion now makes Kiya its original owner. The richness of this coffin, which is comparable in style to the middle coffin of Tutankhamun, provides further evidence of Kiya’s exalted status at Amarna.
Many Egyptologists have tried to produce an explanation for her prominence. Numerous scholarly discussions of Tutankhamun’s parentage during the late twentieth century, and the early years of the twenty-first, have mentioned the hypothesis that Kiya was Tutankhamun’s mother. If she had indeed borne a male heir to Akhenaten, this distinction might well merit unique honors. However, genetic studies of the Egyptian royal mummies, led by Zahi Hawass and Carsten Pusch, have now established that Tutankhamun’s biological mother was KV35YL, the "Younger Lady" discovered in the mummy cache in the tomb of Amenhotep II.
Kiya disappears
Around Year XVI another important figure disappeared from the scene, Akhenaten's second wife, Kiya. In texts, Kiya is given the lengthy title 'the greatly beloved wife of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Neferkheperure-Wa'enre, child of the Aten, who lives now and forever more'. She is never referred to as 'Royal Wife', as this was a title reserved exclusively for Nefertiti. Kiya's abnormally elaborate title, as long as Nefertiti's, may have been given to her to compensate for what was in fact a secondary status.
...there is strong reason to believe that Kiya was princess Tadukhipa of Mitanni...
On jar inscriptions, Kiya is mentioned simply as 'the Great Lady (of Naharina)'. As Naharina was also known as Mitanni, there is strong reason to believe that Kiya was princess Tadukhipa of Mitanni, sent to the Egyptian court late in the reign of Akhenaten's father, Amenhotep III, by Tushratta of Mitanni (Naharina). After a few years in the old pharaoh's harem, she was put into that of his son. During the reign of Akhenaten, relations between Egypt and Mitanni soured, as one Amarna Letter tells us (Armana Letter EA 29), and it is likely that Kiya paid the price for these diplomatic upheavals.
Her final destiny is uncertain. In Amarna her official monuments were re-dedicated to two of Akhenaten's daughters - Merytaten and Ankhesenpaaten. Her coffin and canopic jars, discovered in Tomb 55 of the Valley of the Kings, were reused for the burial of Akhenaten. It is possible that Kiya returned to Mittani when her father was assassinated, leaving a daughter in Egypt. Following Kiya's disappearance, her daughter's name (which contained the suffix -aten) was effaced from the monuments to Kiya and replaced by the names of fictional children of Akhenaten's daughters. There are clear indications that this princess, the daughter of Kiya, was in reality the 'royal daughter' Baketaten, depicted in the tomb of the Noble 'Huya' at Amarna.