Aidan Dodson

My personal view is that what happened when they decided to clear KV-55 is that T is moved off to a new location.

Smenkhare is deprived of his identity but left in place.

And Achenar is taken off and burnt.

That's my personal view of what happened.

Huh.

There's a graduated sort of view that T, okay, she had a dodgy son, but she's okay.

And her mummy is now in Cairo.

Smenkhare, probably misled, wasn't a bad lad.

We'll take his names away, but we will leave his body, his body will survive.

Akhenaten, completely beyond the pale.

And the worst thing which can happen to an ancient Egyptian is to be consumed by fire.

It seems to be that.

And when you read the Book of the Dead, one of the things which the dead are terrified of is fire.

So therefore, I think the most logical solution is that he was taken out and a bonfire kindled in the middle of the Vale of the Kings.

That's my personal view anyway.

I think basically within three years of Akhenaten's death, they've decided Amarna is finished.

And therefore, what seems to happen is that everybody who is living there, royal family downwards, start going back to where they'd always been.

So probably the people who had been building the tombs at Amarna go back to the workman's village at Thebes, at Luxor, where they've always been.

And everybody else starts drifting back to their own, to wherever they were.

I suspect the majority will have gone back to either Memphis or to Thebes, which are the two older capitals.