Aidan Dodson

Because once you get beyond the Amarna period into the time of Ramesses II and so on, it's like the royal family en masse is a thing.

You have Rameses II with his hundred sons and daughters all being shown with him on temple reliefs.

So Akhenaten's promotion of the royal family through his particular reasons actually then changes Egyptian art and the protocol of who you show on temple walls forever.

On the other hand, though, you do see them in private context.

What we're talking about here is their absence from any kind of official or temple context.

Yet in the tomb chapels of the tutors who've been appointed to the royal sons, they're all over the place.

So it's very specific about official contexts.

But if you were the tutor of a royal son, you splashed it all over your tomb walls to show how connected you were with the royal family.

So it's a very, very specifically public and sort of temple thing.

Not that they're denying these royal sons exist.

It's just where they appear.

And so on occasion, if they've got a day job, they will be able to depict it carrying out that day job.

It's just the very fact that if you're simply a royal son, it doesn't count for temple walls until we move on into Akhenaten's time and then on into the following 19th dynasty when you start seeing them in spades.

Okay.

Well, certainly she is a full partner with Akhenaten in everything.

And indeed, in certain points, she is the more prominent.

As I think I mentioned a bit earlier on, there is one of the Aten temples at Karnak where she is the sole officiant.

which clearly marks her out as being his parallel.

Also, there are a few quite remarkable depictions of her in smiting mode, where she is holding an enemy by the hair and about to smash his brain, or in this case, her brains out.

So she, as queen, is doing an awful lot of things which directly parallel what the king is doing.