Pharaoh Akhenaten

Personally, Aknenaten got somehow under my skin when I first made the association of a bust hanging in The Louvre and love in its truest form.

Dorothy Porter said of Akhenaten, “I first saw him in a museum in Berlin in 1976. I had come to see the bust of his wife, Nefertiti, but it was the smirking, distorted, oddly beautiful face of Akhenaten that put out tentacles to my imagination. A strange confession from a feminist poet.”

The unusual appearance of the Pharaoh Akhenaten is still a subject of debate among historians and researchers.


There's a distinctive artistic representation, which shows the pharaoh with elongated features, a prominent chin, large lips, and a rounded belly. Some scholars have suggested that these depictions may reflect a physical condition such as Marfan syndrome or a genetic disorder, rather than the result of inbreeding.

Also for the first time in the history of Ancient Egypt, women were thought of to be equal to men because Aten and Akhenaten were called father and mother of all. Therefore the theory goes; the pharaoh was usually depicted with breasts and feminine hips, in order to symbolize life and fertility.


Succession through a daughter did occur in Ancient Egypt but when it did the husband whom the princess married almost invariably took control of the kingdom. In fact there's a theory that kingship traditionally passed through the daughter of the Pharaoh and that's why so many princes married their sisters.

Hatshepsut in the same 18th Dynasty was Egypt's second confirmed queen regnant, the first being Sobekneferu/Nefrusobek in the 12th Dynasty. Throughout her rule, Hatshepsut represented herself with royal titles, traditional regalia, and both feminine and masculine physical attributes.

However, in reliefs she commissioned of herself, she is often represented in the dress of a male pharaoh, even wearing a fake beard; the only indication that she is a woman is her name inscribed beside her image.

Perhaps Neferneferuaten was then a female pharaoh who most likely was Akhenaten's wife Nefertiti, but it is also possible that she was their daughter Meritaten, the wife of Smenkhkara. The throne name Ankhkheperura was used by both Neferneferuaten and Smenkhkara.

Finally, scientists looked into the pathology itself of both Tutankhamun and Akhenaten, and concluded that there was no definitive signs of Marfan's syndrome or other such disorders which cause marfanoid like changes to the skeletal system.

The distinctive Amarna style was therefore, in the latest research, not influenced by deformities.