Queen Ankhesenamun. Tutankhamun married Ankhesenaten, one of the daughters of his father Akhenaten and his stepmother Queen Nefertiti, so she was his half-sister! She was a little older than Tutankhamun himself. Later, Ankhesenaten changed her name to Ankhesenamun, "She lives (ankhes) for (en) the god Amun (amun)".
Ankhesenamun disappears from the historical record sometime between 1325 and 1321 B.C. — an absence that to historians signals her death. Because no one knows what happened to her, scholars have sometimes referred to King Tut's wife as Egypt's Lost Princess. But it isn't only time that has fragmented her story.
The two stillborn daughters of King Tutankhamun (circa 1336–1327 BC) were mummified and buried with their father in his tomb (KV62) in the Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt. In ancient Egypt, stillborn infants and fetuses were buried with their parents.
Nefertiti is referred to as King Tut's mother, but she is actually his stepmother. However, since King Tut married his half-sister, Nefertiti is also his mother-in-law. Nefertiti suddenly disappears from the record in the 12th year of Akhenaten's reign. No one knows for sure why this was, but there are a few theories.
The Lost History Of Tutankhamun's Siblings (and Wife) | Nefertiti's Daughters | Odyssey
Which pharaoh married his own mother?
Marriage and Children
From the lack of clear records in ancient Egypt, it is unclear exactly how many kids Amenhotep II had, but most claim he had at least 11 children. When he became pharaoh, he married Merytre, his mother. This might seem weird to us, but it was not an uncommon practice in ancient Egypt.
Tutankhamun married Ankhesenaten, one of the daughters of his father Akhenaten and his stepmother Queen Nefertiti, so she was his half-sister! She was a little older than Tutankhamun himself. Later, Ankhesenaten changed her name to Ankhesenamun, "She lives (ankhes) for (en) the god Amun (amun)".
Experts think this trend contributed to higher incidences of congenital defects—such as King Tut's cleft palate and club foot—among rulers. Tutankhamun himself would eventually marry his father's daughter by his chief wife—his half-sister, Ankhesenamun.
We know what Tutankhamun looked like because scientists have done experiments on his skull, bones and DNA. Tutankhamun was slim, 5'6” tall with rounded hips, a narrow waist and large front teeth.
Cleopatra, last pharaoh of Egypt, may be the most famous female ruler in all of history. But her Roman enemies made her notorious for all the wrong reasons: her political ambitions, her sumptuous lifestyle, and above all her love affairs with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.
Queen Ankhesenamun married King Tut at the tender age of 13. King Tut was even younger at just a few years shy of ten. The couple was married in 1334 BC. They lived in Amarna, the city King Akhenaton built for four years until they moved back to the capital city of Thebes.
There is some evidence to suggest that she was married to Ay, Tutankhamun's successor, shortly after his death, and she then disappears from the historical records, presumably due to her own death. Interestingly her tomb has never been located, and none of her burial equipment has been identified.
Two foetuses found in the tomb of Tutankhamen may have been twins and were very likely to have been the children of the teenage Pharaoh, according to the anatomist who first studied the mummified remains of the young King in the 1960s.
He ruled for so long that nearly all of his subjects had been born knowing only him as their pharaoh, leading to some panic upon his death that the world would end. Ramses II, whose mummy showed he stood over six feet tall, had over 200 wives and concubines and 156 children.
Finally: King Tut's Daughters. Based on DNA, King Tut was the father of the babies found in his tomb, with over 99% certainty and they believe that his wife and half-sister was their mother (the body they believe to be hers had more deteriorated DNA).
Incestuous alliances were common among Egypt's royalty, said renowned Egyptologist Zahi Hawass. "A king could marry his sister and his daughter because he is a god, like Iris and Osiris, and this was a habit only among kings and queens," Hawass told a news conference at Cairo's Egyptian Museum.
Nefertari married Ramses II before he became pharaoh. His father, Seti I, put his son under little direct pressure to marry, but, after he officially became prince regent, provided him with a harem and a goodly assortment of desirable women from whom to choose future mates.
Rameses III had two primary wives and several secondary wives, and it was one of these secondary wives, Tiye, who ultimately caused his downfall. She hatched a plot to kill him and place her son, prince Pentaweret, on the throne.
TIL King Tut had a club foot, feminine hips, an overbite. He had Kohler's disease. DNA determine that Pharaoh's parents were undoubtedly brother and sister.
There were also instances of pharaohs marrying their daughters: Ramesses II (reigned circa 1279 B.C. to1213 B.C.) took Meritamen, one of his daughters, as a wife.
"Cleopatra was no mere sexual predator, and certainly no plaything of Caesar," writes Erich Gruen, a professor emeritus of history at University of California Berkeley, in an article in the book "Cleopatra: A Sphinx Revisited" (University of California Press, 2011).
Ancient Egyptian is considered to be a branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family, meaning that ancient Egyptian has similarities to Akkadian, Arabic and Hebrew, and is quite different from Indo-European languages like English, French and German.
