Message #150

[Bianca]

In any event, Kiya is attested side by side with Nefertiti for several years, though the two women are
carefully distinguished by their official titles.

In the royal harem, there had always been only one "great royal wife" and, in the case of Akhenaten,
this was Nefertiti.

Kiya, on the other hand, bore the highly unusual official title "great beloved wife of the King", which elevated her above all the other women of the harem, but without assigning her any religious significance, such as Nefertitit had.

Kiya is also carefully distinguished from Nefertiti in the repressentations.  She never appears wearing a crown or the royal uraeus-serpent and her name is not enclosed in a cartouche.  Additionally, there is never more than one daughter behind her, in contrast to the usually larger number who appear behing
Akhenaten and Nefertiti.
                                         
Whether or not we must reckon with a "disappearance" of Nefertiti from the scene, and however that
would have to be explained, Kiya stood out for a time as the predominant wife at the royal court.  In
a representation preserved only in fragmentary form, she appears, along with her own daughter, be-
hind Akhenaten under the radiant Aten, while at the same time, Nefertiti's daughters Merytaten and
Anhesenpaaten are lying on the ground in proskynesis and are thus clearly relegated to second rank.

Akhenaten apparently had another, seventh daughter by Kiya and it can be imagined that the latter
established her own daughter as heir to the throne instead of Merytaten.  But it can only be left to
speculation whether we must reckon with a formal power struggle between Kiya and Merytaten (who,
in the end, bore the title of a queen) in the later years of Akhenaten.  It seems certain only that in many instances the name if Kiya replaced by that of (Princess, not Queen) Merytaten and that part of the burial equipment in the "ominous" tomb 55 was originally intended for Kiya.