Akhenaten’s Family Tree

About Akhenaten →

Family

• Nefertiti(spouse),Ankhesenamun(child),Meketaten(child),Meritaten(child)— Marriage

  Akhenaten and Nefertiti reigned together at Amarna as the sole earthly conduit to the Aten, and their daughters Meritaten, Meketaten, and Ankhesenamun were born into the new faith they imposed upon Egypt.

• Amenhotep III(parent),Tiye(parent)— Marriage

  Amenhotep III and Tiye, rulers of Egypt at the height of its imperial power, raised Akhenaten — the son who would abandon Thebes, reject Amun, and remake Egyptian religion in the image of the Aten.

• Kiya(spouse)— Consort

  Kiya was Akhenaten's secondary wife at Amarna, bearing the title 'Greatly Beloved Wife' before her images were erased and her monuments usurped by the royal daughters.

• Tutankhamun(child)

  Akhenaten fathered Tutankhamun, the boy-king who would undo his father's religious revolution and restore the old gods to their temples.

  ⚠ Tutankhamun's mother remains debated. Candidates include the minor wife Kiya and a sister of Akhenaten identified as KV35YL. DNA evidence confirms Akhenaten's paternity but has not conclusively identified the mother.

Enemy of

• Amun

  Akhenaten closed Amun's temples throughout Egypt, chiseled his name from monuments, and disbanded his priesthood. After Akhenaten's death, the Amun clergy restored their cult and condemned his memory.

• Horemheb

  Horemheb systematically erased Akhenaten from the official king lists, demolished his monuments, and reused talatat blocks from the Aten temples as fill in new constructions at Karnak and elsewhere.

• Mut

  Akhenaten closed Mut's temples at Karnak and defaced her name during the Amarna revolution, suppressing the Theban triad of Amun, Mut, and Khonsu.

Created

• Akhetaten

  Akhenaten founded Akhetaten ('Horizon of the Aten') on virgin ground at modern Tell el-Amarna, carving boundary stelae into the surrounding cliffs and swearing never to expand the city beyond its limits.

• Great Hymn to the Aten

  Akhenaten composed or commissioned the Great Hymn to the Aten, inscribed in the tomb of Ay at Akhetaten, praising the sun disk as sole creator and sustainer of all life.

Associated with

• Aten

  Akhenaten proclaimed himself the sole prophet and earthly son of the Aten, rewriting Egypt's theology around the sun disk alone — only through the pharaoh could any person know the Aten, and only through the Aten could the pharaoh sustain the world.

• Ay

  Ay stood as Akhenaten's foremost courtier at Amarna, bearing the title 'God's Father,' and had the Great Hymn to the Aten inscribed upon the walls of his tomb as testament to the king's new theology.

• Tutankhamun

  Tutankhamun reversed his father Akhenaten's religious revolution, issuing the Restoration Stela that described how the traditional gods had forsaken Egypt during the Aten's exclusive worship.