Amenhotep IV's story begins at a time when the brave new dynasty of warrior pharaohs which had reined in the end of the second intermediate period (a period of foreign rule) was likely beginning to become stagnant and troubled. The reconquering of Egypt and the forging of a new empire, started off by the pharaoh Ahmose and the beginning of the 18th dynasty, had raised the god Amun to a position of unprecedented power. The pharaohs of the dynasty felt that it was to Amun that they owed their big, flashy, and ultimately expensive and troublesome new empire. According to Dr. Donald B. Redford,

The single most striking feature in Egyptian religion under the early 18th dynasty is the prominence of Amun. The kings of the period never tired of piling the booty from foreign campaigns at the feet of Amun, since they ascribed the success of their military ventures to him alone. The god's coffers bulged with wealth

In these years we see the appearance of several more daughters of Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Neferneferuaten-Tasharit (tasharit means "junior"), Neferneferure and Sotepenre joined Meritaten, Meketaten and Ankhesenpaaten. Redford believes that all of these daughters were born by year 10 of Akhenaten's reign (1984).

The first pharaohs of the 18th dynasty, determined to keep the rest of the world firmly under Egypt's thumb in order to prevent another several centuries' worth of barbarian rule, expended considerable effort in forging out a huge, far-reaching empire (Aldred, 1988; Redford, 1984). Several generations of warrior pharaohs went out and marked out their new, hugely expanded territory through conquest and (although they did not find it necessary to brag about this quite so much) diplomacy. They then left the management of this monster to their successors.

This spiral into tragedy started with the death of Akhenaten's second daughter, Meketaten, whose funeral is movingly depicted in the royal tomb at Akhetaten. Aldred dates the child's death to approximately year 13 of Akhenaten's reign. This date is based in part on her disappearance from the scene in official portraits and on monuments shortly after the year 12 durbar (Aldred, 1988). However, another aspect of this mourning scene has confused and disturbed scholars for many years: the depiction of a royal baby in the arms of a nurse standing on the edge of the scene, attended by a fan-bearer. Aldred and others interpret this to mean that Meketaten had died in childbirth at the age of twelve or thirteen, and that the baby was hers, possibly by Akhenaten (Aldred, 1988). It is possible, however, that the baby, whose identification has now been excised from the scene, was none other than the young Tutankhaten.

Some topics in this essay:
Donald Redford, Amenhotep IV, Amenhotep IV's, Aten Murnane, Amenhotep III, Meanwhile Akhenaten, William Murnane, Aldred Nile, Dr Redford, Translation Murnane, , aldred 1988, aten father, redford 1984, amenhotep iv, murnane 1995, aten father akhet-aten, , akhenaten's reign, father akhet-aten, amenhotep iii, amenhotep iv's, translation murnane 1995, dr donald redford, monuments sun-disc forever,