New theories about Nefertiti's career as a Pharaoh
In 2012, the discovery of an inscription dated to Year 16, month 3 of Akhet, day 15 of the reign of Akhenaten was announced. It was discovered within Quarry 320 in the largest wadi of the limestone quarry project at Dayr Abū Ḥinnis. The five-line inscription, written in red ochre ink, mentions the presence of the "Great Royal Wife, His Beloved, Mistress of the Two Lands, Neferneferuaten Nefertiti". The final line of the inscription refers to ongoing building work being carried out under the authority of the king's scribe Penthu on the Small Aten Temple in Amarna. The Year 16 ink inscription was translated as:
Regnal year 16, first month of the inundation season, day 15. May the King of Upper and Lower Egypt live, he who lives of Maat, the Lord of the Two Lands Neferkheperure Waenre, l.p.h. the Son of Re, who lives of Maat, the Lord of the Crowns Akhenaten, l.p.h., whose life span is long, living forever and ever, the King's Great Wife, his beloved, the lady of the two lands Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti, living forever and ever. Beloved of Re, the ruler of the two horizons, who rejoices in the horizon in his name of Re ///, who comes as the Aten. the /// the work of the Mansion of the Aten, under the authority of the king’s scribe Penthu, under the authority of overseer of work///.
Van der Perre stresses that:
This inscription offers incontrovertible evidence that both Akhenaten and Nefertiti were still alive in the 16th year of his [Akhenaten's] reign and, more importantly, that they were still holding the same positions as at the start of their reign. This makes it necessary to rethink the final years of the Amarna Period.
This means that Nefertiti was alive in the second to last year of Akhenaten's reign, and demonstrates that Akhenaten still ruled alone, with his wife by his side. Therefore, the rule of the female Amarna pharaoh known as Neferneferuaten must be placed between the death of Akhenaten and the accession of Tutankhamun. Neferneferuaten, the female pharaoh, specifically used the epithet "Effective for her husband" in one of her cartouches, which means she was either Nefertiti or her daughter Meritaten (who was married to king Smenkhkare). Moreover, unlike Meritaten, Nefertiti had already used the title "Neferneferuaten" by Year 5 of Akhenaten's reign in her own cartouches.
The number of Egyptologists who today agree that the female pharaoh Neferneferuaten was Nefertiti include Chris Naunton, Aidan Dodson, Athena van der Perre, Nozomu Kawai and James Peter Allen since 2016 in a Göttinger Miszellen article.
In his updated 2016 paper, James P. Allen now also identifies the female pharaoh as Neferneferuaten Nefertiti, and not Akhenaten's daughter who was named Neferneferuaten Tasherit (the younger) as he had previously suggested in a 2009 paper in memory of the late William J. Murnane. Allen states:
The evidence indicates Smenkhkare ruled only about a year at most. ... Smenkhkare's premature death probably no later than Akhenaten's Regnal Year 14 left only the one-to-four year old heir Tutankhuaten as putative heir. ... Tutankhamun must have been considered too young to be named coregent in his father's stead. ... To safeguard Tutankhamun's accession, Akhenaten also appointed a female coregent Ankheperure Neferneferuaten, to oversee the transition and probably to instruct him in the new religion. In 2009, I argued that this coregent was Akhenaten's fourth daughter, Neferneferuaten, both because it seemed a logical progression in his attempts to produce a son within each of his daughters as they reached puberty, and because evidence was lacking that the other Neferneferuaten, Nefertiti, was still alive in Akhenaten's final years. The Year 16 inscription noted [for the existence of Akhenaten's chief queen] at the beginning of this article solves the latter problem, and I (and my students) now think it likeliest that the coregent was in fact, Nefertiti. The arguments for this are more compelling than they are for the daughter. ... Since Nefertiti was still chief queen in Regnal Year 16 [of Akhenaten], her Year 3 as pharaoh must have occurred two years after Akhenaten's death, and it was within those two years that the first steps towards reconciliation with Amun occurred. While little is known about the daughter other than her existence, Nefertiti had assumed pharaonic roles and prerogatives throughout Akhenaten’s reign, and the occasional epithet in her nomen Akhet-en-hyes "Beneficial for her husband", both reflects a relationship that had already existed and mirrors Akhenaten's own nomen [Akh-en-Iten or 'The one who is beneficial to the Aten'], which described his relationship not only with his god but also with his predecessor, the Tjehen-Aten "dazzling Aten", Amenhotep III. Moreover, if as now seems probable, the appointment of a female coregent was intended not to ensure her own succession but that of the young Tutankhuaten, then it is far more likely that Akhenaten would have turned to the older more experienced woman who had served as his virtual co-ruler than to a young daughter who had just reached puberty barely three to six years older than the heir she was intended to safeguard.
