Why do you think akenaten and his duaghters r all depicted so oddly shaped

I've answered questions like this before. Maybe other posters can add their opinions, too.

It used to be people believed Akhenaten in particular suffered some kind of disorder such as Marfan's syndrome, a connective tissue disorder that involves defects in the supporting structures of the body, such as skin, bone, cartilage, ligaments, blood vessels and organ coverings. That theory is rather outdated and has been more or less abandoned.

Taking a more critical look at these bizarre reliefs and statues of the Amarna Period, Egyptologists and art historians see things quite differently now. It has to do with the nature of numerous Egyptian deities. Some Egyptian gods are androgynous, neither clearly feminine nor masculine, and this is definitely the case with the Aten, the physical representation of the solar disk that Akhenaten worshiped above all other deities.

These odd statues and reliefs show us a very androgynous royal family--so much so that sometimes it is very difficult to distinguish Akhenaten from his beloved Nefertiti. Evidently Akhenaten favored an androgynous form in royal representations of himself as an artistic convention to make him appear more divine to the Egyptian eye. It's a concept many of us modern folks have a hard time understanding. He is both male and female, a form that only the truly divine can take on, and for certain Akhenaten wanted to be thought of as truly divine. He felt that he and he alone was fit to be the voice and representative of the Aten, its sole intermediary, which is one of the chief reasons his religion of the Aten was doomed to fail from the start.

And bear in mind these odd depictions of Akhenaten and family come mostly from the early part of the Amarna Period. In the artwork throughout much of the later years of his reign, Akhenaten is depicted quite conventionally.

Now, don't drag me down with you. For me it would be too short a trip!

I've read about the steamy Akhenaten-Smenkhare love affair, too. I think it may have been in Christine El Mahdy's book Tutankhamun: The Life and Death of the Boy King. She spends a good deal of the first half of the book exploring this theory, to the point that they were not only lovers but father-and-son lovers, and I'm thinking, "Where is she coming up with this doo-doo!" But then she wholly dismisses the theory toward the end as she arrives at more sound possibilities.

Akhenaten is perfect.

That's all I can say for now....

But... Akhie+Smenkhare? Akhie+TUT???!!! OMG, no, no, no! I have to say no! Once I read a book called 'Twelveth transforming' and it wrote things like this. I mean I have no problem with homos, but it's only OK for a fiction or something like that. But in a book? Oh, guys, where are your ears? And eyes?... Akhie was not a pedifile! He was weird in his steles, statues and maybe he had some kind of a disease, but he was not a pedifile! Grrr!!! How could you think that? LOL So no, no, no....

Anyway, I adore Akhenaten - EXPECIALLY because he looked as he looked.

Beautiful, LOL

Don't think I'm a craze, but I always had something with weird boys... I totally adore Akhenaten's androgyn appearance!

Well, if he DID have sexual relations with one of his daughters (as has been suggested by the archeological community) then not only was he a pedeophile (by our mmodern definition) but also incestuous.

Very well put, Si-amun. A nice wakeup call. And it wasn't just one but two daughters he may have married and with whom he possibly had "relations." These daughters were Meritaten and Ankhesenpaaten, the latter of whom would of course go on to become Tut's wife and take the new name Ankhesenamun. Meritaten had a daughter called Meritaten-tasherit and Ankhesenpaaten had one named Ankhesenpaaten-tasherit. The tasherit segment of these names means "the child," and many historians believe these two girls were the products of Akhenaten's relations with his two daughters. It's not an historically proven fact, I must stress.

But a pharaoh marrying one or more of his daughters happened in other cases, as with Amunhotep III and Ramesses II. It's quite possible Amunhotep III married his daughter Sitamun as part of the celebration of his first heb-sed festival. We tend to look at all this and think, "Oooo, gross, incest!" Well, of course it was incest, but to the Egyptian royals it had broader meaning and, most practically speaking, was another means to provide the family with potential sons to keep the throne in one's grasp. It also significantly elevated the status of such princesses, however odd that might seem to us.

I always found it interesting that these little girls, Meritaten-tasherit and Ankhesenpaaten-tasherit, are only seen on the monuments which originally belonged to Kiya. That's why the alternative theory is that the little princess depicted on the monuments is actually the daughter of Kiya (sometimes referred to as Kiya-tasherit ).
That theory says that Meritaten-tasherit is identical to Ankhesenpaaten-tasherit and refers to a daughter of Akhenaten and Kiya.
Who knows?

It is true that Amenhotep III married his daughters Sitamen and Isis. He may have also married Henuttaneb. There's some evidence that suggests that all three are elevated to Great Royal Wife.

Ramses II married his daughters Meryetamun, Bintanath, and Nebettawy (and possibly more). Meryetamun was elevated to great royal wife in ca year 24, possibly to replace her mother Nefertari who is thought to have died around that time. Similarly Bintanath seems to have in some sense replaced her mother Isetnofret. Bintanath is known from her tomb to have had a daughter, indicating that the marriage was nor ceremonial.

The only royal woman I know of who married a non-royal and made a life for herself is Ramses II's sister Tia. She somehow escaped the royal harem. I wonder if she married before her father became king? Other than that the options for royal women, specially princesses seem pretty limited.

Yeah, and who does she marry? A man named Tia. That's just too confusing. All 23,537 of Ramesses II's children, when going to visit their aunt and uncle, must have said, "We're going over to the Tias' house."

LOL Wouldn't that be more like:
"wr gng vr t th ti3s hws"

I wonder if it was just as confusing then as it is now. There's really no mention of nick names right?

I did read somewhere that Tia (the man) has a shabti where his name is inscribed over that of Suty (another treasurer).

Would be rather wacky if he had had a different name and then changed it to match the name of his wife ...

.....Ok, Lostris, I can only assume that you loooove Akhenaten...and I like him too...you're not crazy...really...heh heh... ^_^;;

Anyways, I also have to agree to both sides (Wow, this should be fun.) Incest, like Si-Amun and Kmt said, wasn't weird to the Ancient Egyptians, and it was symbolic. Apparently, even the Gods incested!!

And where did Ramesses II come in....? Speaking of which, Kmt, my dear friend, I must correct you--Ramesses II had 7,488,003 children, not 23, 537, as you suggested.

I agree

Oh, you two are soooo confusing but funny!