Thursday, August 27, 2009

The Woman Who Would Be Pharaoh By William Kline


A well researched and very interesting piece of historical fiction about Ankhesenamun (the name means – “she lives through Amun”), the beautiful wife of Tutankhamun. She was one of the daughters of Pharaoh Akhenaton (Amenhotep IV) and his queen Nefertiti who eliminated all of the old Egyptian gods and replaced them with a single god Aten .

The Egyptians were not happy with this change and after Akenenaton’s death, they went back to worshiping their old gods. Tutankhamun and his wife supported this change.

The novel deals with the younger life of Ankhesenamun and Tutankhamun as they grew up together and the political power struggles that brought Tutankhamun to the throne for seven years until he was killed by power hungry relatives. His widow queen Ankhesenamun fearful of her life, enlisted the aid of a powerful Hittite king in an attempt to protect the throne against her scheming grandfather who would force her into marriage in order to become Pharaoh.

As a companion, one might want to read “Nefertiti” by Nick Drake and “Nerartari, The Heretic Queen” by Michelle Moran.

2 comments:

ImageNations said...

this is a book I would love to read. I love such topics/themes. thanks

Alan said...

Most welcome! Egyptian history has always fascinated me and I enjoy good fiction about Egypt; I read Elizabeth Peters and Wilbur Smith's River God and its sequal are favorites. You have a very interesting bio. Thanks for visiting