Queen Mutnodjmet

It's unkown when exactly Horemheb married Mutnodjmet but it was probably just before or just after he became king Around (1319BC). Nothing is recorded of their life as a couple.

According to some scholars Mutnodjmet was the half-sister of Nefertiti. Nefertiti is thought to have had a (half?)-sister called Mutbenret who had the title "Daughter of the King". Mutbenret and Mutnodjmet are such similar names that some believe they actually refer to the same person, but are just different spellings.

In this case, their common father was probably the Pharaoh Ay. This fits. As a Great Royal Wife, Mutnodjmet was almost certainly of royal, or near royal, birth herself. The names of the six positively identified daughters of Akhenaten and Nefertiti are known and are not Mutnodjmet. There is some speculation that Nefertiti had a seventh child, and Nefertiti's daughter Meketaten died in childbirth, so there are other possible mothers - in both cases the father would have been Akhenaten. There are no known surviving offspring from the reigns of Tutankhamun or Smenkhare, although it is thought that Ankhesenamun may have had a daughter (,A HREF="http://www.squidoo.com/ankhesenpaaten-tasherit">Ankhesenpaaten Tasherit) before marrying Tutankhamun. In any event, the chances are very high that Mutnodjmet was blood kin of Queen Nefertiti: half-sister, daughter or grand-daughter.

Reportedly Queen Mutnodjmet died at age 35. As there is presently some difficulty in locating her remains, this must be in doubt. (I am also unimpressed with the dating of her death - see below.) Hopefully they will be found for DNA assessment. As she is believed to have died in year 13 or 14 of Horemheb's reign, this points towards Ay as her father, but if she was just a couple of years younger when she died, then it is possible that Meketaten was her mother. It is possible that Nefertiti could be her mother, but the timings don't seem to work out - there aren't 35 years between the deaths of the two women. The title "Sister of the King's Great Royal Wife" seems to rule Mekaten out as mother: she died bearing her first child. Ankhesenemanun/Ankhesenpaaten was certainly too young to be Mutnodjmet's mother.

On balance, Mutnodjmet probably was Nefertiti's sister and the daughter of Ay and his wife Tey, but this creates a second mystery. Horemheb suppressed references to the Amarna years, and to Akhenaten and Nefertiti. It is odd that his wife retained a title commemorating Nefertiti as her sister.

However, Geoffrey Martin who excavated Mutnodjmet's tomb at Saqqare takes a different view:

“ The name Mutnodjmet was is not particularly rare in the late Eighteenth Dynasty, and even if she were the sister of Nefertiti her marriage to Horemheb would have had no effect on Horemheb's legitimacy or candidacy since Mutnodjmet (who is depicted in the private tombs at El-Amarna) was not herself of royal blood. In any case whatever her antecedents Mutnodjmet could have been married to Horemheb a little before he became Pharaoh. „

Finally, thank you to the developers whose icons I feature on my lenses: Dry Icons for the Portfolio icon; Gopal Raju for the Twitter Bird; Icons-Land for Sweet Angel; Maja Benic for the Contact, Home & Pencil icons.
I also appreciate the section dividers from Stargazer00.