Tea at Trianon: The Hunt for Ankhesenamun

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, September 7, 2023

The Hunt for Ankhesenamun

Wife of Tutankhamun. From Ancient Origins:

Born Ankhesenpaaten in Regnal Year 5 or 6 of the enigmatic Pharaoh Neferkheperure-waenre Akhenaten, this girl would ensure that her family consolidated their hold on the throne against tremendous odds. The third of six daughters of the Heretic and his enchanting wife, Nefertiti; she was probably born in the new capital Akhetaten―‘Horizon of the Aten’ (modern Tell el-Amarna). Ankhesenpaaten was raised in an opulent, but heavily-guarded environment; for in his overweening idealism, her father had dared to annul centuries-old religious beliefs by discarding the pantheon of deities, especially the state god Amun, and proclaimed that there was but one divinity, the Aten―the radiant solar disc. One of the references to Ankhesenpaaten found on Amarna monuments reads King’s daughter of his Body, his beloved Ankhes-en-pa-aten, born of the great royal wife, his beloved, Lady of the Two Lands (Neferneferuaten Nefertiti) . The idyllic, paradisiacal life that the art of that age depicted seems to have been a conscious effort to herald the glories of the monotheistic experiment at Amarna. In reality, however, it was but an astute facade for the terrible inner tumult; and matters would soon plummet inexorably. (Read more.)

The young Queen disappeared from history without a trace, HERE.