| Kiya | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Queen consort of Egypt Great Beloved Wife | ||||||||||
 A plaster study of a young woman wearing large earrings, generally identified as Kiya, currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City | ||||||||||
| Spouse | Pharaoh Akhenaten | |||||||||
| Egyptian name | Two variations:
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| Dynasty | 18th of Egypt | |||||||||
Kiya was one of the wives of the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten. Little is known about her, and her actions and roles are poorly documented in the historical record, in contrast to those of Akhenaten's 'Great royal wife', Nefertiti. Her unusual name suggests that she may originally have been a Mitanni princess.[1] Surviving evidence demonstrates that Kiya was an important figure at Akhenaten's court during the middle years of his reign, when she had a daughter with him.[2][3] She disappears from history a few years before her royal husband's death. In previous years, she was thought to be mother of Tutankhamun, but recent DNA evidence suggests this is unlikely.
- ^ Reeves, C. Nicholas. New Light on Kiya from Texts in the British Museum, p.100 The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 74 (1988)
- ^ William J. Murnane. Texts from the Amarna Period in Egypt. Edited by E.S. Meltzer. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1995. (ISBN 1-55540-966-0) Page 9, pp 90–93, pp 210–211.
- ^ Aidan Dodson. Amarna Sunset: Nefertiti, Tutankhamun, Ay, Horemheb, and the Egyptian Counter Reformation. The American University in Cairo Press, 2009. (ISBN 978-977-416-304-3) Page 17.