I, too, would be afraid

Among a set of Hittite tablets entitled “The Deeds of Suppiluliuma as told by his son Mursilis II”, one recounts Ankhesenamen’s frantic letter.

The letter is extraordinary. The queen of Egypt writes to Egypt’s traditional enemy, the Hittites, and says that she is afraid and wants to marry a Hittite prince and make him king of Egypt. Nothing like this had ever happened in Egypt.

The queen of Egypt, who was Dahamunzu sent a messenger to my father and wrote to him thus: “my husband died. A son I have not. But to thee, they say, the sons are many. If thou wouldst give me one son of thine, he would become my husband. Never shall I pick out a servant of mine and make him my husband! … I am afraid!

Ankhesamun, Tutenkhamen’s teenage widow, was pressured to marry her husband’s elderly vizier, Ay, so that he could assume the throne. A teenager’s natural revulsion towards elderly men aside, I would be afraid to marry that mug, too.