Dakhamunzu Affair: An Egyptian Queen Asks for a Hittite Prince

The Dakhamunzu affair is an episode of about 1323 BC in which a recently widowed queen of Egypt wrote to the Hittite king Suppiluliuma I asking him to send one of his sons to become her husband. It was an extraordinary request, since Egyptian royal women were never married off to foreign rulers. The prince who was finally sent, Zannanza, died on the way, and the affair pushed Egypt and the Hittites toward open conflict.

Background

In the fourteenth century BC the great powers of the Near East were Egypt, the Hittite kingdom in Anatolia, Babylon, Assyria and Mitanni. They exchanged letters, gifts and royal brides, as shown by the diplomatic archive known as the Amarna Letters. Egyptian kings happily received foreign princesses but refused to send their own daughters abroad.

Under Suppiluliuma I, the Hittites became the strongest power in northern Syria, taking over much of the former Mitanni empire and threatening Egypt’s zone of influence. At the time of the request, the Hittite army was besieging Carchemish, a fortified city on the Euphrates.

The queen’s letter

The story is told in the Deeds of Suppiluliuma, a historical account composed by Suppiluliuma’s son, Mursili II, and preserved on clay tablets from the Hittite capital, Hattusa. According to this text, news came that the Egyptian king, called Nibhururiya, had died. His widow, whom the Hittites called Dakhamunzu, wrote to say that her husband was dead, that she had no son, and that she would not take one of her servants as husband. She asked Suppiluliuma to give her one of his many sons to become her husband and king of Egypt.

The name Dakhamunzu is a Hittite version of the Egyptian title ta hemet nesu, “the king’s wife”, so the Hittites may not have known her personal name.

Suspicion and a second message

Suppiluliuma is said to have been amazed, remarking that nothing like this had ever happened to him. Suspecting a trick, he sent his chamberlain Hattusa-ziti to Egypt to find out whether the king really had no son.

The queen answered angrily, asking why he doubted her and insisting that she had written to no other country. An Egyptian envoy named Hani accompanied the reply. Convinced, Suppiluliuma finally agreed and sent his son Zannanza.

Death of Zannanza

Zannanza died during the journey. The Hittite sources state that the Egyptians had killed him, but they give no details, and some historians think he may have died of illness. A fragmentary letter attributed to Suppiluliuma accuses the Egyptians of the prince’s death. No Egyptian source mentions the episode at all.

In Egypt, the throne passed to the elderly courtier Ay. A ring recorded on the Cairo antiquities market in 1931, bearing the names of Ay and Ankhesenamun side by side, has sometimes been taken as evidence that he married the widowed queen, though this is uncertain.

Which queen?

The identity of the queen is the main scholarly debate. Nibhururiya is close to Nebkheperure, the throne name of Tutankhamun, which would make the widow Ankhesenamun. This is the majority view.

Others argue that Nibhururiya stands for Neferkheperure, the throne name of Akhenaten, so the widow would be Nefertiti or her daughter Meritaten, and the episode would date to about 1336 BC. The answer affects how historians reconstruct the confused succession at the end of the Amarna period, and both positions have able defenders.

Consequences

Suppiluliuma took revenge by attacking Egyptian-controlled territory in Syria, around the region of Amqa in the Beqaa Valley. Prisoners taken in that campaign were brought back to the Hittite lands.

Mursili II later wrote prayers to the gods blaming those prisoners for a plague that ravaged the Hittite kingdom for some twenty years. It killed Suppiluliuma himself and then his son and successor Arnuwanda II. Mursili saw the plague as divine punishment for breaking an earlier treaty with Egypt. Hostility between the two powers continued into the next century.

Key people

• Suppiluliuma I – Hittite king who received the request and sent his son.
• Zannanza – Hittite prince who died on his way to Egypt.
• Dakhamunzu – the widowed Egyptian queen, most often identified as Ankhesenamun.
• Hattusa-ziti – Hittite chamberlain sent to check the queen’s claims.
• Mursili II – son of Suppiluliuma, whose writings preserve the story.

Timeline

• c. 1330s BC: Suppiluliuma I expands Hittite power into northern Syria.
• c. 1323 BC: Death of the Egyptian king Nibhururiya, probably Tutankhamun.
• c. 1323 BC: The widowed queen writes to Suppiluliuma during the siege of Carchemish.
• c. 1323 BC: Hattusa-ziti travels to Egypt; the queen sends a second letter.
• c. 1322 BC: Prince Zannanza dies on his way to Egypt.
• c. 1322 BC: Hittite forces attack Egyptian territory in Syria.
• c. 1320s BC: Plague kills Suppiluliuma I and then Arnuwanda II.

Why it matters

The Dakhamunzu affair is one of the most dramatic stories in ancient diplomacy and a rare glimpse of political crisis in Egypt after the Amarna period. It shows how close Egypt came to having a Hittite king, and it helped shape the rivalry that later led to the Battle of Kadesh.