Ankhkheperure-Merit-Neferkheperure/Waenre/Aten Neferneferuaten () was a name used to refer to a female pharaoh who reigned toward the end of the Amarna Period during the Eighteenth Dynasty. Her gender is confirmed by feminine traces occasionally found in the name and by the epithet Akhet-en-hyes ("Effective for her husband"), incorporated into one version of her nomen (birth name) cartouche. She is distinguished from the king Smenkhkare who used the same throne name, Ankhkheperure, by the presence of epithets in both cartouches. She is suggested to have been either Meritaten or, more likely, Nefertiti. If this person is Nefertiti ruling as sole pharaoh, it has been theorized by Egyptologist and archaeologist Dr. Zahi Hawass that her reign was marked by the fall of Amarna and relocation of the capital back to the traditional city of Thebes.
General chronology
There is no broad consensus as to the succession order of Smenkhkare and Neferneferuaten. The period from the 13th year of Akhenaten's reign to the ascension of Tutankhaten is very murky. The reigns of Smenkhkare and Neferneferuaten were very brief and left little monumental or inscriptional evidence to draw a clear picture of political events. Adding to this, Neferneferuaten shares her prenomen (throne name) with Smenkhkare, and her nomen (birth name) with Nefertiti/Neferneferuaten Nefertiti making identification very difficult at times. With little dated evidence to fix their reigns with any certainty, the order depends on how the evidence is interpreted. Many encyclopedic sources and atlases will show Smenkhkare succeeding Akhenaten on the basis of tradition dating back to 1845, and some still conflate Smenkhkare with Neferneferuaten. The lack of unique names continues to cause problems in books and papers written before the early 1980s: an object might be characterized as bearing the name of Smenkhkare, when if in fact, the name was "Ankhkheperure", it could be related to one of two people.
As illustrated in a 2011 Metropolitan Museum of Art symposium on Horemheb, the general chronology of the late Eighteenth Dynasty is:
Aidan Dodson proposes that Smenkhkare did not have an independent reign and thus, Neferneferuaten must have come after him, the result being that Smenkhkare's reign is entirely that of a coregent, ending about a year later, in Year 14 or 15 of Akhenaten's reign, with little firm evidence to argue against it. Gabolde cites the Smenkhkare wine docket to support the idea that Smenkhkare must have succeeded Akhenaten. Finally, Allen has used the wine docket and strong association of Neferneferuaten with Akhenaten in her epithets and on stelae to speculate that both may have succeeded Akhenaten, with one as a rival king. An Allen-Dodson hybrid could see Tutankhamun succeeding Akhenaten directly as rival to Neferneferuaten. There are almost as many theories and putative chronologies as there are Egyptologists interested in the period.
The recently discovered inscription for Nefertiti as Great Royal Wife in regnal Year 16 makes it clear she was still alive and still queen, which could be seen as supporting her candidacy as Neferneferuaten and direct succession to Akhenaten. On the other hand, advocates for Smenkhkare make the case that since she is attested as queen just before the start of Akhenaten's final regnal year, then Smenkhkare is more likely to be Akhenaten's direct successor.
Regardless of the order, Neferneferuaten's successor seems to have denied her a king's burial based on items originally inscribed with her name but utilised for the burial of Tutankhamun. In the reign of Horemheb, the reigns of the Amarna Period pharaohs from Akhenaten to Ay were expunged from history as these kings' total regnal years were assigned to Horemheb. The result is that 3,300 years later, scholars would have to piece together events and even resurrect the players bit by bit with the evidence sometimes limited to palimpsest.