Akhenaten and Nefertiti Phoenicians to the north so that one of their priestkings offered his daughter Jezebel to Ahab in an arranged political marriage The Bible records that Ahab fought three or four wars with the dreaded Aramaeans and won two of them The genius of Ahab’s foreign policy seems to be his peacemaking with Judah to the south, the Philistine states to the west, and Phoenicia to the north Conserving his resources and limiting his battles allowed him to gain concessions from the Arameans The real challenge came from the traditional hotbed of imperial ambition, Mesopotamia Here the fierce Assyrians were mobilizing their forces to reestablish their empire in the western end of the Fertile Crescent Only a makeshift alliance of all the kingdoms could stand in Assyria’s way The Assyrian records tell of a battlefield victory at Qarqar (853 b.c.e.) in the Orontes Valley in the coastal region of present-day Syria, but it was not decisive enough for the victors to push on toward their goal Phoenicia was not even touched, much less Israel Other minor losses for Israel during this time are reported in the Moabite Stone: A small region far to the southeast (present-day Jordan) seceded from the hegemony Ahab also knew how to run the internal affairs of a state He relied on the new capital of Samaria to integrate the non-Israelite interest groups, chiefly the advocates of Baal and Asherah worship, while the older city of Jezreel served as residence to the traditional elements of Israelite culture This balance suggests that Ahab allowed the building of foreign temples, though he showed some wavering attachment to the Israelite God The explanation for this double-mindedness, according to the Bible, was his increasing submission to his Phoenician wife, Jezebel According to the geologies given in Josephus and other classical sources, she was the great-aunt of Dido, banished princess of Phoenicia and legendary founder of Carthage She was an ardent devotee to Baal, working behind the scenes to achieve dominance for her religion and dynasty She tried to eliminate the all-traditional prophets in Israel and plotted against the famous prophet Elijah She outlived her husband by 10 years and only died when her personal staff turned against her in the face of a rebellious general Her sons and daughter went on to rule: Ahaziah was king for two years after Ahab’s death; then her son Joram ruled for eight years; her daughter Athaliah married the king of Judah, then ruthlessly killed all offspring of her own son so that she could rule for six years after her son died In the biblical account Elijah, the prophet of Israel, is the unadulterated light that casts the reputation of Ahab and Jezebel into dark shadows Ahab stands as a pragmatist who compromises his faith and coexists with idolatry, while Jezebel takes on the role of a selfwilled and idolatrous shrew whose drive for power undermines divinely balanced government In the New Testament, Jezebel becomes a type of seductive false prophetess who gives license to immorality and idolatry under the cloak of religion See also apocalypticism, Jewish and Christian; Christianity, early; prophets Further reading: Becking, Bob Fall of Samaria Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 1992; Thiel, Winfried “Ahab.” In Anchor Bible Dictionary, pp 100–104 New York: Doubleday, 1992 Mark F Whitters Akhenaten and Nefertiti (d c 1362 b.c.e and fl 14th century b.c.e.) Egyptian rulers Akhenaten, the pharaoh of the eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, was the second son of Amenhotep III (r 1391–54 b.c.e.) and Tiy (fl 1385 b.c.e.) His reign ushered a revolutionary period in ancient Egyptian history Nefertiti was his beautiful and powerful queen He was not the favored child of family and was excluded from public events at the time of his father Amenhotep III Akhenaten ruled with his father in coregency for a brief period He was crowned at the temple of the god Amun, in Karnak, as Amenhotep IV From his fifth regnal year, he changed his name to Akhenaten (Servant of the Aten) His queen was renamed as Nefer-Nefru-Aten (Beautiful Is the Beauty of Aten) The pharaoh initiated far-reaching changes in the field of religion He did away with 2,000 years of religious history of Egypt In his monotheism, only Aten, the god of the solar disk, was to be worshipped The meaning of the changed names for himself and his queen was in relation to Aten Even the new capital that he constructed was given the name Akhetaton (Horizon of Aten) Making Aten the “sole god” curbed the increasing power of the priesthood Earlier Egyptians worshipped a number of gods represented in animal or human form Particular towns had their own gods The sun god received the new name Aten, the ancient name of the physical Sun