The Mother History Forgot

The woman who gave birth to Tutankhamun, yet vanished from history.

Welcome Back: A New Home for the Stories Behind My Novels

After some time away, my website is back online and with it, a new space to share the research, the mysteries, and the history behind my novels.

I’m also launching History & Tales, a newsletter where I take readers behind the scenes of my work: the archaeological discoveries, the academic debates, and the unsolved cases that inspire my fiction.

For the first edition, I wanted to start with a mystery that has fascinated me for years, one that sits at the heart of my novel The Eye of Bastet.

The Mother History Forgot

The woman who gave birth to Tutankhamun, yet vanished from history.

Everyone knows the name Tutankhamun. The treasures of his tomb have fascinated the world for a century. And yet, for decades, a shadow hung over his origins: who was the woman who brought him into the world?

For a long time, Egyptologists believed that Tutankhamun’s mother was Kiya, a secondary wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten. But the archaeological evidence never fully supported this theory and the mystery seemed destined to remain unsolved, until modern science entered the tombs of the Valley of the Kings.

In 2010, DNA analysis of the royal mummies revealed something no one expected: Tutankhamun’s parents were brother and sister, both children of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye. Genetics gave us a family tree but not a name, and not an answer to the darker question that follows.

Because the real mystery isn’t who she was. It’s how she died.

Read and comment the full story — the DNA breakthrough, the wound that changed everything, and the murder theory that inspired The Eye of Bastet — on History & Tales.