Year 12 is a significant date in the time frame of Amarna. Tomb reliefs from this period were to be the last showing the royal family together, unfractured by death and politics, as Egypt's vassals showered Akhenaten with tribute to replenish the royal coffers undoubtedly drained by the extensive building program at Akhetaten. Among those structures was a Sunshade temple dedicated to Pharaoh's mother, the Dowager Queen Tiye. Her companion for the occasion and the banquets that followed was a demure figure clad in miniature gowns and the sidelock of youth: Beketaten.

The origins of this princess are unknown. No inscription explicitly states her parentage, only mentioning that she is the daughter of a King. In lieu of this silence, Beketaten's constant and close association with Queen Tiye has been taken as evidence that they were mother and daughter. Beketaten's father now logically becomes Amemhotep III, and indeed, there is a tomb scene at Amarna showing Amenhotep III, Tiye, and Beketaten facing the Akhenaten and his family. Ruling against this conclusion is the date at which the princess appears: Year 12. If Akhenaten began counting his years of rule from the death of his father, then Beketaten would seem too young to be his littlest and last sister, for she is always represented as a small child. This apparent youth is cited as grounds for a co-regency between Akhenaten and Amenhotep III.

However, just as lack of representation does not mean a princess has not been born, all art is not necessarily true to life. Despite her small pictoric stature, Beketaten could have been in her early teens when she and her mother admired the latter's new Sunshade temple. Nor does the sidelock of youth automatically indicate youth; Nefertiti's adolescent sister Mutnodjmet is shown with her hair in such a sidelock in the tomb of the God's Father Ay, and close associates of the family like servants and menats often wore their hair in styles similiar to those of the princesses they served. Conversely, Beketaten may have been as young as five years of age in Year 12, thereby excluding Amenhotep III from fatherhood unless there was a co-regency. But what if there was no co-regency? What if Amenhotep were not her father?

Some of Akhenaten's most infamous aspects are his love of family and the many children conceived by such love. Nefertiti, alone, bore him six daughters, and his secondary wife Kiya also had a girl, and perhaps a son. Repugnant as it is to modern eyes, Queen Tiye may well have born him another. Unlikely, but not impossible, not when Akhenaten seems to have fathered children by his three eldest daughters. But that was later in the reign, when Akhenaten was desperate for an heir. Beketaten--never mind her age--was born earlier than Pharaoh's desperation by several years. Perhaps Beketaten's father really was Amenhotep III. Perhaps her name is not even Beketaten.

At the time of his death, Amenhotep's youngest known child was a daughter, Nebetah. Historically and politically shy, she appears seldom and fleetingly prior to her father's death, and afterward vanishes completely. Names were important in ancient Egypt, embodying the person connected to them and even giving others power over them; it is not inconceivable that Nebetah underwent a name change to honor her brother's theology. Many of the Amarna nobles probably did the same.

Less clear than her beginning is the conclusion to Beketaten's young life. Like many of her kin, Year 12 marks her last appearance at Amarna. No reference or physical evidence hints at either the cause of her disappearance or a prospective tomb should that cause have been death. She may have been interred in the royal tomb alongside her mother, brother, sister-in-law, and neice, only to have her burial moved elsewhere as Akhetaten was abandoned to the sands from which it came.