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00:08Their names are etched in stone, their stories carved into the very fabric of history to live
00:14on forever. This is the true story of Egypt's greatest rulers, from their meteoric rise
00:21to absolute power to their ultimate downfall. This is the rise and fall of the pharaohs.
00:50It's mid-14th century BCE. Egypt, the land of the pharaohs, is gripped in chaos.
00:57The old gods are being destroyed. The temples are ransacked. This is a new era in Egyptian history.
01:08But this isn't an invasion from an outside power. It's a revolution. And at the core of this
01:14revolution is the pharaoh, Akhenaten. Akhenaten was different from any pharaoh that had come
01:21before because of his radical devotion to the worship of only one god. As the old gods are
01:28washed away by Akhenaten, they are replaced by one, the Aten. Akhenaten's Aten is a universal god that
01:36encompasses everything. It is the one true god, not just of Egypt, but of the world. Under Akhenaten,
01:44we're seeing political change, religious change, cultural change on a profoundly disruptive scale.
01:51Can Egypt survive this religious revolution? A revolution not from the bottom, but from the pharaoh
01:58himself? Akhenaten's plans for Egypt had the potential to destroy Egypt entirely.
02:10To understand Akhenaten's revolution, we must travel back to the early days of Egypt's new kingdom,
02:17to the reign of Queen Hatshepsut in the mid-15th century BCE, a time when the Queen of Egypt was
02:24in desperate need for allies against her political foes.
02:27When Hatshepsut turned to the priests of Amun to help her establish legitimacy, she unknowingly set
02:34a number of things in motion. She wanted to have their support. And in return, she not only regaled it
02:42with gifts and helped build this temple of Karnak to make it a glorious institution, but she also
02:49promoted them as confidence and consultants of her regime. And this meant that they developed into an
02:56incredibly influential institution. What would happen from her reign onwards is a concentration of
03:03wealth and power amongst the priesthood of Amun. They control lands. They control food. They dictate
03:12policy, too. Like, if you want to go to war or something like that, well, we got to consult Amun
03:18and
03:18see what he says about that. They're going to help the king make decisions. So they are in control of
03:25more than
03:26just religion. They have political power as well.
03:29These temples had always been important to the construction of pharaonic power. But we have to
03:34recognize that because they were, these were also powerful institutions that could be a threat to a
03:42pharaoh if unregulated. What we're starting to see is almost a rivalry between the institution that's
03:50supposed to support the pharaoh and the office of the pharaoh itself. They were the most influential
03:56competing power with the royal court because they were the ones in daily interaction with the communities.
04:02They were the most visible power to the people at the time. They became so influential that successive
04:10pharaohs had to work closely with this temple complex in order to survive. And at the center of the temple
04:19complex
04:19is the worship of the god Amun. The chief god of the city of Thebes was becoming more and more
04:26powerful across
04:26Egypt. The god Amun was the hidden one. And he's often painted blue to show you that he's not there.
04:34So he has no form,
04:36although he can take on a form. But when he is shown, you draw him as a human being. You
04:41draw him basically as a king of Egypt.
04:44Amun really is kind of the state god in this period. He's sort of the guy that's most closely tied
04:51to kingship.
04:54The pharaohs, after Hatshepsut's reign, sought to seek alliances with other gods and priesthoods to curb the ever-growing power
05:02of the Amun priesthood.
05:04So when Amenhotep II starts championing Ra, a god from Heliopolis, we see that there might be some
05:11trouble brewing between the office of the pharaoh and the priesthood of Amun. The problem is only
05:17exacerbated with his son, Amenhotep III. Amenhotep III takes the name heir of Ra. What we're seeing here is
05:25the beginning of a schism between the powerful priesthood of Amun, who are almost challenging,
05:31rivaling the power of the pharaoh. And the pharaoh is saying, well, if you guys are going to challenge
05:36my power, I'm going to back a different god, and this god is going to be Ra.
05:41And it is during this time that the popularity of one of the aspects of Ra begins to take hold,
05:47the Aten. The sun god Ra has many aspects, but the rays were called Aten. It is not a physical
05:56form.
05:56It's nothing you can touch. It's intangible. But it is a deity that at the same time is everywhere.
06:04In many ways, Amenhotep III set the stage for what was to come, and that is by promoting the worship
06:12of Aten, the sun's disk. So for example, he had a daughter that he named Bekataten, handmaid of Aten.
06:21He named a division of his army, Aten Glitters. He took on an epithet for himself,
06:28Jechen Aten, the radiance of Aten, or the splendor of Aten. He named one of his forts that name.
06:34So he was promoting Aten worship even before Akhenaten came around.
06:39For his jubilee celebrations, Amenhotep III builds an entire royal city called Malkata on the west bank of Thebes.
06:48This is essentially a giant stage for royal pageantry to present himself as the solar king.
06:56He was an incredibly powerful ruler who ruled mostly through diplomatic means rather than active campaigning and warfare.
07:05His rule was golden period for the construction of monuments and additions to temples, additions of statuary to temples.
07:13He built a lot in the Theban region, but elsewhere as well.
07:16In the 38th year of his reign, Amenhotep III dies, but his principal heir has died before him, which was
07:26common enough in ancient Egypt.
07:27There were a lot of things that could end your life early.
07:31So Amenhotep IV, or the prince that would become the king, Amenhotep IV, takes the reigns as pharaoh.
07:38But even during his first year, there are signs that Amenhotep IV will be different.
07:45One of the first things that we know about that young Amenhotep IV does is he adds to the temple
07:51of Karnak, which of course is what you do.
07:53Every king wants to contribute to building some sort of addition to this temple.
07:59It's sort of the tradition that you add something to Karnak because you want to leave your mark on this
08:06all-important cult center.
08:09To the north of the temple of Karnak is what they call the precinct of Montu.
08:13This is a whole big area that's dedicated to Montu.
08:16Further south, there's a precinct dedicated to the goddess Mut.
08:19So he's going to have a precinct dedicated to the Aten. No problem.
08:24Amenhotep calls this Gempa Aten, where the Aten is found.
08:29Now it's an odd temple, because instead of the temple getting darker and quieter as you go in and to
08:36the sacred place, it stays bright and open.
08:40Aten is a purely solar deity.
08:42His worship is based around worship of the sun, and therefore the temples have to allow the sun to enter
08:50them.
08:50This was dramatically different from any other temple construct at the time, which had an inner sanctum that was intended
08:57to be a place of mystery.
09:00It was dark. There would be candlelight. There would be incense. It was to create an atmosphere of secrecy.
09:08They were closed off to the public. They were behind high walls with enormous pylons.
09:15The gods themselves lived in small shrines. They were taken out. They were bathed on a daily basis.
09:23They were wafted with incense. They were clothed by priests. They had fresh makeup applied.
09:28But it all happened in semi-darkness. It was something that was hidden, something that was secretive.
09:36Having open temples instead of these dark little places where priests are doing their thing, we now have the ability
09:44for people to come forward and to celebrate in open areas.
09:49It was offering a more democratic, a more unified way of worshiping that is different than what was offered before.
09:59The temple of Gempa Aten, dedicated to the Aten, is the first and not the last of the signals to
10:06Egypt that Amenhotep IV is something different.
10:10The next big shock comes when Amenhotep IV celebrates his Sed Festival.
10:15The pharaohs of Egypt would have a festival called the Sed Festival, where they would renew their kingship.
10:21This generally happened at year 30 or so, and then they would do it in successive times over the years
10:27to prove they were still fit and strong enough to be pharaoh.
10:30Even though he's been on the throne for 30 years, he's still vigorous. He can still run. He can still
10:35lift weights. He's very tough still.
10:37The king who comes to the throne at 20, by the time he's 50, yeah, it's time to show that
10:41you're still fit.
10:42So it is unusual that Amenhotep IV would have one so early in his reign.
10:48He has a Sed Festival after only a few years on the throne, so he probably still hasn't hit 20.
10:53He also has a Sed Festival that's very different to those that have come before him.
10:58For instance, Amenhotep IV isn't recorded as having done any physical trials of strength. He didn't undertake any physical challenges.
11:06He had other people perform the rituals that normally the king would perform. Why didn't he do it?
11:13Amenhotep IV's Sed Festival also marks another change.
11:17It's a Sed Festival that's based around Amenhotep IV, his wife Nefertiti, and the god Aten.
11:26In the very first representations of the Aten, the Aten is the typical image of Rey, a hawk-headed human
11:32being with a sun disc on his head.
11:34By the time we get into the reign of Amenhotep IV, he portrays the Aten simply as a sun disc
11:42with rays radiating from it and hands at the bottom of those rays,
11:47sort of symbolically showing how the light touches and interacts with the world.
11:52Any image of him at all anthropomorphic is gone.
11:55It's more direct.
11:57Any individual, even those who lack the education, which makes the majority of the population,
12:02could easily understand the visual symbolism and the function that he's meant to be performing.
12:08We see a real distancing from this anthropomorphizing of divinity,
12:13but it's being replaced with something even more powerful.
12:18You know, we think about what do the rays represent.
12:20Think about experiencing them.
12:22This is something that is felt.
12:24It resonates in the world around them.
12:26It shapes how they live their lives.
12:29It gives them life.
12:30So there's something about this new image of deity that conveys transcendent existence, power, something ineffable.
12:39And when you first see this image, you think, oh, isn't that a nice image of God?
12:42And then you notice that the hands only touch Akhenaten.
12:47And later they touch Nefertiti, and they touch his children.
12:50They don't ever touch anybody else.
12:53So God's blessings flow through Amenhotep IV and his wife,
12:59and the rest of us get the leftovers.
13:01It's trickle-down blessings.
13:03The political message is clear.
13:06Akhenaten is the high priest and prophet of this new religion.
13:09Only through him can there be salvation.
13:13Because of this fact, Akhenaten believes Egypt no longer needs the priesthood of any god,
13:19especially one as powerful as the priesthood of Amun, who could threaten the position of the Aten.
13:25Amenhotep IV's next shot in his fervor for change would signal the start of his revolution in Egypt.
13:32In Egypt, names are very important.
13:35They mean something, right?
13:36And Amunhotep means Amun is satisfied.
13:40If you don't believe in Amun anymore, you don't worship Amun,
13:43you don't want to have his name in your name.
13:45So you have to come up with a new name.
13:47So he chooses Akhenaten.
13:49And Akhenaten means beloved of the Aten.
13:52It's very significant to show that not only are you a follower of a god, but that you are actually
14:00chosen by that god.
14:02Because what that's saying is that you have a purpose which is divinely instituted.
14:08You have a responsibility that is given to you by that god.
14:12So that means you have been elevated over everybody else.
14:16And he is so fixed on this new name that he has the name Amun erased all throughout the country,
14:24even in his father's name.
14:27If you go to Luxor Temple and look up, you can see places where you can see the Hotep, but
14:32the Amun has been wiped away.
14:35Somebody had to go up there on a scaffold or on a rope and erase a name that was carved
14:40into stone.
14:40The priests of Amun must have been shocked and horrified.
14:46And further change is in the air.
14:49The other way that you make the Amun priesthood irrelevant is by picking up moving shop to another location.
14:58Because Thebes is just too saturated with the Amun priesthood and all that they have going on.
15:04So he moves the capital and he moves it to central Egypt.
15:07He marks out boundaries of a new city and he has people come in and they build new buildings, they
15:13build temples to the Aten, a palace for them.
15:16And it was called Akataten, the horizon of the Aten.
15:20We call it Amarna, which is a little easier to say.
15:23Visitors to the place where this city was constructed say the sun rises between two hills so that it looks
15:30like the hieroglyph for the Aten as it rises in the east.
15:34So he's setting up his new staging ground for his new religion, much like his father did at Malkata for
15:43more traditional solar deities.
15:45He's doing this in a totally unprecedented location for his new solar deity.
15:50You could be a little bit cynical about it and say this is all about politics.
15:56It's about him as a very shrewd leader realizing that there is a rival power, not in name, but in
16:05function and wanting to limit that.
16:07Or you could say, as some have, that he's this sort of starry-eyed dreamer that has this theological idea
16:15and runs with it.
16:17I tend to fall more on the political end of the thinking spectrum.
16:22Akhenaten is clearly on a path to try and reduce, if not remove, these power bases to clear the way
16:31for building up his own power by creating essentially a new religion, but one that is pharaoh-centric.
16:39But there could be another reason for Akhenaten's move to this new city.
16:44Akhenaten has undermined the power base of what was one of the most powerful forces in Egypt, the Temple of
16:50Amun.
16:50It's entirely possible that they wanted him out of the picture.
16:54These priests had spent many, many years in power, and Akhenaten essentially rips that from them overnight.
17:02They are no longer important.
17:05They do not have the social standing any longer, and they're not getting the wealth.
17:12So he's in a very precarious situation.
17:15He probably has threats against his life, and it makes sense for him to move away from those threats to
17:24a safe zone.
17:27While Akhenaten had angered the religious establishment of Egypt, possibly to the point of attempts on his life,
17:33he was quick to make alliances with one of the other important pillars of Egyptian society, the military.
17:40You need the military behind you.
17:42If you don't have the priesthood of Amun behind you, you need somebody else.
17:45And the only other place you can turn is the military.
17:48Akhenaten definitely had the support of the military.
17:51We know that from depictions of them receiving royal benefits for their military service.
17:56And he probably could not have stayed in power without their backing.
18:00Two of those people who became his top advisors would be Ai, but a very powerful nobleman.
18:05And then Horamheb was a general.
18:07With these power players supporting him and Aten worship, he was able to accomplish what he needed to.
18:16Akhenaten also has support from young Egyptian nobles looking for change.
18:21There would definitely have been kind of a revolutionary spirit following the creation of Atenism.
18:27And like any great cult leader, there seems to have been kind of charismatic leadership at the forefront of it
18:33as well.
18:33To a young Egyptian noble who's looking to move closer to the seat of power, this could have been very
18:39attractive.
18:40You go with Pharaoh to his new city, and suddenly you're getting a promotion.
18:44You have a chance to rise up in the administration, to be promoted to higher positions than you might otherwise
18:51have been in,
18:51because certain people are out now, and there's room for new people on the scene.
18:56So if you embrace the religion, oh yes, we praise the Aten, then Akhenaten is going to appoint you into
19:03important positions.
19:04So it's better for your career.
19:07With Akhenaten set in his new capital city, this religious revolution begins to take its full shape.
19:14What Akhenaten is doing is to increasingly raise one god above all others,
19:20but eventually to the point of actually rejecting virtually all of the other gods.
19:27Polytheism was the way it was always done.
19:29There's a god of this, there's a god of that, there's a god of the other thing.
19:32They had a national god, Amun, but they never just devoted themselves to only one god.
19:38And yet, this is what Akhenaten did.
19:40The other unusual thing about Akhet Aten is the fact that only images of Akhenaten and his family are placed
19:48on the temple walls here.
19:50Essentially what Akhenaten is doing is he's saying,
19:53there is one god, my god, the Aten, I am its high priest, and you can only reach the god
19:59through me.
20:00And to that end, he depicts himself and his wife, Nefertiti, as two of the three triumvirate gods in this
20:08religion.
20:09The idea of a triad of deities in which the king also plays a role is central to Egyptian religion
20:16and to the ideology of kingship,
20:18going back to really ancient times when, you know, the king is a manifestation of the solar deity Horus,
20:23and his father is a manifestation of Osiris, and his mother is Isis.
20:29So we can sort of view Akhenaten's new triad as being a kind of twist on that same idea of
20:36the family group,
20:36where there's his father, the Aten, who does not take anthropomorphic form, except in the hands,
20:42who is the father of Akhenaten, and then Akhenaten in his union with Nefertiti.
20:47And in some cases, their children are also part of this family grouping that is revered through monuments at the
20:54site of Amarna.
20:55The new religious thrust of the worship of the Aten is best characterized in the hymn to the Aten,
21:02which was composed by Akhenaten himself.
21:05You rise beautiful from the horizon on heaven, living disk, origin of life.
21:11You are arisen from the horizon. You have filled every land with your beauty.
21:17You are fine, great, radiant, lofty, over and above every land.
21:24Your rays bind the lands to the limit of all you have made.
21:28You are the sun. You have reached their limits. You bind them for your beloved sun.
21:35You are distant, but your rays are on earth. You are in their sight, but your movements are hidden.
21:41The hymn to the Aten is in a couple of tombs at Amarna.
21:44It's a very, very, very beautiful hymn.
21:47The Egyptians were really good at writing hymns to their gods.
21:50And this is one of the nicest.
21:52And it talks about how the Aten, how the sunlight, brings life to everything.
21:57And how the sun shines equally, not only on all men in Egypt, but on all peoples of the world.
22:04So the same sun that's shining here in Egypt is shining up there in Syria and shining down there in
22:10Sudan.
22:11It captures something or tries to convey a conception divinity that is intangible, all-encompassing, eternal, and about creation.
22:22And when people first read it, it gave them a really nice feeling about Akhenaten.
22:28If he wrote that, he's a good guy.
22:31But there is kind of a dark side to this hymn to the Aten in the sense that there's passages
22:38in the hymn to the Aten
22:39where it talks about how it's not just Egyptians that are meant to worship the Aten, it's everyone.
22:45And just as rulers had done before, this is effectively justification for maintaining an empire.
22:53So on the surface, the hymn to the Aten is a very lovely poem about this solar deity.
23:01But if we're saying that everyone is, you know, meant to be worshipping the Aten,
23:06and that Akhenaten is his one and only representative on the earth, effectively it means that Akhenaten is meant to
23:12rule everything.
23:14But was Akhenaten's religious revolution just spiritual? Or was there an earthly motive as well?
23:21What we're seeing with Akhenaten is new relationship that he's forming between the office of Pharaoh and the god Aten
23:29is also reconfiguring of religious relations more generally in the kingdom.
23:34Because from this time forward, the only way to worship in Egypt is to recognize the Pharaoh as the intermediary
23:42of Aten.
23:43No other priestly complexes are relevant anymore.
23:48It was always the case that the Pharaoh was an intermediary for the gods, but others could act for him.
23:54Akhenaten has changed this. He's wiped this system out.
23:57Now, none of the priesthood can act on his behalf, and no one can act for the gods except for
24:04him.
24:04What this does is undermine Egypt's system of economic and political stability completely.
24:12Money and tithes are no longer being sent to the temples. The temples start to lose power and wealth.
24:18So here we have essentially a pharaonic cult in the making,
24:22in which Aten and the house of the pharaoh is now the only path to the afterlife.
24:28He strips all the power away from any other priest, any other god that's ever been worshipped before him,
24:37and moving forward. He is the one and only.
24:41He's becoming, in essence, a true tyrant.
24:45With focus on Akhenaten himself as the central pillar of his new state,
24:50one might expect to see this new god-king depicted in a superhuman fashion as Pharaoh was before.
24:57But for Akhenaten, his revolution would not only be a spiritual and political one, but also an artistic one.
25:05This new artistic tradition would have looked extremely strange from the perspective of people at the time.
25:12The figures, which had not changed for well over a thousand years, suddenly look very different.
25:19Egyptian art from the time of the old kingdom had been canonized and reified into a very fixed form.
25:26They used things that we think of as golden ratio and golden proportion to represent the kings and the gods
25:34in a very definitive way for millennia.
25:37Egyptian pharaohs were always depicted as straight and strong.
25:40They had very straight backs and they were seen as muscular and physically powerful.
25:46Akhenaten is almost the opposite.
25:48He is seen as bent over, hunched.
25:51He has long, thin limbs and an exaggerated stomach.
25:55He has a very long head and exaggerated lips and ears.
26:00This is a pharaoh unlike any other.
26:03And his whole family is depicted ultimately in this convention.
26:07So he breaks away from convention and ultimately creates a new convention, the artanist convention.
26:14And a lot of the credit is given to a fellow by the name of Beka, who was an artist
26:19working for Akhenaten.
26:21He may have been the one that devised this whole new style.
26:24While this new art style was revolutionary, there is a suggestion that Akhenaten was breaking from tradition and showing the
26:32people what he really looked like.
26:34It has been hypothesized that there might be a medical condition that would explain why he looks so different.
26:41Some have attributed it to Marfan syndrome, for example.
26:44All of that's possible.
26:46All of that's possible.
26:46He died at a relatively young age, in his 40s.
26:50There is a mummy that some people believe could be Akhenaten, but it isn't 100% sure.
26:57And the mummy looks normal.
26:59So, if it is his mummy, then it seems maybe it's just the art.
27:04A powerful example of the art of this period are the colossal statues of Akhenaten at East Karnak.
27:11The statues are very, very peculiar.
27:15They are colossi, so they're bigger than human life.
27:19But on them, his face is very elongated.
27:23He has very narrow shoulders.
27:25He has womanly breasts, a little waist, swelling hips, again like a woman, swollen thighs like a woman, and then
27:34spindly shanks.
27:35That's not what Egyptian kings look like.
27:39There's been many arguments about whether or not he was somebody of a multiple gender, or he was perhaps, you
27:48know, more effeminate.
27:49But I do believe that this is a depiction of what he believed the god Aten looked like.
27:57Egyptian art was highly symbolic.
27:59It was meant to convey a message.
28:00And if we think about what's going on with Akhenaten's religious beliefs, his ideology,
28:06he is styling himself as a creator deity, like the Aten.
28:10The Aten is a single creator deity.
28:12And a creator deity has to have both male and female elements in order to create.
28:17There's also a shift in terms of what we refer to as a marna naturalism.
28:22We start to see scenes of things that we don't really see.
28:25We see people actually eating, holding food to their mouth.
28:29We see actually quite lovely domestic scenes of the royal family.
28:33He's shown cuddling his children, sitting on the couch with his wife, kissing her even on a chariot.
28:39Poses that you would never see in earlier artistic depictions of the king.
28:44So there are shifts in not only how things are being portrayed, but in a sense what's allowed to be
28:50portrayed when it comes to the royal family.
28:52This period also produced one of the most beautiful and famous works of Egyptian art ever found.
29:00In a workshop at Akhenaten, a small bust was found.
29:04He's one of the most famous faces in history.
29:07This was the wife of Akhenaten.
29:09This was Nefertiti.
29:11It is exquisite.
29:14If that is what she looked like in real life, she was stunning.
29:19The craftsmanship is on par with anything that Michelangelo or any of these, you know, Renaissance artists, these sculptors were
29:29doing.
29:29And this is thousands of years before them.
29:33And it's odd that we see it in this time, but then we move forward and we don't see it
29:39again.
29:39So there's something very special happening within the court of Akhenaten.
29:45And perhaps it was that people had less worry about what all the other gods and things that were happening
29:53around them.
29:54They had more time to spend on refining their arts and their abilities.
29:59While this era produces some of the most celebrated art in Egyptian history, it also faces political and religious turmoil.
30:07During this revolution, Akhenaten targets the old gods, focusing especially on the Temple of Amun.
30:14After Akhenaten has lived in splendid isolation at his new city for some ten years, he decides for somewhat unknown
30:26reasons to attempt to deliver a death blow to the gods of ancient Egypt.
30:37He gave the order to go in and destroy the temples, to break the idols, to erase their names from
30:45the engravings.
30:46Even things like amulets that people are wearing around their neck.
30:50Somebody is saying, let me see that amulet.
30:53And they're erasing the name of the god Amun.
30:55Now that's real fanaticism.
30:58So these raids serve a double purpose.
31:00On the one hand, he gets to destroy the images of competitor gods.
31:04On the other hand, he gets to take all the resources of these temples for himself.
31:09This would have been a very effective way to keep funding his city of Akhenaten.
31:15And he doesn't just put priests out of work.
31:18He doesn't just close the temples.
31:20He murders the priests who are trying to protect the gods that they venerate.
31:25We have to see this as a deliberate effort to try and remove obstacles to his power.
31:32This is a potentially horrific end to the religion of Egypt, which had existed for millennia.
31:41I think the reason why it took him so long to attack the Amun temple and priesthood is because, first
31:47of all, he needed to know that he could get away with it.
31:51He wanted to go after them because they were where the power resided.
31:55So you have to get rid of your main rivals here.
31:58I think that may have always been his intention, but you can't do it until all the pieces are in
32:03place.
32:04And it probably takes people a while to realize what he's really doing.
32:09We know in political matters, you can think, well, they're not going to do anything as stupid as that.
32:14Well, he's not going to go that far.
32:17And then the dictator in question goes that far.
32:20In Akhenaten's new capital, Akhenaten, the worship of the Aten was strictly enforced.
32:27Those that did not bend to the Akhenaten's will were punished.
32:32Egyptian religion is really inseparable from life in ancient Egypt.
32:36Not just politics, but everyday life.
32:39This was the way of people's lives.
32:42And now they were expected to radically change.
32:47We think that this was perhaps a quite paranoid time of brutal suppression of religious beliefs by Akhenaten.
32:54One of the most bizarre and heretical things about Akhenaten is that you and I can no longer worship our
33:04household gods.
33:05I can no longer pray to Hathor.
33:07Hathor's gone.
33:08So who do I pray to?
33:09I can pray to Nefertiti.
33:11I can pray to Akhenaten.
33:13I can't pray to the Aten because the Aten only speaks to them.
33:18The inhabitants of his new capital, Akhenaten, and people across Egypt strive to embrace Akhenaten's new order, praising it in
33:27public declarations.
33:28But in private, many believe Akhenaten's repression of the gods is a great sacrilege and horror.
33:35This belief is held by many in Egypt, but rarely said in public due to fear.
33:40There were definitely aspects of his reign that communicated fear to the population.
33:47He wasn't some sort of peace-loving hippie, right?
33:49He enacted rituals that involved physical mutilation, repeated physical mutilation.
33:54They found scapulae from both pigs and humans that show repeated spear wounds.
34:01So there were people who were speared and then, you know, lived on for another couple of years enough for
34:07it to heal and then speared again, probably in a ceremonial context.
34:11Akhenaten treated his workers very, very badly.
34:14They die very young.
34:16They die miserably.
34:18And he even seems to have invented new kinds of torture.
34:22So he is not a nice guy.
34:25And that city, I think, was built on blood.
34:29There is a very interesting depiction of a festival, a moment of devotion to the pharaoh.
34:37On the surface, it looks quite traditional.
34:39We see the people gathered around the pharaoh, who is this over-large figure.
34:44And they seem to be worshipping him, or at least paying devotion to him.
34:49But behind them, we see evidence of soldiers with clubs, which suggests that this might be a core scene.
34:56Who produced this art, we cannot say.
34:58But it does suggest that his changes were not greeted warmly by everyone in Egyptian society.
35:06And what's really interesting is that at Amarna, at Akhenaten, the military and the police are shown going everywhere with
35:14the king.
35:15They're always around.
35:16Some have speculated that this ever-presence of the police and the military might also be a way of preventing
35:23attempts on Akhenaten's life from a populace who may not be as happy with these changes or their treatment under
35:32Akhenaten as he would like to have us think.
35:36While Akhenaten's revolution is focused on Egypt itself, the pharaoh's relationship with the outside world is neglected.
35:45There seems to be some indications that Akhenaten was so consumed with his religious policies that he didn't care much
35:52about other things.
35:53He certainly was neglecting diplomacy.
35:56For example, we have the king of Mitanni, Tushrata, sending many messages to Akhenaten.
36:03In those days, it was very customary to give gifts between kings, like our country will give this to you
36:09and you give this to us.
36:10And Tushrata complains, your father gave me so much more.
36:14You give me nothing, you know, things like this.
36:17Tushrata even went so far as to write a letter to Akhenaten's mother complaining about this.
36:24He doesn't give me anything.
36:26I give him ten times more than what he gives to me.
36:29Where are my gifts?
36:30He's not like previous pharaohs who tried to develop relationships or to overtake other regions.
36:38He really seems very lazy in terms of bothering with any kind of diplomacy.
36:44I think what it is is that he feels he's above it and that everyone should just bow down to
36:50him and therefore he does not need to address diplomacy.
36:55Akhenaten's negligence on foreign affairs curbs Egypt's trade wealth.
37:00But it's his religious revolution that is taking the heaviest toll on Egypt's economy, an economy that was deeply connected
37:08to its religious establishment.
37:10A threat to the temples leads to a threat to the whole state because these were the main foundations of
37:16the state.
37:16If you think about a temple like Karnak, Karnak requires enormous numbers of flowers every day.
37:24We don't think of their temples as full of flowers, but they were.
37:27They were full of the most beautiful and fragrant bouquets you could imagine.
37:31Somebody grows those, somebody picks them, somebody packages them, somebody arranges the flowers,
37:37somebody brings them to the temple, somebody puts them up.
37:40All those people are out of work.
37:41The temple has sacrifices every day.
37:44All those geese, all those ducks that are brought to the temple and sacrificed,
37:48the bulls that are brought, the sheep, the sheep that feed the priests.
37:52All those animals, that market is gone.
37:55There's nobody to buy those things anymore.
37:57So what happens to those farmers and herdsmen?
38:00What happens to all the farmers who used to bring vegetables to put on the altars?
38:04Unless they've moved to Akhenaten, the city, they've got nothing to do.
38:08So the city must be sinking into serious poverty.
38:12Around the year 1337 BCE, plague ravages Egypt and Akhenaten retreats from public life.
38:21In his stead, his co-regent, his queen Nefertiti, takes the reigns of Egypt.
38:26Throughout Akhenaten's reign, he has been supported silently but visibly by his wife Nefertiti.
38:37She is represented together with him and with her family members on many reliefs and stelae.
38:44Nefertiti clearly has a very important role.
38:48From the imagery we can see that Akhenaten considered her an equal.
38:54Nefertiti was so important to Akhenaten's national project,
38:58that he even made her a member of the triad of worshipped gods in the Aten religion.
39:04Nefertiti's a really interesting figure when it comes to royal women in Egypt.
39:10There had been plenty of powerful women throughout the 18th dynasty in the royal family.
39:15That's certainly nothing new.
39:17But with Nefertiti, we see her in sort of unprecedented context.
39:22So for example, sometimes she is shown in the traditional smiting motif
39:27where she's holding enemies by the hair and about to smite them over the head with a weapon.
39:33That's something that you only ever see the king do.
39:37But Nefertiti's co-regency would be short-lived.
39:41She would soon die, and after her, Akhenaten himself.
39:45You would be, wait, what? God died? How is that possible?
39:50To this day, there are questions about the death of Akhenaten.
39:54Did the god-king die of natural causes, or was it something more sinister?
40:00With Akhenaten dead, what will become of his revolution?
40:05Akhenaten's heir, Tutankh-Aten, is in line for the throne.
40:09But he's a child.
40:11Ai has been vizier of Egypt for some years and supported Akhenaten's revolution.
40:16It's natural that he steps in, essentially as a co-region in all but name.
40:21Ai is essentially running the bureaucracy and administration of Egypt,
40:25whilst Tutankh-Aten is a child.
40:27The main promise that Akhenaten's son would have for Egypt is to bring order,
40:35is to retain Mu'at one way or the other, which was, I think, at the time,
40:41the most difficult job ever, given all the circumstances that Akhenaten have left him with.
40:49Right away, a decision was made, probably by Ai and Horemheb themselves, who were the top advisers to his father.
40:57They said, no, we're gonna go back to the old ways.
41:01We're gonna restore the Amun priesthood, we're gonna bring it all back,
41:04and we're getting rid of all that Aten stuff.
41:06There really is a very quick backpedal on the part of the official ideology.
41:13Which itself is a major radical change,
41:16but it's easier to make because you're going back to the conservative old ways that the people are used to.
41:22There was a lot of pressure from the priests and temple of Amun.
41:27Even though Akhenaten had destroyed the iconography,
41:32it's more than likely that those priests continued behind the scenes,
41:37and when he died, they were waiting for their opportunity to step forward again.
41:45And being a young boy, it probably made it easier for him and or his handlers
41:53to control the masses based on old ideology.
41:59So basically everything that Akhenaten did was reversed.
42:04Karnak is reopened.
42:05The Aten priesthood, they're gone.
42:08The capital was moved back to Thebes.
42:12So the military is trying to clean up the country and getting things back in order.
42:17And Tut signs the restoration degrees.
42:20Little Tut has to remake all the statues that were broken,
42:23and they all have his face.
42:25So Tut's features are very often put on the statues of the god Amun.
42:30To this end, Tutank Aten becomes Tutank Amun, the living image of Amun.
42:38His future wife and sister, Ankh-Es Aten, becomes Ankh-Es Amun.
42:43Imagine being told as an 11-year-old kid, both your parents dead,
42:48you've got to change your name, kid.
42:49And from now on, we will all refer to your father as the heretic or the criminal.
42:55We're not going to ever say his name again.
42:57This must have been very hard on Tut's little brain.
43:01Unfortunately for Tutank Amun, his reign is cut short.
43:05The boy king tragically dies in 1322 BCE, still a teenager.
43:11The promising young pharaoh's untimely death evokes sadness,
43:16compounded by suspicions of foul play.
43:19One man, I, Akhenaten's loyal administrator and Tutankhamun's guardian,
43:25stands to gain much from Tutankhamun's death.
43:28When Tutankhamun dies, he leaves behind his half-sister slash wife, Ankh-Es Aten Amun.
43:35Ankh-Es Aten Amun is in a very precarious position.
43:39Her husband has died, and there's someone else that's really gunning for power.
43:45That's Ai.
43:47Ankh-Es Aten Amun does not want to marry Ai.
43:51Ai wants to be the pharaoh. She doesn't want to marry him.
43:54He's an old man.
43:55So, unbeknownst to Ai, she sends a letter to none other than Shupilu-li-Uma, king of the Hittites.
44:05And she says, I want to marry your son.
44:08Now, for Shupilu-li-Uma, this is, like, too good to be true.
44:11Like, what? My son? I think his name was Zananza.
44:14He'll be king of Egypt? He'll be the next pharaoh?
44:18She's like, yeah.
44:19This is totally unheard of.
44:22The Egyptian pharaoh can have foreign wives and often cemented diplomatic relations that way.
44:29But the idea that a foreign son would come and sit on the throne of Egypt was really a shocking
44:37thing.
44:38So, a whole entourage, Zananza came, traveled to Egypt to go marry Ankh-Es Aten Amun.
44:44And as soon as he gets to the border, he dies under mysterious circumstances.
44:49And, uh, Ai married Ankh-Es Aten Amun.
44:52And I'm sure she wasn't too happy about that.
44:54However, Ai's reign is short-lived.
44:57His death is not well documented.
45:00And there are no records indicating foul play or a violent end.
45:04Nonetheless, some believe he is another victim of pharaonic power politics.
45:09After Ai dies, we have the former general of Tutankhamun, Horemheb, come to the throne.
45:16He's another person with no real claim on the throne per se.
45:23But he does wind up being crowned.
45:27Horemheb was a well-respected military leader of Egypt.
45:31But he needed another pillar of Egyptian society to seize and keep the throne.
45:36Religion.
45:37His way of legitimizing his reign is by tying himself to that more traditional god, Amun.
45:46And he does this by staging his coronation at the annual Opet Festival.
45:52The Opet Festival was a grand festival of national importance that happened every year at Thebes,
46:01where the shrines of Amun, Mut, and Khansu would be paraded from the Temple of Karnak to the Temple of
46:08Luxor
46:09and back again in these grand festival processions.
46:12And the festival would last a multitude of days.
46:15And by staging his coronation at the Opet Festival,
46:19and by claiming that actually the oracle of the god Amun chose him,
46:25and that's how he says, look, I'm on the throne and I'm here because the god Amun wants me here.
46:31With Horemheb in power, thanks to the traditional religious authorities,
46:36he would repay them in kind with the destruction of their greatest foe.
46:41It's very clear he has made an alliance, a deal, with the priests of the temple complex of Amun.
46:49And that is to not only restore their power, but to erase any evidence that Akhenaten's true cult had existed.
47:02Horemheb strikes the names of Akhenaten, Tutankhamun, and I from the record.
47:08He has them removed from any type of written documentation, any images, any kind of stele,
47:19anything that their name and or their image is on.
47:23He has Akhenaten's temples at Thebes, again Paaten and the others, disassembled.
47:30And since they're just little bricks, it's pretty easy to take them apart.
47:33He has them taken apart and they are used as fill inside new pylons that he's building at Karnak.
47:41He destroys every trace of the Aten, including Akhetaten itself.
47:46Its foundations are razed to the ground, it is buried.
47:50Even Akhenaten's royal tomb was desecrated.
47:54Images on the walls and on the sarcophagus were badly damaged.
47:57His body was moved to the Valley of the Kings, where a mummy believed to be Akhenaten was found.
48:04The face on the coffin was destroyed and the inscribed name removed.
48:10Akhenaten is to be forgotten for all eternity and it is Horemheb's business to ensure that this occurs.
48:19The grand irony of this is that so much of the Amarna period is preserved,
48:27despite attempts to erase Akhenaten's memory after his death.
48:33And partially that's thanks to where he chose to put his capital city, mostly in the desert.
48:41So that's a great place for preserving things.
48:45It's nice and dry and it was abandoned pretty much immediately after those couple short reigns after his death.
48:52The site of Amarna is a special site because it's really a single period site.
48:57So it was constructed, occupied and then abandoned, largely abandoned in a pretty short period of time.
49:05And so the archeological deposits are relatively accessible to excavation.
49:09There's not really much built on top of it.
49:12There's some modern settlement that overlays the ancient one.
49:17But for the most part, Amarna is really kind of an open book.
49:21We have an entire capital city preserved with lots of documents, palaces, temples, roads, houses.
49:31All of this can be found at Amarna.
49:33It's an incredible site for understanding so much of Egyptian life, not just what happened politically in that period.
49:42It is ironic that Horemheb does everything in his effort to have the entire family of Amenhotep IV, right through
49:52to Ai, removed from history.
49:55And by doing this, we never knew where the pharaoh's tombs were, especially Tutankhamun.
50:02His tomb was never found and never raided.
50:10With the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922 filled with treasures relating to Akhenaten's reign,
50:18he effectively ensured that Akhenaten's name would continue to live alongside Tutankhamun,
50:25probably today the greatest known pharaoh in history.
50:30Tut's tomb is full of wonderful stuff.
50:33And Tut's a nobody.
50:34He's got this little, tiny, crummy tomb, and it's full of wonderful things.
50:38Why?
50:39Well, some of them have other people's names on them.
50:41And is it that Horemheb said, get everything belonging to that family and get it out of sight?
50:47Now, he could have had it all smashed, but he has everything belonging to that family and buries it
50:52and tries to make sure nobody ever sees it again.
50:55So everything that Horemheb did to remove them from history actually backfired for him.
51:01Most people don't know who Horemheb is.
51:03They're like, who is that?
51:04What?
51:04Never heard of him.
51:05But we know who Tutankhamun is and many people know who Nefertiti and Akhenaten are.
51:12While Horemheb restored the old order of Egypt, there was still a great threat hanging over his throne.
51:19He had no heirs.
51:21Who would continue his legacy?
51:22He hires as his vizier another general, a man named Paramesu.
51:28Paramesu ascended to the throne as pharaoh after Horemheb's death, ruling as King Ramesses I.
51:35And this will lead to one of the greatest dynasties ever seen.
51:42Thank you for listening.
51:43He was bombed for a while to these other guys today.
51:43Bye now.
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