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00:18This plane has only one passenger, and he is three and a half thousand years old.
00:32He was one of the most powerful kings of the ancient world.
00:37His dynasty ruled the greatest empire on earth.
00:57Today, some see him as a genius, the first king in history to believe in a single god.
01:03For others, he was a madman and a heretic.
01:16He is the pharaoh Akhenaten.
01:25This is the story of Akhenaten and his family.
01:29His father, Amenhotep, the richest ruler in the world.
01:33His son, Tutankhamen, who was buried with the greatest treasure ever discovered.
01:41And Akhenaten himself, who embarked on a revolution that brought the Egyptian empire to the brink
01:48of disaster and changed the world forever.
01:54The End
01:55The End
02:231550 B.C., for over a hundred years,
02:28Egypt had been overrun by foreigners.
02:31But now, a new dynasty of warrior pharaohs inspired Egyptians to rise up and reclaim their land.
02:53Egypt's armies surged beyond their traditional borders.
02:58On battlefields deep in foreign territory, they created the largest empire the world had ever seen.
03:08It was an empire controlled with an iron fist.
03:11There were clear, bloody warnings to anyone who dared to question the new might of Egypt.
03:36Egypt was now the most powerful and feared nation on earth.
03:40And in 1390 B.C., there was a new young pharaoh on the throne.
03:47His name was Amenhotep, meaning the god Amen is satisfied.
03:52His forefathers had led Egypt into battle.
03:55Now this young pharaoh faced a completely different challenge.
04:05There were no more wars to fight.
04:08Egypt was rich, respected, and free.
04:24Amenhotep's challenge would be to protect this peace and prosperity.
04:28Ruling Egypt's vast, sprawling empire.
04:33An empire whose riches were the envy of the world.
04:40When he comes to the throne, it really marks the beginning of peace.
04:45And it's a time when the wealth of all the empire pours into the coffers of the pharaoh.
04:51You could probably think of it as the golden age of empire and Egypt.
04:59Amhotep III would have been the richest man in the world.
05:02He had the gold of Nubia.
05:04He was able to command the cedars of Lebanon.
05:07He was able to command silver from Anatolia.
05:11He had the trade running along the Red Sea.
05:14There was hardly anything in the known world that Amhotep couldn't put out his hand and touch.
05:20But the world was changing.
05:23For centuries, Egypt had been unchallenged.
05:27Now Babylonia, Assyria, and Mitanni had emerged.
05:32Powerful civilizations that could rival Egypt.
05:35United, they could destroy Amenhotep's empire.
05:41Amenhotep wanted to avoid war at all costs.
05:45He had to find a new way of dealing with the outside world.
05:50His solution was a masterstroke.
05:52And we know about it because of a remarkable discovery.
06:03In 1887, a peasant woman was digging near the Egyptian town of Amarna.
06:11She was looking for old mud bricks to use as fertilizer.
06:16What she found were not the usual rough blocks, but rows of well-preserved clay tablets.
06:26The little bits of mud were covered with writing that looked rather like birds' feet had wandered over mud,
06:32and the things had been set in the mud after the birds had gone.
06:37The lady didn't know what they were, but picked some of them up.
06:41These humble clay tablets were not bricks, but letters, and they were the key to Amenhotep's success.
06:47The peasant lady had stumbled across the diplomatic record office of the capital of the ancient world.
06:57The Amarna let us throw a flood of light onto the politics of the Near East.
07:03These small tablets were the correspondence between Pharaoh Amenhotep and the other rulers of the Near East.
07:11The strange marks covering them are minuscule writing.
07:15They contain as much information as the inscriptions on all of Egypt's greatest monuments.
07:24They reveal Amenhotep was controlling his world not with weapons, but with words.
07:31The Pharaoh had become a diplomat.
07:35I would describe it as the most important discovery of the ancient world, probably.
07:40In terms of understanding of political life, not the most visible, not the most artistically appealing,
07:48but the politically most significant discovery of the ancient world.
07:56At a time when most people on earth could not read or write,
08:01Egypt was conducting a lively dialogue with her rivals.
08:10The king's messengers ran back and forth across the deserts of the Near East,
08:15carrying letters that revealed Egypt's status as a superpower.
08:21International diplomacy in the days of the Amarna letters would be very familiar to diplomats today.
08:26It was really very much like diplomatic interaction between countries even in our own time.
08:35The letters show Amenhotep was as good at diplomacy as his ancestors had been at fighting.
08:50Ambassadors flocked to Pharaoh's court, bringing gifts of friendship.
08:55Less powerful countries sent endless streams of tribute to show their loyalty.
09:03The principle in the ancient world was quite clear.
09:06If somebody was rich, you made them feel even richer.
09:09So when you visited them, you would turn up with the produce of your own country.
09:14It's partly to acknowledge that the power of the Pharaoh extends even to countries where he has not set foot.
09:37Scenes painted in Egyptian tombs show how these dazzling displays of tribute must have looked.
09:47Priceless objects flooded in from all over the known world,
09:52from Minoan Crete to Biblical Babylon.
10:03The Nubians will bring giraffes and lions.
10:07The Syrians may bring bears, which are found in the mountains of Syria.
10:12Other places will bring characteristic animals and birds of their countries.
10:17It was a very dramatic, physical, dynamic expression of what the empire meant for the Egyptians,
10:25what it was composed of, and above all, how central the Egyptian king was to this whole system.
10:36Amenhotep calls himself the king of kings,
10:38and the king of kings is what he must have seemed to the rulers who shared his world.
10:46Amenhotep knew he was the most powerful man in the world,
10:50and he knew he had one great advantage.
10:56Not military might, but gold.
11:01The letters that went back and forth from Pharaoh's court show that even the greatest kings of the Near East
11:07were desperate for Egypt's gold, and they were prepared to beg for it.
11:14If you send me the gold I wrote to you about, I will give you my daughter.
11:20Send me as much as your father did.
11:23In your country, gold is like dust, and you can just gather it up.
11:26If it is your intention that a sincere friendship exists, send much gold.
11:32I have begun a new palace.
11:34Send me as much gold as is required for its day.
11:38Amenhotep responded shrewdly to their requests.
11:40He gave them gold, but always left them wanting more.
11:45The strategy was a triumph.
11:46The kings of the Near East were exchanging gifts, not blows.
11:55The most precious gift of all was a foreign princess as a wife, plus her dowry and retinue.
12:03Amenhotep employed his personal ambassadors to find him the very best brides.
12:10It was about much more than Pharaoh's sex life.
12:14Amenhotep's harem was full of the most beautiful daughters of the most powerful kings of the age.
12:24It's brotherhood between the great kings, and they call themselves brothers.
12:29And if you marry the daughter of another king, then you really are part of a family.
12:35But this was not a two-way process.
12:37In one letter, the king of Babylon complains bitterly that Amenhotep has refused to send him an Egyptian princess.
12:47When I wrote to you about the possibility of my marrying your daughter, you wrote to me as follows.
12:54No daughter of a king of Egypt has ever been given to anyone.
12:59Why not? You are a king, and do what you like.
13:03It was a useless complaint.
13:06No Egyptian princess was allowed to marry into a foreign court, for fear it would give a foreigner a claim
13:12to Egypt's throne.
13:14But the Babylonian king suggested a devious compromise.
13:19Send me a beautiful woman, as if she was your daughter.
13:23Who will be able to say this is not the king's daughter?
13:27The Babylonian king's second request was denied.
13:31Amenhotep saw himself as able to take princesses and give none in return.
13:37I see him as a very, very intelligent man, and he obviously uses his position extremely carefully.
13:44So, although there is great respect for the other kings of the time, he is always one cut above everybody
13:52else.
13:57Amenhotep was more wealthy and powerful than any previous pharaoh.
14:01And soon everyone would know it.
14:06He would channel the vast resources of the empire into the largest building program the world had ever seen.
14:14To embark on a building program was one of the best ways for an Egyptian king to present himself as
14:23a hero, as an achiever, as a doer.
14:37It was work on an epic scale.
14:45The countless sandstone blocks hewn from the Egyptian quarries have left caverns that are themselves like temples carved out of
14:53the rock.
14:58It was a triumph of organization.
15:01Soldiers, cooks, doctors and water bearers were all sent into the desert to support the quarry.
15:16Amenhotep's magnificent new temples did more than advertise his wealth.
15:20They also honored the ultimate source of Egypt's glory, her many gods.
15:31Amenhotep thanked one god in particular for his success.
15:35Amenhotep, the king of the gods.
15:41To guarantee the support of Amenhotep, the pharaoh donated great portions of his wealth to the gods' main temple.
15:50And as the temple grew richer, the temple priests grew more powerful.
16:01The priests who control these vast establishments have power. They have financial power. They have political power as well.
16:14The power of the priests of Amun-Re was beginning to rival pharaoh himself.
16:19But out in the empire, Amenhotep made sure his subjects heard only of his triumphs, not his problems.
16:29And Amenhotep had a surprising new way of communicating directly with his subjects.
16:38Amenhotep made sure his subjects heard only of the prophets.
16:38Stones, carved into the shape of dung beetles, had long been used in Egypt as amulets.
16:45Now Amenhotep had these mass-produced, portable scarabs inscribed with news of his latest achievements.
16:54Carried across the empire, these propaganda beetles were the first newspapers in history.
17:01He wants to proclaim his power, his richness, his achievements to the broadest possible strata of the Egyptian population.
17:11And this new scarab was a way to replace a kind of earlier form of TV, if you will, of
17:17sending information all over the place.
17:21It was by news, Garab, that the outside world first heard Amenhotep had chosen his queen.
17:30In addition to the minor wives in his harem, every pharaoh selected a chief queen.
17:36To strengthen the royal line, she was often a sister or close female relative.
17:42Amenhotep chose to ignore this royal custom.
17:45He proudly announced that he was marrying a commoner, the daughter of a chariot officer.
17:51A woman called Ti.
17:55The chief queen Ti.
17:58Her father's name is Yuya, and her mother's name is Tuya.
18:03She is the wife of a mighty king.
18:07We get a sense of a very strong woman. The portraits are extraordinary.
18:12And they do for once convey something of the person, because there is no blandness to Queen Ti.
18:18You look at her and you think, ooh, she really was something else, this one.
18:24Queen Ti was not an easy queen. She was so strong, and you can see that from the statues of
18:32this queen, how she was equal to the king in size.
18:37Queen Ti was more than just a chief queen. She was Amenhotep's near equal.
18:48Far down the Nile in Nubia, Amenhotep made this stunningly clear by building a pair of temples.
18:55One for Queen Ti, and one nearby for himself, here at Soleb.
19:03These temples were not just built for the royal couple. They were actually dedicated to them.
19:10Deep in the southern part of his empire, Amenhotep and Ti were worshipped as gods.
19:16The shadow of Pharaoh extends in stone along the Nile to the African provinces of his empire.
19:25He is there in a physical presence, looking out over the empire that he controls.
19:33Amenhotep's message to his Nubian subjects was clear.
19:37At the base of the columns at Soleb are images of captive Nubians.
19:41A graphic representation of Pharaoh's power for all to see.
19:55Here in Nubia, it was especially important that Amenhotep was in control.
20:01Nubia's mines supplied most of Egypt's gold.
20:05And gold was what allowed Amenhotep to control his rivals.
20:11The request from the foreign kings is for gold, gold, and more gold.
20:17Because as says one of these kings, in your land, gold is as plentiful as dust.
20:23It's the Fort Knox of the ancient world.
20:30Amenhotep had secured the gold supply.
20:35But more and more of this gold was pouring into the temple of Amun-Re.
20:41Amenhotep's priests and thieves now controlled a third of Egypt's wealth.
20:46They also interpreted Amun-Re's will, which Pharaoh had to obey.
20:53At this stage, the priests of Amun-Re were probably more powerful than they had ever been in the history
20:59of Egypt.
21:00The high priest of Amun at Karnak would probably, in fact, have a power superior to that of the king.
21:11To shift the power away from Amun-Re's priests, Amun-Hotep began to show interest in another minor god.
21:20The Aten, the visible sun.
21:24It could hardly have seemed important.
21:26Yet, it was about to change everything.
21:31In 1352 BC, Amun-Hotep III, the great king, the diplomatic genius, died.
21:42Egypt was plunged into mourning.
21:58The death of the king must have been a terrible event.
22:03This is a man who had dominated politics, religion, the life of not only his subjects, but the life of
22:09the empire for such a long time.
22:13Even in the Near East, Amun-Hotep was mourned by his rivals.
22:19Foreign kings wrote to his widow, Queen Ti, expressing their personal grief.
22:26I cried, I sat, I did not eat or drink.
22:31I mourned, saying, if only I were dead, or ten thousand were dead in my land,
22:39and that my brother whom I love and who loves me were alive as long as heaven and earth.
22:56Amun-Hotep III died in the course of his 39th year.
22:59Probably in his last days, he could look out over the empire that, seemingly, the sun would never set over.
23:06He could think of a world at peace, where diplomacy ruled, where the wealth of Egypt was undoubted,
23:13and he could leave it all to his son, Amun-Hotep IV.
23:24Amenhotep IV had grown up in the most powerful family on earth.
23:29Now he found himself pharaoh, and ruler of Egypt's empire.
23:36In the first years of Amenhotep IV's reign, it must have seemed like nothing has changed.
23:41But at his court, the new pharaoh was encouraging ideas that would soon transform Egyptian society.
23:52A radically new style of art was flourishing.
23:56According to the artists, it was the pharaoh himself who had taught them.
24:00These artists rejected the conventions of traditional Egyptian art.
24:05Instead, they celebrated the vibrancy of the real world.
24:11Their work was sensual and filled with movement.
24:28But what shocked Egypt most were the new depictions of the royal family.
24:33To a modern eye, they seemed peculiar.
24:36To conservative Egyptians, they must have been staggering.
24:43Suddenly you get a sort of celebration of ugliness,
24:46and the bodies become extraordinarily proportioned.
24:50You've got sort of a thin torso and thin shoulders,
24:54massive hips on male figures as well as female figures,
24:59big buttocks and pendulous thighs,
25:01which must have been quite extraordinary for an Egyptian to see.
25:07Presumably, he was actually just trying to make a statement,
25:10sort of, hey, I'm different,
25:12doing something which completely breaks with tradition.
25:15It must have been very shocking,
25:17and it's a very good way, presumably,
25:19of getting yourself noticed as someone who is going to do something really quite radical.
25:29Amenhotep IV was embarking on a religious revolution.
25:33The seeds had been sown in the reign of his father,
25:36but nothing could have prepared Egypt for what was about to happen.
25:46In the second year of his reign, Amenhotep IV abandoned Egypt's traditional gods.
25:52Even Amon-Re, the king of the gods, was discarded.
25:57His temples were closed, and his priests were evicted.
26:02If you want to make a break with the past, you close the temples.
26:06You remove the means for these people to use or abuse their power.
26:13For this pharaoh, there would be only one god,
26:16the Atom, the visible sun.
26:23Amenhotep would become the first monotheist in recorded history.
26:31He would also be the only priest of his new religion.
26:34The pharaoh stands alone, bathed in the rays of the Atom.
26:40At a stroke, all the certainties of life that had marked the golden age of his father were swept away.
26:50He discarded the name Amenhotep, meaning Amon is satisfied.
26:55He would take a new name, Akhenaten, meaning one who is beneficial to the Atom.
27:03Akhenaten does seem to have been a very driven person,
27:06and must have had enormous energy to carry through all the changes he's making.
27:12They're much more substantial than just the sort of religion and the art.
27:19At the end of the day, he must have restructured in some way the whole way the country was working.
27:29Akhenaten had only just begun.
27:31Now he planned another astonishing act.
27:34To seal the break with the past, he ordered the construction of an entirely new capital city,
27:40far to the north of Thebes.
27:45It was a desolate site known as Amarna.
27:54He called it the Horizon of the Sun.
27:59On vast boundary stele, cut into the cliffs, Akhenaten claimed the Sun God had led him here.
28:07And he made it clear that his decision to move here was irreversible.
28:12It was my father, the Atom himself, who pointed out the site.
28:18Before I came here, it didn't belong to any god or goddess or to any king or queen.
28:24I will never say I am leaving it.
28:27And I have no intention of breaking this oath.
28:33Amarna can't have been a very welcoming place for the first people that had to go there and try and
28:40create a city.
28:42It was desert, really.
28:44It seems a rather strange place, really, to build a city.
28:49Abandoning Thebes, the new pharaoh could escape the influence of Egypt's high priests.
28:57We have a situation in which Thebes, the city that was traditionally celebrated in Egyptian hymns,
29:04had in fact become a threat to the king, to the most important inhabitant of this city.
29:17Everything in Thebes was packed up.
29:20Akkad Natan and his entire government, officials, scribes, soldiers and artisans, would move to the new desert site.
29:44They were leaving behind their houses and their carefully prepared tombs.
29:50They were leaving behind the most cosmopolitan city in Egypt, built by Akkad Natan's father.
29:58I don't think you would really have had any choice in the matter.
30:01If Akkad Natan decides he wants to go there, everybody goes.
30:05The whole court would have had to get up and go there and all the hangers-on.
30:10Everybody who would be part of court life would have had to get up and move to Amarna.
30:33Tens of thousands set out for Amarna.
30:36Ahead lay a 200-mile journey up the Nile to a new life in the new city.
30:41All part of Akkad Natan's great experiment.
30:48The new capital city had been built on an unprecedented scale.
30:52It was eight miles long and three miles wide.
31:18Four huge palaces rose from the desert floor.
31:22Surrounded by ornamental lakes and gardens.
31:26And dominating the city was the great temple of the Atan.
31:31A temple open to the sun, surrounded by wide roads and open spaces.
31:37To a certain degree, Amarna was conceived very much like an American city.
31:43It was conceived and planned in a way that would account for openness and freedom, we could call it.
32:01The whole city was one great stage on which Pharaoh could demonstrate his devotion to the Atan.
32:09Beware CB Fallows —
32:26With him at the head of these processions, his subjects could see the Woman who had helped him realize his
32:32vision.
32:32one of the most remarkable women of the ancient world but her face would not be
32:39seen again until the beginning of the 20th century in the winter of 1912 a
32:49German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt came to excavate at Armana on December
32:566th just before the lunch break I was called by an urgent note from Professor
33:01ranker who was supervising the excavations there at about knee height in front of us
33:08a flesh-colored neck appeared as his workmen brushed the sand away Borchardt
33:15began to see a stone face looking back at him the most beautiful he had ever seen
33:21it was the face of a queen whose name meant a beautiful woman has come Nefertiti
33:36Stunned that evening Borchardt wrote just one line in his diary description is useless see for
33:45yourself in real life Nefertiti was as remarkable as her statue like her mother-in-law Queen T Nefertiti
33:56played a prominent role in public life she and Akhenaten stood together at the
34:03head of the new regime if you look at the role Nefertiti plays in the Amarna period it is almost
34:10as important as that of Akhenaten so she's there present all the time she's even shown in some of
34:18the reliefs smiting the enemy as a Pharaoh is always shown so Nefertiti is not just a beautiful
34:25woman she's a very very important element in this new and incredible experiment Nefertiti is also the
34:35only Egyptian Queen intimately described by her husband verses of love and devotion over 3,000 years old
34:44she stands out in the palace fair-faced and beautiful at the sound of her voice rejoicing breaks out her
34:55appearance fills the king with pleasure she is the chief queen the king is beloved the mistress of two
35:05lands Nefertiti Nefertiti was not the only woman in Akhenaten's life in the northern apartments of the
35:18palace Nefertiti brought up their six daughters in the few surviving reliefs we see the princesses six
35:26little girls growing up in the city of the Sun well loved by their father and mother
35:37no other royal family in the ancient world seems so human so real
35:53Stele even show Akhenaten and his wife playing with their children a brief moment in time captured 3,300 years
36:02ago
36:10the representations of this divine family are unique never before do you see the king or the queen with
36:19their children climbing all over them or the king kissing his child these are family situations which
36:25we would recognize now as very human and they appear at this time freed from the constraints of the old
36:34order
36:35life in Amarna was good at least for now this success was celebrated in a new type of hymn which
36:44the king himself claimed to have written
36:48the greatest of these hymns is carved in a tomb above the city a hymn so powerful that phrases from
36:55it found their way into the Bible
36:58in it Akhenaten praised the sun as the creator of the natural world plants animals Egyptians even foreigners
37:13when you cast your rays the herds are happy in their pasture trees and plants grow green
37:21all the flocks gamble and all the birds come to life because you have risen for them
37:29even the fish in the rivers leap towards your face you created the earth to please you people cattle and
37:38flocks
37:38everything which walks on land or takes off and flies using wings
37:44the general message of the great hymn to the Aten in Amarna is that life comes from the sun god
37:52and life is
37:53distributed equally over the earth equally among nations equally among people equally among animals
38:08Egypt appeared to have accepted the new religion of the Aten and in the twelfth year of his reign
38:17Akhenaten organized a massive celebration to give thanks to his god with thousands of offerings
38:48ambassadors came from all over the world to deliver their tribute at the head of it all
38:53Akhenaten and sitting beside him Queen Nefertiti there had never been a partnership like it the
39:03incredible experiment appeared to be working but that same year in the midst of apparent triumph
39:13Akhenaten's new world suddenly began to fall apart
39:20at the height of her powers Nefertiti simply vanishes from history
39:27Egyptologists have failed to discover exactly what happened to her
39:38personal tragedy heaped upon the pharaoh Nefertiti was gone his mother the great queen tea died soon
39:47afterwards so too did one of his minor wives and even one of his daughters
39:56after twelve years of tolerance Akhenaten began to turn his power to destructive ends
40:02once he had been content simply to replace Egypt's traditional gods now he actively began to persecute
40:09them and Amun-Re bore the brunt of his fury
40:17the reformer had become a fanatic incapable of tolerating other gods
40:33Akhenaten was certainly the first monotheist but also certainly the first religious oppressor
40:41in the history of the world wherever they could be found the name and image of Amun-Re were destroyed
40:48no reference to the god was too far away or too inaccessible he sent out what must have been armies
40:55of
40:55men with chisels along with people who could read the walls and find the names of the gods to be
41:02removed
41:06Akhenaten even attacked the memory of his beloved father Amunhotep
41:11gouging out the part of his name that mentioned Amun
41:14the name Amunhotep means Amun is satisfied Akhenaten removed the Amun portion of the name of Amun is
41:23satisfied because obviously under his reign Amun was certainly not satisfied and so he in fact
41:29inflicted a punishment on his own father's name in order to comply with his own religious views with his
41:36own religious fanaticism consumed by his religious fervor Akhenaten had lost touch with the outside world
41:46letters poured in to warn Pharaoh that his empire was under threat old allies princes and vassals
41:53wrote begging him for help the king my lord should be informed that the king of Hatti has seized all
42:00countries that were the vassals of we've been writing to the king our lord for 20 years but we
42:07haven't heard a single word back in Canaan some locals beat my merchants and steal their money Canaan is
42:13your country and its kings are your slave I keep writing to the palace but you never reply
42:22those princes and those people in the east were crying help us but he his ears did not hear any
42:34anything Akhenaten ignored the desperate pleas of his subjects
42:42the empire his father had worked so hard to maintain was now in danger
42:50as their world began to fall apart Akhenaten's oldest officials must have remembered how things had been
42:56under his father one could say that Akhenaten did all he could in his power to destroy his father's legacy
43:04so
43:05at the end of his reign what used to be a very cohesive power in the international arena is a
43:14country on the verge of crisis
43:20only the pharaoh's personal charisma held the dream together
43:26then in 1336 bc Akhenaten died
43:40with Akhenaten dead the keystone of Atenism was gone
43:48in the hills above the deserted city work was abandoned on the tombs of Akhenaten's courtiers
44:01the tombs of Telalamana are all unfinished and unoccupied the paintings are barely finished
44:09in some cases it's almost as though somebody has just heard the king has died we're going away drop your
44:16tools and go
44:23now with Akhenaten dead traditional forces took hold of Egypt
44:29once loyal courtiers artisans even priests of the Aten flocked back to Thebes eager to wrest
44:37order from the chaos that threatened to engulf Egypt
44:43after just 20 years Armana the setting for pharaoh's great experiment was abandoned
44:59emerging from the chaos came a new king
45:03a nine-year-old boy this child pharaoh had grown up in Akhenaten's palaces
45:09his son by a minor wife his name was Tutankhaten meaning the living image of the Aten
45:21Tutankhaten inherited a dynasty a country and an empire staring disaster in the face but he was only a
45:30boy those who had lost out under Akhenaten seized their opportunity they would use the young king to their
45:38their own ends
45:41first they would have to change his name
45:45Tutankhaten became Tutankhamun
45:48the living image of Amun
45:51Tutankhamun is to a certain extent a dual personality
45:55he is a personality in between between the Amarna and the post Amarna age
46:00he certainly breathed Amarna air he was imbued with this intellectual innovation
46:10on the other hand he was also the first pharaoh of the post Amarna era he was a puppet of
46:17the new
46:18leaders in Egypt priesthood and military in a carefully scripted decree
46:25Tutankhamun blamed his own father Akhenaten for neglecting Egypt's traditional gods and plunging Egypt into chaos
46:34when his majesty's reign began the temples of the gods and goddesses were in ruins
46:41their shrines had crumbled into piles of rubble choked with weeds
46:46their chapels were little more than footpaths
46:50and the land was in chaos because the gods had abandoned it
46:55Tutankhamun's solution to these problems was simple
46:59there is a very important proclamation to the effect that order is being restored
47:05and then things are going to go back to the way they were before
47:09so this is
47:10the bringing back of Amun
47:13of the ancient gods of the old order
47:17the old gods
47:19the temples
47:20and above all the power of the priests of Amun-Re were restored
47:26the Aten was relegated to a minor place in the pantheon
47:30no one went to its city
47:33no one spoke of it
47:35Akhenaten's heresy had simply never happened
47:41by the time Tutankhamun was 19 and able to rule in his own right
47:46everything seemed to have returned to normal
47:49but that same year Tutankhamun died
47:54suddenly and mysteriously
47:56an examination of his skull has recently produced yet another theory
48:02concerning the Aten family and that is that Tutankhamun may have been murdered
48:09by whom? question mark
48:12it's a disaster for the family
48:14it's a disaster for the royal family there is no heir
48:20Tutankhamun would only have been a footnote in Egyptian history
48:23if it had not been for the perseverance of a 20th century archaeologist named Howard Carter
48:30in 1922
48:32Carter discovered a tomb in the valley of the kings
48:34that few else believed existed
48:52in a single breathtaking moment he would bring the age of Tutankhamun back to life
49:02the dusty film itself maintained eerie footprints of the last people to breathe that very air
49:093,500 years earlier
49:12as you note the signs of recent life around you
49:16the blackened lamp the finger marks on the freshly painted surface
49:20the farewell garland dropped upon the threshold
49:24you feel it might have been put there yesterday
49:27time is annihilated by such intimate details as these
49:32and you feel an intruder
49:38Carter's find was unique
49:40he had not just rediscovered Tutankhamun
49:43he had unearthed the most fabulous treasure ever found
49:56he had not just rediscovered
50:0232,000 objects and vast quantities of the gold of Egypt's empire
50:07were buried with the boy king
50:16there were thousands of objects six chariots four ceremonial beds endless containers
50:23in the antechamber alone
50:25when howard carter describes opening the tomb and eventually removing these objects
50:31and it took 10 years to clear the tomb he actually tells us that they had to rig up
50:37platforms above ground in order to avoid trampling on these objects and breaking them
50:48in spite of its astonishing contents Tutankhamun's tiny tomb was not complete
50:55his treasures had not been carefully placed but randomly crammed in
51:03this was no normal burial the back of the golden throne found in his tomb is a clue
51:12Tutankhamun and his wife are shown sitting beneath the rays of the sun god
51:28called Aten
51:29Tutankhamun's officials had taken the opportunity to seal away this reminder
51:33of his father's reign and the period they found so shameful
51:46Tutankhamun was doomed to spend eternity with the very god he had renounced
52:00Tutankhamun died without an heir the backlash could now begin and it was savage
52:09the
52:09every mention of the athin that could be found was destroyed with ruthless efficiency
52:21every reference to akhenaten nefertiti and their children was hacked out
52:28the entire royal family was torn from the pages of history
52:34everything is obliterated and akhenaten nefertiti and this period become as though they had never
52:41happened akhenaten is a non-person he's referred to if ever he is mentioned as that heretic
52:54amarna the once great and beautiful city that witnessed the birth of monotheism
52:59and this period of time gradually crumbled back into the sand abandoned for all time
53:06i would say that the egyptian society as a whole saw the amarna experience as one of its most tragic
53:14moments so much so that the amarna experience left its trace for hundreds of years the memory of this
53:24very dark period of egyptian history remained in egyptian consciousness
53:31a turbulent episode in the history of egypt was over the dynasty of the great pharaohs who had
53:38founded the empire came to an end the stage was now set for a new beginning and a new family
53:45of pharaohs
53:46who would struggle to recapture the glory of egypt's golden empire
53:53so
54:05there
54:20a
54:22Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
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