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