Akhenaten and Nefertiti: religious revolution in ancient Egypt

Greg Jenner is joined in ancient Egypt by historian and curator Dr Campbell Price and comedian Sikisa to learn all about Tutankhamun’s parents, Nefertiti and Akhenaten. As well as their famous son, this ancient Egyptian power couple are best known in the modern age for two reasons. Firstly, Nefertiti’s legendary beauty – her portrait bust is instantly recognisable around the world. Secondly, Akhenaten’s religious radicalism, which saw him reorient Egyptian belief towards the sun god Aten and build an entirely new capital away from the traditional seat of power at Thebes. This episode traces their lives as members of the 18th dynasty, often regarded as the ‘Golden Age’ of pharaonic Egypt. We look at Akhenaten’s murky childhood and Nefertiti’s even murkier origins, exploring their family life and the children they had, the religious revolution that Akhenaten drove, the unique architecture and art styles developed during their reign, and the fate of Aten worship after Akhenaten’s death. Along the way, we dig into the archaeological evidence and the many uncertainties surrounding their lives, and ask whether they really were Tutankhamun’s parents after all. If you’re a fan of pharaohs and their follies, the history of religion, and unravelling the mysteries of ancient Egypt, you’ll love our episode on Nefertiti and Akhenaten. If you want more ancient Egyptian history with Dr Campbell Price, listen to our episodes on Hatshepsut or Ramesses the Great. And for more power-hungry monarchs, check out episodes on Emperor Nero or Frederick the Great. You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past. Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Siobhan-Michelle Smith Written by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Greg Jenner?

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• 1:39Greg Jenner?

  Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me. We are the BBC Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name's Greg Jenner, I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster, and today, well, we're bounding back to ancient Egypt and bowing down before the great sun disk in the sky as we learn all about the pharaoh Akhenaten and his queen Nefertiti. And to help us tell our amun's from our atuns, we have two very special guests. In history corner, he's the curator of Egypt and Sudan at the Manchester Museum, he's a fellow of the University of Liverpool, maybe you've read one of his excellent books, including Ancient Egypt in 50 Discoveries, and the children's book we wrote together, Totally Chaotic History: Ancient Egypt Gets Unruly. But you will definitely remember him from our episodes about Hatshepsut, the royal

• 2:22Greg Jenner?

  pharaoh queen, and Ramses the Great, the ego himself. It's Dr Campbell Price. Welcome back, Campbell.

• 2:28Speaker 04

  Hello again, nice to be back.

• 2:29Greg Jenner?

  Lovely to have you back in. And in comedy corner, she's an award-winning comedian, actor and producer. Maybe you've seen one of her hilarious tour shows, stand-up shows, or maybe you've watched her on the telly, on Live at the Apollo, Comedy Central Live, Jonathan Ross's Comedy Club. And for wrestling fans out there, maybe you've listened to her podcast, Wrestle Club UK, it's Sakisa. Welcome to the show, Sakisa.

• 2:50Speaker 05

  Oh my god, I'm so excited to be here. Can't wait to learn.

• 2:52Greg Jenner?

  You are going to learn so much stuff.

• 2:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:55Greg Jenner?

  Quite weird stuff.

• 2:56Speaker 04

  Yep. Even for ancient Egypt.

• 2:58Greg Jenner?

  Even for ancient Egypt. So Sakisa, we have to do some of the basic chat. First time on the pod.

• 3:02Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 3:03Greg Jenner?

  Thank you so much for coming in. I have to ask, do you like history?

• 3:05Speaker 05

  I do like history, actually. I always wanted to do it at GCSE, but I decided to pick geography instead.

• 3:11Greg Jenner?

  Oh.

• 3:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:13Greg Jenner?

  Come on.

• 3:14Speaker 05

  But yeah, like, Henry VIII was like my... Like, if we did an episode on that, I'd be like, you don't need, we don't need you. But I'll be the expert on that one.

• 3:22Greg Jenner?

  Oh, interesting. Okay, so you quite like the Tudors, but what about ancient history? Do you know anything about ancient Egypt?

• 3:28Speaker 05

  That the women were great.

• 3:31Greg Jenner?

  Yes.

• 3:32Speaker 05

  Nefertiti was amazing.

• 3:34Greg Jenner?

  She, I mean, yeah?

• 3:35Speaker 05

  I actually do love the symbols. I always see the symbols come up quite a lot in like tattoos and stuff like that. I've always wanted to get one, but decided not to.

• 3:45Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 3:46Speaker 05

  Feel like it's a bit like the Chinese symbols, you know, when people get Chinese symbols and you're like, does that actually mean what it means? I don't know.

• 3:52Greg Jenner?

  Well, you've got an Egyptologist here who's been...

• 3:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, oh, actually, you could draw me one.

• 3:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, maybe after the show.

• 3:56Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 3:57Speaker 04

  I've seen people in swimming pools where I'm like, your name is Steve. It's written in hieroglyphs.

• 4:04Greg Jenner?

  All right, today we're talking about Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Do you, I think you know Nefertiti's name, right?

• 4:09Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 4:10Greg Jenner?

  What about Akhenaten, her husband?

• 4:11Speaker 05

  No, don't care about that person. Don't care about that.

• 4:13Greg Jenner?

  Maybe by the end you will.

• 4:14Speaker 05

  Really?

• 4:15Greg Jenner?

  Maybe you won't. I mean, he's a controversial guy from history and his queen, I think, is perhaps more famous than he is. So, what do you know?

• 4:27Greg Jenner?

  Let's crack on with the first segment of the podcast. This is called the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener or viewer, hello, might know about today's subject. And Akhenaten, I think, is a tricky one. I think you've probably heard of Nefertiti, though. I think that's the sort of the baseline. She's this famously beautiful queen, whose one-eyed bust is, you know, one of the most incredible ancient sculptures, one of the most famous sculptures in ancient art. And you may even know about their possible son, a certain chap by the name of Tutankhamun.

• 4:56Speaker 05

  Oh, yes.

• 4:57Greg Jenner?

  So, you know, we'll get into that, sort of, you know, basically, as we think, Nefertiti was the big mummy to little King Tut, or was she? I mean, we'll ask, we'll find out. Akhenaten, I don't know, if you're an opera fan, Philip Glass wrote an opera about him, but I don't know if that's well-known. He's a baddie in Assassin's Creed Origins, and Doctor Who fans will remember Nefertiti herself from hunting dinosaurs on a spaceship, as you do. So, were the real historical Akhenaten and Nefertiti hunting dinosaurs on spaceships? Probably not. But how did they profoundly change ancient Egypt? And do we need to redraw Tutankhamun's family tree? Let's find out. So, Sakisa, historians, we... I'm coming to you first.

• 5:38Speaker 05

  Why are you coming to me now?

• 5:40Greg Jenner?

  Historians love dates, not romantic dates, mathematical dates. We like, you know, years in history. So, we'll start with some basic ones. How long ago do you think our story is?

• 5:49Speaker 05

  Oh, don't do this to me.

• 5:54Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 5:58Speaker 05

  Can I? I feel so stupid.

• 6:01Greg Jenner?

  It's not stupid, it's a long time ago, so I'm not expecting you to know this.

• 6:04Speaker 05

  No, but people think I'm smart because I'm a lawyer, and I'm like, no.

• 6:06Greg Jenner?

  You are, you are smart, you are a lawyer.

• 6:08Speaker 05

  I'm actually quite dumb, but I'm going to say 1300s.

• 6:13Greg Jenner?

  BCE.

• 6:14Speaker 05

  This reaction is everything for me.

• 6:17Greg Jenner?

  Campbell, I mean, that is bang on, right?

• 6:20Speaker 04

  Sakisa is bang on.

• 6:21Speaker 05

  Yay!

• 6:22Speaker 04

  BCE, yes.

• 6:24Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 6:25Speaker 04

  So Akhenaten and Nefertiti are in the 14th century BCE, the 18th dynasty out of 30, so they're kind of midway in ancient Egypt.

• 6:34Greg Jenner?

  So we're talking about 3,340 years ago, something like that?

• 6:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, a long time ago.

• 6:39Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 6:39Speaker 04

  But this is really the ancient Egyptian golden age. So you sometimes hear Egyptologists talk about the New Kingdom. So the pyramids are the Old Kingdom. The New Kingdom, Greg, as we've said before, isn't particularly new, it was 3,000 years ago, but it's a time when Egypt has expanded in a way and kind of taken a lot of stuff from its neighbours. So the treasury is full.

• 7:03Speaker 05

  Is this, is this what Britain got it from? Is this, is this...

• 7:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:07Speaker 05

  Do they get it from Egypt?

• 7:08Speaker 04

  We'll come back to this. But we've got letters from this time from the reign of Akhenaten, which is basically him talking to foreign kings, and all the kings are writing to the Egyptian pharaoh asking for gold. They're like, in my brother's kingdom, gold is as plentiful as dust. So it's so common as an idea that ancient Egypt is rich, and we'll see evidence of that.

• 7:32Greg Jenner?

  We're talking here about the kind of, almost the high point of a 3,000-year civilisation, right?

• 7:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's up and down and up and down, and history's never as that, that simple as a real high point, without any question. But Akhenaten's dad is a guy called Amenhotep III. He rules for over 30 years and he is not doing much in the way of battles because the treasury is so full, all he wants to do is build stuff. So this is really, an international time, it's quite cosmopolitan, and Egypt has lots of gold, Sakisa.

• 8:02Speaker 05

  I've got a question.

• 8:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:04Speaker 05

  So I will put up my hand, because I feel like, I feel like, I feel like I am in school, I am taking notes. How do you know that was his actual name?

• 8:13Speaker 04

  Without going on a major tangent about the Rosetta Stone, we've got lots of texts that repeatedly give the king's name, so we have the basic components. So it may have sounded like Iman Heta or Amon Hotep or something, but we know for sure that the dad is called Amenhotep, and in fact, the son is also called Amenhotep.

• 8:33Greg Jenner?

  This is a good name.

• 8:34Speaker 04

  And this is name-checking the big god at the time, the kind of prime god, a guy called Amun Ra, who, as we will see, goes out of fashion under our friend Akhenaten.

• 8:47Greg Jenner?

  Let's talk about Akhenaten's mum. So we've met Akhenaten's dad, Amenhotep III. Let's talk about his mummy.

• 8:53Speaker 04

  You will insist on doing that.

• 8:54Greg Jenner?

  I will, I will, you know, sorry. Who was the mother of Akhenaten?

• 8:59Speaker 04

  We know a lot about this lady. So Queen Ti is the daughter of people who seem like fairly normal folk, so she's not born into the royal family. In fact, we found the intact tomb of her parents in the Valley of the Kings. So that's really where you get buried if you're a king or a queen. But Queen Ti's mum and dad are thought of so highly by their son-in-law that they get buried in the Valley of the Kings. Queen Ti, and this is important for understanding Nefertiti, just is right front and centre with her husband. She is doing things, she's depicted, commanding things, she's very present in the monumental art, and I think that sets the tone for the reign.

• 9:40Speaker 04

  It's not just Amenhotep III is a god, and he's telling people he's a god when he's alive, he's also saying, my wife is a living goddess. They are worshipped full-on deities.

• 9:52Speaker 05

  So it's Kate and William.

• 9:54Speaker 04

  Kind of like Kate and William, Kate and William on steroids.

• 9:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, cool. I can, I can see the vision.

• 10:01Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 10:02Speaker 05

  I can see the vision.

• 10:03Speaker 04

  And they have a few children.

• 10:04Speaker 05

  How many?

• 10:07Speaker 04

  This is going to be a repeated thing. We don't know for sure, because the record doesn't always record.

• 10:13Speaker 05

  Historians.

• 10:14Speaker 04

  Historians. Of course, we're talking about an archaeological subject where we have got loads of stuff surviving, but that stuff is a fraction of what must originally have been produced, right? So we know Queen Ti and Amenhotep III have several children, one of whom is a guy called Tutmos.

• 10:39Speaker 04

  What is it about Tutmos that tickles you?

• 10:41Speaker 05

  It's Tutmos. That sounds so funny. Just Tutmos.

• 10:47Speaker 04

  What's your name?

• 10:47Speaker 05

  Tutmos.

• 10:51Speaker 04

  See our episode on hatchbacks for a joke about Tutmos. So we know a bit about this guy. He is a big cat lover. He is one of the only ancient Egyptians who for sure has a pet cat. Now, we think of the ancient Egyptians, oh, they loved cats, they buried their cats, they mummified cats. Actually, most cats were a sacrifice to the gods and were not pets. But Prince Tutmos, he definitely has a pet cat because he makes a sarcophagus for it. And he's also a bull fancier. He makes a massive tomb for some lucky bulls that can answer fortunes.

• 11:27Speaker 05

  What do you mean that the cats were sacrificed to gods? Like what they were just like a bunch of cats, just what about the dogs? What about?

• 11:35Speaker 04

  Dogs as well, crocodiles.

• 11:37Speaker 05

  Crocodiles?

• 11:38Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 11:39Speaker 04

  Anything you could kill, you could give as an offering to the gods.

• 11:42Greg Jenner?

  Not spiders, though.

• 11:43Speaker 04

  No evidence of spiders, you're right.

• 11:45Speaker 05

  How about flies?

• 11:47Speaker 04

  Flies.

• 11:47Greg Jenner?

  Hard to mummify a fly.

• 11:48Speaker 04

  Hard to mummify a fly.

• 11:50Greg Jenner?

  Tiny bandages.

• 11:52Speaker 04

  They do, they do scarab beetles.

• 11:55Speaker 05

  Obviously, as we've seen from the mummy.

• 11:56Greg Jenner?

  Yes, exactly.

• 11:57Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 11:58Greg Jenner?

  Renowned documentary.

• 11:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:00Speaker 04

  Reliable information.

• 12:01Speaker 05

  That's how we get all that information.

• 12:04Speaker 04

  But yes, so, so this prince is, he's a high priest. So he's, he's got a job and that's important to give a job to these young princes.

• 12:14Speaker 05

  Yes, as we know from history.

• 12:16Speaker 04

  Yes, keep them occupied. But we know a little about him, but he does seem to be involved with animal cults. Because ancient Egyptian gods can usually take the form of animals.

• 12:28Greg Jenner?

  So he's in charge of this sort of famous temple called Saqqara, right? Where there's the, there's the fortune telling, future predicting sacred bull.

• 12:35Speaker 04

  The Apis Bull.

• 12:36Greg Jenner?

  The Apis Bull, which you ask it questions and it tells you what's going to happen in the future.

• 12:39Speaker 05

  Wait, wait, wait, time out. So the bull is like telling the future?

• 12:42Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 12:43Speaker 05

  Where is the, is the bull?

• 12:45Speaker 04

  The bull can't speak.

• 12:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's what I was going to say.

• 12:47Speaker 04

  To be clear.

• 12:48Speaker 05

  The bull's dead, right?

• 12:49Greg Jenner?

  No, no, it's living.

• 12:50Speaker 04

  No, when it's alive. So imagine you go into the sacred paddock and you've got a question.

• 12:55Speaker 05

  So they've got a bull who's like being praised by everyone.

• 12:59Speaker 04

  Got a harem of cows.

• 13:00Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, it's got special markings. So the sacred bull, when it is born, they, they know it's sacred because there's special markings, right?

• 13:05Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 13:06Greg Jenner?

  And then you ask it questions and it will, it will eat food or it kick over a bucket or it sort of.

• 13:11Speaker 04

  If it just gallops in a certain direction, you say, okay, I've got a question. Did the woman down the road steal my chisel? A bit to the left for yes, a bit to the right for no. So it's like interpreting movements of, you know, statues of the virgin.

• 13:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:25Speaker 04

  Mary, yeah.

• 13:25Speaker 05

  And the ball is obviously in a room and has got like several other cows around it, just like, just worshipping him. Just being like moo.

• 13:35Speaker 04

  Pretty much.

• 13:35Speaker 05

  Moo. All hell, the ball moo. Okay, interesting, okay.

• 13:42Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 13:42Speaker 05

  We see, we see how the hip hop stars have got their allies from the ball.

• 13:47Greg Jenner?

  Exactly. So that's, that's Tutmos's job.

• 13:49Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 13:49Greg Jenner?

  So he's, he's the main prince.

• 13:51Speaker 04

  He seems to be the heir apparent.

• 13:53Greg Jenner?

  So Akhenaten, the guy we're talking about today, he's not the main prince, he's a backup prince. So what's his childhood like?

• 14:00Speaker 04

  We know next to nothing about royal, royal children.

• 14:03Greg Jenner?

  Thanks for coming in, Campbell, bye.

• 14:06Speaker 04

  Especially boys, because I think there is a taboo about boys being shown or given too much power or too much influence because they might try and bump off their dad. Whereas princesses can feature in the art, in the kind of public monumental discourse. So we know next to nothing about Prince Amenhotep as he is the younger son of Amenhotep III.

• 14:28Greg Jenner?

  So he's not called Akhenaten yet, he's Amenhotep Junior.

• 14:31Speaker 04

  The fourth, yeah, going to be Amenhotep Junior.

• 14:34Greg Jenner?

  Okay, but then Tutmos, Tutmos dies.

• 14:36Speaker 04

  He does.

• 14:37Greg Jenner?

  Perhaps run over by a sacred cow, who knows?

• 14:39Speaker 04

  Who knows in the line of duty?

• 14:40Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, absolutely. So that means that we now get the kind of the, the succession is established, right?

• 14:46Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 14:46Greg Jenner?

  Our, our little prince, Amenhotep, Amenhotep IV is going to be pharaoh one day.

• 14:51Speaker 04

  Second son, if he is indeed the second son, takes the throne eventually, which is not uncommon in other parts of history.

• 14:58Greg Jenner?

  And his pharaonic name, Sakisa, do you want to guess his pharaonic name? You won't guess this, and if you do, you are a witch, but like, do you want to guess his official pharaonic title?

• 15:10Speaker 05

  Amma, Amma Pharaoh?

• 15:14Greg Jenner?

  Pretty smart, pretty good guess. It's a bit more complex than that. I mean.

• 15:18Speaker 04

  Do you want me to, to give you some pronunciation?

• 15:21Greg Jenner?

  I can't even read this.

• 15:22Speaker 04

  Nefirchepru ray waen ray Amenhotep.

• 15:27Greg Jenner?

  That's his name.

• 15:29Speaker 04

  They are definitely emphasizing not just that he's connected to the god Amun, who as I said, is the big main god of the time. But they mention the god Ra or Re, and he's the sun god. And so the power of the sun god is going to be very important in this story.

• 15:46Greg Jenner?

  This won't be his last rebrand, Sakisa, spoiler alert, he's going to be, he's going to change his name again.

• 15:50Speaker 05

  Oh, it's Madonna.

• 15:52Greg Jenner?

  A little bit.

• 15:54Greg Jenner?

  But let's get on to Nefertiti, because I think Sakisa knew, you knew a bit about her. So do you know what Nefertiti translates to? Do you know what her name meant?

• 16:02Speaker 05

  The queen? The boss queen?

• 16:04Speaker 04

  It means literally the beautiful lady has arrived.

• 16:08Speaker 05

  Okay, I think I'm now going to be renamed as Nefertiti.

• 16:11Speaker 04

  It's a great name. The word nefer means beautiful or perfect. She is unusually well known for an ancient Egyptian queen, as we'll find out, because of the bust, this famous bust Greg mentioned that's now in Berlin. But she seems to not be royal, she's not married into the royal family, she's not born of royal stock. Some people think because of the meaning of the name, that she might be a foreign princess who comes into the Egyptian court. We know the ancient Egyptians do that, the Egyptian king takes foreign wives.

• 16:45Greg Jenner?

  So she's an import bride.

• 16:46Speaker 04

  She might be a mail order bride from the Tani.

• 16:50Speaker 05

  She's Meghan. I can see how it's moving into a lot of class.

• 16:55Speaker 04

  Don't want to force too many historical comparisons. But like most ancient Egyptian brides, generally certainly royal brides, she seems to get married to Amenhotep IV, as he is, quite young. So she's anywhere between the ages of eight and 16.

• 17:12Greg Jenner?

  Ugh, oh, I'm going to have to honk my problematic marriage klaxon, that's so young. I mean, 16 by our standards on this show is like tolerable, but eight is horrific.

• 17:21Speaker 05

  Did they really get married at eight?

• 17:23Greg Jenner?

  Well, yeah.

• 17:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:25Greg Jenner?

  And that's not the worst thing probably, because there's, there's more to talk about.

• 17:28Speaker 05

  Oh, dude.

• 17:30Greg Jenner?

  So she may have been eight, some scholars say nine, some say 12, some say 16.

• 17:34Speaker 04

  It's impossible to say for sure.

• 17:36Greg Jenner?

  But like, she's extremely young, it's very, very upsetting. But also she might have been, I mean, so Amenhotep may have been related to her, we're not sure.

• 17:47Speaker 04

  We're not sure, but it wouldn't be uncommon for the king to marry a relative to keep the royal blood pure.

• 17:53Greg Jenner?

  So we've had in the past, brusbons, brother husbands.

• 17:56Speaker 04

  We've had brusbons.

• 17:57Greg Jenner?

  In ancient Egypt, we call them brusbons, but we, she would now introduce a new term, cousin husbands. So Amenhotep might be a cousin or a brusband.

• 18:06Speaker 04

  He could be.

• 18:07Greg Jenner?

  We could hope not, but.

• 18:08Speaker 05

  Hey, again, if we're talking about modern royal families, it's not uncommon, come on now. If you're historians, you should know.

• 18:17Greg Jenner?

  No comment, but yes. Okay, but so Campbell, jumping forward in time, when do our, our married couple become parents themselves? When do they then have their own children? You know, Amenhotep and Nefertiti, when do they have their own princes and princesses?

• 18:32Speaker 04

  They have at least for sure, because we've got lots of depictions, six daughters. So it's quite uncommon actually to show daughters in that way. They may have some sons, maybe Tutankhamun.

• 18:44Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 18:45Speaker 04

  But there is evidence that Akhenaten may marry one of his own daughters and have more daughters.

• 18:54Greg Jenner?

  That's a whole other problematic marriage klaxon, I don't even have that one.

• 18:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, it's a different realm.

• 18:59Speaker 05

  That sounds Austrian.

• 19:02Speaker 04

  We don't, we don't know for sure, and there can be symbolic ritual marriages that may not have involved children.

• 19:10Greg Jenner?

  What else can we say about this, these children they have, you know, the, the family dynamics?

• 19:16Speaker 04

  Well, I think the general context is high infant mortality. So children are dying a lot more in the pre-modern world. So you might want to have more children. Amongst those children, there is likely to have been a boy. Now, this is a big question, is Nefertiti the mother of Tutankhamun? We don't know for sure. He maybe is the child of a lesser wife and Akhenaten, and he subsequently, subsequently goes on to marry one of his half sisters, but.

• 19:50Speaker 04

  It's complicated, but in all of this, you're trying to, if you're the pharaoh, you're trying to secure your right to the throne. And for a long time, it was assumed the real right to the throne passed through the female line. So it was really the female blood that was securing the right to be the pharaoh.

• 20:06Greg Jenner?

  So Tutankhamun, historically, traditionally, we'd say was Nefertiti's son. And now we are putting a question mark on it.

• 20:12Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 20:12Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 20:13Speaker 04

  Yes, some people believe he was, some people believe he wasn't.

• 20:16Greg Jenner?

  Interesting. Okay. Welcome to Egyptology. Sekhisa, it's really hard. Sorry.

• 20:21Speaker 05

  Is there no DNA test that we could do?

• 20:23Speaker 04

  Um, we're not sure that the bodies we have are definitely the people involved. That makes it complicated. So we do have mummified bodies.

• 20:32Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 20:32Speaker 04

  Which is a historical resource.

• 20:33Greg Jenner?

  We've got Tutankhamun, right?

• 20:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure. We've got Tutankhamun.

• 20:36Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 20:37Speaker 04

  DNA and stuff degrades with time, so you can't just do a quick test and say, ah, I know whose son you are.

• 20:43Greg Jenner?

  All right, let's, let's talk about the backstory that's going to get quite confusing, Sekhisa, because the reason we're here to talk about Akhenaten and Nefertiti is that they did something radical in ancient Egyptian history.

• 20:53Speaker 05

  Oh, exactly.

• 20:54Greg Jenner?

  And the way we can sort of see some of that is in Tutankhamun's name.

• 20:58Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 20:58Greg Jenner?

  So tell us about that. Give us the backstory on how his name is a sort of interesting indicator.

• 21:03Speaker 04

  So we've been talking about Amenhotep IV. At some point, he changes his name to Akhenaten, so a completely different name, mentioning the Atten. So the Atten is the sun disk, is the disk in the sky, perceptible sunlight. Tutankhamun, the child, is not called Tutankhamun originally. He's called Tutankaten. So that means literally living image of the Atten of the sun disk. So he is very much a product of the belief, which becomes pretty serious at this period, in just the Atten, the sun disk in the sky. Traditionally, the ancient Egyptians, you know, are worshipping lots of gods, magic bulls.

• 21:47Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 21:47Speaker 04

  Cats.

• 21:48Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 21:48Speaker 04

  Crocodiles.

• 21:49Greg Jenner?

  The Nile, etc.

• 21:50Speaker 04

  The Nile.

• 21:50Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 21:51Speaker 04

  The idea of magic, really broad pantheon. But Akhenaten comes along and says, no, we're not doing that. We're going to switch things up. So the fact that Tutankhamun eventually changes his name to Tutankhamun tells you something, a bit of a spoiler, that things go back into reverse. So we go back to worshipping Amun and all the other gods, and the Atten episode is fairly short.

• 22:16Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, and we've got to talk about that episode because obviously that's, that's the sort of extraordinary thing about them. This sort of tiny, pretty flurry of monotheism.

• 22:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:24Greg Jenner?

  One god.

• 22:24Speaker 04

  Essentially.

• 22:25Greg Jenner?

  But we'll get into it. So Sekhisa, beneficent one of the Atten is the, the official name.

• 22:32Speaker 04

  Of Akhenaten.

• 22:33Greg Jenner?

  Of Akhenaten. I mean, I know you're into your wrestling. It's not a great wrestling name. I mean.

• 22:37Speaker 05

  No, it's too long, too long. It doesn't really have a nice ring to it. You kind of need, say the name again?

• 22:43Greg Jenner?

  Beneficent one of the Atten. How would you wrestle that up? How would you pop that into spandex?

• 22:48Speaker 05

  Welcome into the ring, the Atten!

• 22:51Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 22:52Speaker 04

  That could work.

• 22:53Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 22:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's about it.

• 22:54Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, I mean.

• 22:55Speaker 05

  You don't need to, you don't need to begin a bit.

• 22:57Greg Jenner?

  Fair enough. All right, okay. But I'm, you know, I'm thinking, you know, the undertaker, the Atten, these things, they kind of, you've got to have, you've got to have the kind of branding. So, you know, it's an interesting problem, I suppose, of name changes and whatever. Akhenaten's already a brand new name for him.

• 23:11Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 23:12Greg Jenner?

  And also, I mean, you said the, sort of the pantheon of gods, they normally had animal heads?

• 23:17Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 23:18Greg Jenner?

  Quite common, not always, but they often, you know, falcon headed and what's up. Sekhisa, what do you think the Atten looked like? What do you think the, the official imagery was of this brand new god that Akhenaten said, that's the one god, that's it?

• 23:31Speaker 05

  Can I get a clue? Is it an animal?

• 23:34Speaker 04

  No.

• 23:35Speaker 05

  Then sexy, cool. I think he is wearing like a sun ray.

• 23:43Greg Jenner?

  Ooh.

• 23:44Speaker 05

  Kind of helmet. And it looks like, like it's flared out with sun rays, but it's actually feathers.

• 23:54Greg Jenner?

  That's quite nice.

• 23:55Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 23:55Greg Jenner?

  That's a good image.

• 23:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, and some of the queens do actually wear that at the time.

• 23:59Greg Jenner?

  So how close is Sekhisa with that really lovely guess?

• 24:03Speaker 04

  Um, not that close because for ancient, for ancient Egypt, the Atten is, is really weird. So it is shown, usually referred to with male pronouns, but kind of is a universal deity, as just a circle, as the sun disk.

• 24:21Greg Jenner?

  It's quite basic. Okay.

• 24:22Speaker 04

  But reaching out from the sun disk on the chalkboard behind Greg are lots of little hands, reaching out not just to humanity, not just to everybody, but only to the royal family. And at the end of the hand is a hieroglyphic symbol you will know. It's the looked cross, the Ankh symbol, the symbol of life. So it is, in a way, a totally aniconic, not human form of the god. But it's also exclusive because it's saying the sun only shines for Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their kids. Other people can't get close to the god.

• 25:03Greg Jenner?

  This is the new only god, right? Akhenaten said, this is our new god, the only god, and he only likes me.

• 25:09Speaker 04

  Yes, I am the only way you're going to get to talk to him.

• 25:12Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 25:12Speaker 04

  I'm his gatekeeper.

• 25:14Greg Jenner?

  So Akhenaten is a diehard Atten bro. He's all about the Atten. Sorry, can't help it. So does he think that the sun literally shines out of his arse? Like, you know, is he literally?

• 25:25Speaker 04

  Not out of his arse necessarily, but out of his hands.

• 25:28Greg Jenner?

  Out of his hands, okay.

• 25:29Speaker 04

  Because there's one depiction, which may be the only ancient Egyptian scene showing a rainbow. Like, you never, think how universal symbolism of rainbows is now. Ancient Egyptians knew what rainbows were. There's one showing the Atten with a rainbow around it.

• 25:48Greg Jenner?

  Really?

• 25:49Speaker 04

  Um, but yeah, it's a very weird experiment and the experiment doesn't last because it lasts maybe 20 years for this period and then the ancient Egyptians forget about the Atten.

• 26:00Speaker 05

  What I heard from that is, is that how Egypt invented pride. That's what.

• 26:04Speaker 04

  I would love that to be the case.

• 26:07Speaker 05

  That's what I got from that?

• 26:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. It may not be.

• 26:09Speaker 05

  I'll just write that down in my notes.

• 26:09Greg Jenner?

  Akhenaten and the rainbow flag. Yeah, absolutely.

• 26:12Speaker 04

  We'll come back to that idea, I think.

• 26:14Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, maybe. I mean, we should say, I suppose, this is not a brand new god, right? It had initially been one of the gods in the pantheon. And then it's sort of, it's been elevated, it's been sort of pushed forward. So the, the iconography had started as a sort of man with a falcon head?

• 26:28Speaker 04

  Yes, we've, we've got early in Akhenaten's reign, when he's not changed his name, he's still Amenhotep. There is a scene labelled the Atten and it's a regular guy, or regular for the ancient Egyptians, god. Man's body, falcon head, that's acceptable. But then things change. And as Greg says, the, the Atten has existed in ancient Egyptian religious texts for hundreds of years. But then, this is interesting, Akhenaten's dad, Amenhotep III, says that he is the dazzling Atten. So all of this might be a bit of a daddy complex. And Akhenaten might actually just be worshipping his fully divine dad, Amenhotep III.

• 27:10Speaker 04

  So as I said, Amenhotep and his wife, Queen Ti, are full on gods.

• 27:15Speaker 05

  Wait, how do you become a god?

• 27:16Speaker 04

  You just say you're one.

• 27:17Speaker 05

  Okay, so I'm a god?

• 27:19Speaker 04

  You could be a goddess right now.

• 27:21Speaker 05

  All right, we all know. I already have. Thank you.

• 27:23Greg Jenner?

  And sometimes if you die, if you were eaten by crocodiles, I think sometimes you could be made a god, right?

• 27:27Speaker 04

  You could pretty much overnight. Yes, that's right.

• 27:29Greg Jenner?

  Because the Nile was holy and crocodiles were holy, so if they ate you, that was actually like.

• 27:34Speaker 04

  You get full mummification, even though your family might not be able to afford it, you get mummified. And everyone says, yeah, you're totally ascended, become.

• 27:40Greg Jenner?

  So you can choose. You can, you can decide to just be a god or you can feed yourself to a crocodile.

• 27:45Speaker 05

  I think I'll just be a god, thanks. Cheers.

• 27:47Greg Jenner?

  Sekhisa, how do you, how do you think Akhenaten went around publicly replacing these other gods, these ancient important gods? What do you think he did to sort of, you know, bring in his brand new religion?

• 27:58Speaker 05

  I think he basically said to everyone, if you don't do what I say, you are all dying.

• 28:03Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so you just think pure threat, right?

• 28:04Speaker 05

  Pure threat, threat, threat, pure threat.

• 28:08Greg Jenner?

  Pure threat sounds like an Egyptian pharaoh.

• 28:10Speaker 05

  It could be, actually. It's pure threat. Or I think he even bribed them and was like.

• 28:15Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 28:16Speaker 05

  And was like, hey, I'm going to give you some gold.

• 28:19Speaker 04

  Akhenaten says, right, we're going to move the capital city away from the traditional area of what is now modern Cairo, the city of Memphis. And we're going to move it into the middle of nowhere in the barren desert. And I'm going to call my new city the horizon of the Atten, which is very on trend with the whole sun cult. So confusingly, the ancient Egyptian name of the city is Akhet Atten, meaning horizon of the Atten, of the sun disk. And the king's name is Akhen Atten, beneficent one for the Atten. So it gets confusing. This is the principal royal residence and Akhenaten says multiple times in big inscriptions,

• 29:03Speaker 04

  I am never going to leave this place. And I'm going to be buried here and the royal family are going to be buried here. And he just constructs this massive city in the space of maybe 15 years.

• 29:15Greg Jenner?

  In the middle of the desert?

• 29:17Speaker 04

  Pretty inhospitable, next to the Nile.

• 29:19Greg Jenner?

  Okay, all right.

• 29:20Speaker 05

  So when you say move, like he literally like dug up the town and moved or displayed like, oh, you lot, hey, we're going.

• 29:28Speaker 04

  He moves the people. He moves the people. And I suspect because his dad is sitting in this throne and he's not going out to war. He's got so much time to build stuff. There are people who are ready to build. So he moves the builders. He doesn't move the actual stuff. He doesn't move the buildings. Later kings do that. But he starts fresh because he makes this thing of this is virgin land. It's not sacred to any god or any goddess. Let's just start from scratch because we're shaking it up.

• 29:57Greg Jenner?

  But he also trashes some of the existing temples, right?

• 30:00Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:00Greg Jenner?

  He doesn't just say new religion. He, he vandalizes the existing temples, the existing gods who have been, they've been revered for 1500 years by this point, 2000 years by this point?

• 30:12Speaker 04

  There's an interesting theory that maybe this, this kind of reaction against the old gods happens later on in Akhenaten's reign, where things start going wrong. So his big revolution seems to have cracks in it and he thinks, this is the bad luck from the old gods. I've got to go and attack them. So especially the god Amun gets totally removed from every standing monument. Akhenaten sends people with chisels out, some of them who can't read the text properly and who are carving out the wrong thing. But he even attacks his dad's name. So if you remember, his dad is called Amenhotep.

• 30:47Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 30:48Speaker 04

  He attacks the Amun part of his dad's own name.

• 30:51Greg Jenner?

  Wow. Okay, so he can't be worshipping his dad then if he's attacking his dad's name?

• 30:55Speaker 04

  Maybe he's worshipping the sun god form of his dad, maybe not the Amun part of his dad.

• 31:00Greg Jenner?

  Wow.

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• 33:22Greg Jenner?

  So he completely relocates a brand new city, trashes the old temples and says, this is the new capital city.

• 33:28Speaker 05

  You know, he's got the power. I would do the same thing.

• 33:31Greg Jenner?

  Well, and everyone has to follow it because he's the pharaoh.

• 33:33Speaker 05

  Exactly. If you're God, hey, you must do what I say.

• 33:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, we're not having a referendum on this.

• 33:38Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly. Because that's how, that's how things mess up. If you have a referendum, if people get to speak.

• 33:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:46Speaker 05

  They're in trouble.

• 33:49Greg Jenner?

  This is the problem we have in modern politics. We did a referendum and now we're in, yeah.

• 33:52Speaker 05

  This is what happens. You gave the people the vote and then.

• 33:55Greg Jenner?

  So if you had limitless power, Sekesa, you'd be building a brand new city.

• 33:58Speaker 05

  Oh, you would, oh, if I had power, oh, if I had power, oh, the world would be crazy. No, yeah, I would do so much.

• 34:07Greg Jenner?

  He's obviously trying to bring people around to his brand new religion, his brand new revolution, his brand new city.

• 34:11Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 34:12Greg Jenner?

  He sees, I mean, to me, it sounds like a sort of, you know, a series of red flags, but I guess he's the pharaoh, he's a god, he can do what he wants.

• 34:19Greg Jenner?

  I mean, Sekesa, how do you think Nefertiti took to this? Her husband has got this big, bold new religion. Do you think she's a supportive queen?

• 34:27Speaker 05

  No. I think she's an independent woman and I don't think she was very much like, I don't want to move, you're making us move. I don't want to move. And it was like, why are we moving? I think there was a lot of questions and I don't think she was happy about it.

• 34:41Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 34:42Speaker 05

  And was like, we're happy how we are. Why do you, I think she was kind of like, you're being a typical man.

• 34:49Speaker 05

  You want to do this thing and you've not thought about it?

• 34:52Greg Jenner?

  So you think she's like Victoria Beckham having to move to Madrid and being like, I don't want to live in Madrid.

• 34:55Speaker 05

  Yeah. I've got quite a lot of friends who've got husbands who complain that how they want to do something and they've not thought about how it's going to like process and how you get to that endpoint. And I think exactly this is what's, this is what's happened.

• 35:09Greg Jenner?

  And you know, the kids have to start a new school. I mean, it's tough, right? You know, we've got to think about these things.

• 35:12Speaker 05

  We've got, how are we gonna move? Like, have you thought about where we're going? Have you thought about the weather scheme?

• 35:18Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, I mean, you know, exactly that. Doctors, surgeries, dentists, you know, you've got.

• 35:22Speaker 04

  All of those things.

• 35:23Greg Jenner?

  Important.

• 35:24Speaker 04

  I think you're right, Sekesa, that there's a lot of eye rolling.

• 35:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, of course I am. It's a woman.

• 35:31Speaker 04

  He's doing this, I'm gonna have to follow him. So Nefertiti is very prominent in all the art, so she's with him.

• 35:38Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 35:38Speaker 04

  Whether she's actively supportive, not sure. Some evidence against, she gets her own palace, so she's at a distance from him.

• 35:46Greg Jenner?

  I'm getting my own house, yeah.

• 35:48Speaker 04

  She is mentioned in an inscription where the king says, I'm going to make these decisions and the great royal wife, Queen Nefertiti, is not going to argue with me.

• 35:57Greg Jenner?

  Hmm.

• 35:58Speaker 04

  So the idea is there that they're having a bit of a to do.

• 36:02Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 36:03Speaker 04

  And her mother-in-law is on the scene. So Akhenaten's mom, Queen Ti, is still alive and she probably lives at this site, the site of what we call Amarna today. And so if I was Nefertiti, I would want my own palace.

• 36:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, because if the mother-in-law's still there, that's the worst thing, isn't it? Why is she here? Go away.

• 36:24Greg Jenner?

  It's like that J Lo movie, Monster in Law. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so we have a brand new city. We have perhaps squabbling.

• 36:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:31Greg Jenner?

  Royals, or maybe not, we do know, but perhaps there's some tension there. Tell us about the city itself. Tell us about Akhenaten?

• 36:39Speaker 04

  Akhenaten.

• 36:41Greg Jenner?

  Akhenaten, okay.

• 36:42Speaker 04

  Akhenaten. So we call it Amarna today.

• 36:43Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, I was gonna say.

• 36:44Speaker 04

  And so you'll hear people talk about the Amarna period. So this is this 20 years where the capital city moves to this area of Middle Egypt. So it's about seven kilometers along the Nile, so it's big.

• 36:57Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 36:57Speaker 04

  It is mainly the king's palace or series of palaces, Nefertiti's got her own, and temples. Unlike traditional Egyptian temples, which have got roofs on the, on the inner parts where you can worship God's statues, because the god is the sun, nothing has a roof. So you go and the royal family at least worship in these temples. There is a major road connecting the palace and the temple. And because the ancient Egyptians were used to God's statues being taken in procession and everyone having a party, they're totally deprived of that. So Akhenaten and Nefertiti decide, do you know what? We're just gonna be the gods and we're gonna ride between the palace and the temple in a chariot and we're gonna snog. And that is your religion.

• 37:42Speaker 04

  So you can invite.

• 37:44Greg Jenner?

  Sekesa, your face right now is a picture.

• 37:48Speaker 05

  I'm confused. How have we diverted to this?

• 37:53Speaker 04

  So, so Akhenaten and Nefertiti bring the kind of the high officials along and they have to publicly at least buy into this crazy new scheme. But it's interesting in the art depictions of what the city is like, there are soldiers shown flanking this royal chariot.

• 38:12Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 38:12Speaker 04

  Never before seen soldiers. You do suspect there's a bit, level of unpopularity about this.

• 38:18Greg Jenner?

  Some bodyguards to keep the king safe.

• 38:20Speaker 04

  To keep the kind of obstreperous masses at arms length.

• 38:24Greg Jenner?

  I mean, yeah, and that's the interesting question, I suppose. How many people do we think maybe move to this city? Like, it's a big city geographically.

• 38:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, yes.

• 38:32Greg Jenner?

  But is it 10,000, 50,000 people? How many people live here?

• 38:36Speaker 04

  It could be anywhere between 10, 50,000 people.

• 38:39Greg Jenner?

  Amazing.

• 38:40Speaker 04

  But so the elite people, the actual, like the rich people who are making any of the decisions, the royal family and the elite are maybe, I don't know, 100 people in total. And then everyone else is building or servants.

• 38:53Speaker 05

  So it sounds like it's a failure. Yeah. It sounds like this move was kind of like not going very well.

• 38:59Speaker 04

  Doomed, it's a failure.

• 39:00Greg Jenner?

  And actually, you mentioned building there, that they do something radical here in ancient Egyptian history. They revolutionize the kind of construction process by making the blocks smaller.

• 39:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, so the temples and the palaces and the houses are built of mud bricks mainly, but there's a lot of stone being used, local limestone. So unlike the pyramids, where if you've heard anything about pyramid building, you take a team of guys and they drag a big old stone on a sledge. They might have used ramps, they might have used pulleys. They use big blocks and a whole team do the dragging. At Amarna, Akhenaten says, okay, I want this done double quick time.

• 39:39Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 39:39Speaker 04

  So I want the blocks to be smaller so you can throw up the buildings quicker. And I want each block just to be enough for one man to carry. Which sounds great, but actually, one person holding one block is much worse for your back than a team of people dragging a bigger weight.

• 39:58Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. So it's not, the health and safety.

• 40:01Speaker 04

  Not great.

• 40:01Greg Jenner?

  Not great.

• 40:02Speaker 04

  Not great.

• 40:03Greg Jenner?

  So we've got thousands of workers to do each carrying one block each.

• 40:07Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 40:07Greg Jenner?

  And building this sort of temple and city in 10, 15 years.

• 40:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:12Greg Jenner?

  Incredibly busy. But also, you know, we've got the artistic tradition changes too. Have you ever seen any Egyptian, ancient Egyptian art? Have you ever seen any of the kind of famous murals or, you know, the inside the tomb of Tutankhamun?

• 40:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's only the like the pictures and the hieroglyphics, hieroglyphics of like the sticks. Stuff like that, but that's about it. Nothing like of like where they were, apart from like obviously the women.

• 40:38Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 40:38Speaker 05

  The women pictures of them being in that thrones and being gorgeous and obviously like that.

• 40:41Greg Jenner?

  But they're often depicted side on, right? I mean, gods are depicted side on, people are, it's often a sort of two dimensional.

• 40:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's always like this.

• 40:46Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, it's like, it's the chemist.

• 40:47Speaker 04

  Profile, yeah, it's this profile.

• 40:49Speaker 05

  They're like, this is my good side.

• 40:51Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 40:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, my good side.

• 40:53Greg Jenner?

  But we get a brand new revolution in art in this period. And the Amarna style of art is weird.

• 40:59Speaker 04

  Yes, even by ancient Egyptian standards, which in some ways doesn't come up to what we might expect of Renaissance art, it is weird, it's totally strange. It's worth saying also that Amarna, the city now if you visit, is a desert. It's 50 shades of beige, but actually in ancient times you would have.

• 41:18Greg Jenner?

  One of my favourite erotic novels.

• 41:19Speaker 04

  Oh, indeed. You would have, the insides of these palaces would be eye poppingly colourful.

• 41:26Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 41:26Speaker 04

  There's lots of gold, there are inlays, we've got all the fragments of these. And the scenes on the temple walls show for a start the weirdness of the gods. So the god is just the sun. There are only ever the royal family shown worshipping the sun. Any flunkeys are way down the kind of pecking order. But actual people are shown very differently. They have long elongated skulls, they have long spindly legs, big bums, thighs, long thin feet. So even to an ancient Egyptian.

• 41:59Greg Jenner?

  Quite a rotund bellies that they kind of.

• 42:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, quite, quite a pronounced belly and quite androgynous. So men and women, which previously had been shown quite differently, are shown very similarly. So to an ancient Egyptian artist who was told, go away and help build this temple, they would have had to learn these new skills, these new techniques. They just look very weird even to an ancient Egyptian.

• 42:23Greg Jenner?

  But the artistic style is radical and it's weird, but it also shows Nefertiti doing manly things, kingly things.

• 42:30Speaker 04

  Yes, so Nefertiti is a force to be reckoned with. She is present with her husband, as you'd expect the queen of Egypt to be, but she's also shown on her own a lot, worshipping the aton on her own. And in one scene, she's even shown beating up a foreign enemy. So that is usually just the pharaoh is shown with a mace smashing in the skull of a foreign captive. So she does a bit of that. And so there's a different aspect.

• 42:57Speaker 05

  Independence, yeah.

• 42:58Speaker 04

  Independent woman.

• 42:59Speaker 05

  Be a queen, yeah.

• 43:01Speaker 04

  She's often shown with her husband, interacting with the children. This is super weird also. Usually the king and queen in ancient Egypt are never shown with any level of affection or emotion. You never get family scenes, you never get the king touching anybody. But at Amarna, as I said, there's this regular procession, Akhenaten and Nefertiti are shown kissing each other and their own children. They're, they're depicted in a way that invites us to believe that it was a very kind of airy fairy floaty existence where everyone loved each other. The reality is likely to have been quite different, I think.

• 43:41Greg Jenner?

  Living in separate palaces.

• 43:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:43Speaker 05

  What I'm getting from that is that they're trying to like make it a bit like Real Housewives, to be like, this is a real relationship or actually it is not.

• 43:50Speaker 04

  Actually, yeah, Real Housewives of Amarna.

• 43:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're like, give me the gossip, that's what.

• 43:56Greg Jenner?

  Because you've got Queen T in the background and you've got Nefertiti, yeah, and then you've got the kids and then, and then you've got the kind of the dad of the family who's like, I'm the god now.

• 44:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:05Greg Jenner?

  It's all quite tense.

• 44:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, I want to see that drama, please, I want to make it.

• 44:09Greg Jenner?

  The Real Housewives of Amarna would be amazing. And actually Akhenaten, Sekesa, he doesn't live long. Do you know how old he is when he goes?

• 44:17Speaker 05

  Oh, 26.

• 44:18Greg Jenner?

  He's not, actually he's older than that. Thank, I mean, okay, but.

• 44:21Speaker 05

  32.

• 44:22Greg Jenner?

  That might, that might, that might be about right.

• 44:24Speaker 04

  Maybe, so the, the reign lasts, it seems, about 17 years.

• 44:28Speaker 05

  Oh, that's not bad actually.

• 44:30Speaker 04

  So if you imagine he came to the throne at 15.

• 44:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:33Speaker 04

  He's still only in his 30s, so young by modern standards.

• 44:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:37Greg Jenner?

  And, and when he dies, does everyone go, right? But you know, or, or is there a kind of continuity thing? Does Nefertiti step in?

• 44:46Speaker 04

  Well, and this is really interesting. I think there are definitely sighs of relief in some quarters, like, gosh, thank goodness, that's over. Because you know, while Akhenaten's doing all this and he's getting the elite people to worship the aton, we know from, from archaeology, from the city of Amarna, which was abandoned shortly after Akhenaten's reign, tells you something. It's a gift for archaeology because no one built on top of it. So it is like an ancient Egyptian Pompeii. You can literally go in, see what people were using in the houses. And so all the regular people were still using images and amulets of the old gods. So that rather implies his atonism wasn't that popular with ordinary people.

• 45:28Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 45:28Speaker 04

  So yeah, when Akhenaten dies, there is a lot of, there are a lot of questions about what happens next. Maybe he has a son who comes along and rules beside him for a period, a guy called Smenech Kari. Then there's a mystique, the names get really, really weird now. There's another person called Nefernefruaten, who is meant to, to also be a king-like figure who might share the throne with Akhenaten and lives slightly after Akhenaten. And for some Egyptologists, this is Nefertiti by a different name.

• 46:04Greg Jenner?

  Oh.

• 46:05Speaker 04

  So the husband dies and she says, right, I've waited long enough. I am the pharaoh now. So not just the queen of Egypt, I am the pharaoh. And she starts reversing the decisions of her husband and she brings back Amunism. And then eventually King Tutankhamun, or Tutankhatun as he is.

• 46:26Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 46:27Speaker 04

  He fully sees through the counter-revolution and he fully brings back the worship of Amun.

• 46:33Greg Jenner?

  So Nefertiti might be undoing her husband's work, we're not sure.

• 46:38Speaker 05

  To be fair, I could understand that, just, let's just slowly but surely, let's go back to the way things should be.

• 46:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, this went too far.

• 46:45Speaker 05

  It went too far.

• 46:45Speaker 04

  It was a joke, we'll go back.

• 46:47Speaker 05

  I just let my husband do his thing. I was just making sure he was happy, you know, happy wife, happy life, sort of, well, but yeah.

• 46:55Greg Jenner?

  But it's, I mean, as you say, it's fascinating. The Amarna archaeological sites is an amazing window into ordinary lives too, isn't it?

• 47:01Speaker 05

  It's interesting that.

• 47:02Greg Jenner?

  Because people ditched it, right? They just went, we're going back home, we're going back to Thebes.

• 47:06Speaker 05

  It is interesting the fact they didn't touch it.

• 47:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, almost like it was like scorched earth policy. They reused a lot of the stone, but latterly they tried to forget about that, that, that part of Egyptian history. And there is a dark side to this because although the palaces are very beautiful and they made a real focus on naturalism in art. So there's lots of plants, flowers. There are good bits of evidence that the people that did all the building lived very short, very hard lives. So there are cemeteries of people who literally had their backs broken, young kids. Plagues seem to have swept through the city. It was not a particularly pleasant place to live unless you're Akhenaten and Nefertiti.

• 47:53Speaker 04

  So it's maybe no surprise that there was a counter-revolution, there was a reaction against this idealism, this utopianism of Akhenaten.

• 48:02Speaker 05

  Maybe it's like a tourist like area for them. Maybe they were like, if you're feeling a bit down.

• 48:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:09Speaker 05

  Go to this place, it'll cheer you up because that's where you could be living.

• 48:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:13Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 48:13Speaker 04

  This is what you could have won.

• 48:14Greg Jenner?

  Yes, it is, yeah. I mean, I, I guess we've already introduced a couple of name changes because he was, he was Amenhotep, Amenhotep IV, then Akhenaten, then he died. Sekesa, he got a new name after death.

• 48:26Speaker 05

  A new name after death?

• 48:28Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, do you want to guess what it was?

• 48:29Speaker 05

  Rebranding.

• 48:30Greg Jenner?

  They did.

• 48:31Speaker 04

  This could be a good wrestling name.

• 48:34Speaker 05

  Nookie. I'm trying to like figure out like if it's a shorter version, just beginning with N, just Nookie.

• 48:42Greg Jenner?

  No, I mean, that's cute, that's a cute lovely name. It wasn't quite as good as that. It was, it was closer to like, you know, more like The Undertaker, more like a kind of a, more like a heel character because he's the baddie, right?

• 48:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's the rebel or that criminal.

• 48:55Greg Jenner?

  Wow.

• 48:57Speaker 05

  What was the Egyptian pronunciation of that?

• 48:59Speaker 04

  I can't think off the top of my head. Jefet might be the one.

• 49:04Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 49:04Speaker 04

  Jefet.

• 49:05Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, I mean, he, he's, they're not even calling him by his name now, they're just like, that.

• 49:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:09Speaker 05

  That dude.

• 49:10Greg Jenner?

  That guy who did the bad stuff.

• 49:12Speaker 04

  Which in ancient Egypt, where there's such a focus on names and carving your name onto everything and everyone remembering the name, if you are not referred to by name, you're just that guy, that rebel.

• 49:22Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 49:22Speaker 05

  I've got, I've got loads of people that, that called that in my life, just that guy.

• 49:28Greg Jenner?

  And the temples of Aten that had been built, they are smashed to the ground. You know, there's, there's no like, it's not like this sort of just go, well, we'll just leave it behind and just get, go back home. They trash it.

• 49:39Speaker 05

  All that hard work.

• 49:40Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, no, yeah, all those broken backs.

• 49:41Speaker 05

  Oh my God, that's, that's disrespectful. I, I would be annoyed.

• 49:46Greg Jenner?

  But that's also anger, right? That's people who are angry, like they take it out on the religion.

• 49:50Speaker 05

  The building.

• 49:51Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, the religion he forced upon them, they're like, no, no. So we, we get this sort of sense of vandalism of anger and of people writing, you know, returning to the old ways, the old gods.

• 50:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, so when later Egyptians are listing the great kings of Egypt, they leave a conspicuous gap. So Akhenaten, we're not going to talk about him. So it goes from his dad to one of Akhenaten's successors. They completely miss out. Nefertiti, if she was a king, Tutankhamun is also tarnished by association, yeah.

• 50:22Greg Jenner?

  Even though he changed his name back to Tut, you know, Amun.

• 50:24Speaker 04

  Even though Tutankhamun actually did the counter-revolution and brought things back to the way they used to be, he gets.

• 50:29Greg Jenner?

  They just get written out of history.

• 50:32Speaker 05

  It does seem a bit like modern history.

• 50:34Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. This is what people do.

• 50:36Speaker 05

  It's reflecting, it's reflecting.

• 50:37Greg Jenner?

  It's what people do.

• 50:38Speaker 05

  You know what? I can, I don't appreciate them cutting out Nefertiti.

• 50:43Greg Jenner?

  No, what, what happened to her actually? I mean, that's a good point. Does she get, you know, you say she gets written out of history, but like, does she die powerful and rich and glamorous or is there a kind of?

• 50:53Speaker 04

  We do not know whether she dies as the queen of Egypt during the reign of Akhenaten, that's possible, or maybe she kind of transforms into being the pharaoh. There was a theory for a while that she was actually buried in secret rooms in the tomb of Tutankhamun that haven't been found yet, but that radar results were kind of unsure. So that doesn't seem likely. She just disappears from the, the, the history books and only comes back as a kind of figure in history in the late 19th century. And with the discovery of that bust, that brings her up to modern times and has a great impact on popular culture.

• 51:32Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, so there we go. What a story Sekesa, right?

• 51:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's, it's actually very interesting. I did take some notes and I was glad to, I was glad to hear about her husband, I will say that.

• 51:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, okay.

• 51:42Speaker 05

  Because he's like, men don't get talked about enough.

• 51:46Greg Jenner?

  In some parts of history, it's true.

• 51:47Speaker 05

  And I feel like it's about time.

• 51:49Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, right in those wrongs.

• 51:50Speaker 05

  Right, yeah, it's about time. It's a new era, equality, we need equality.

• 51:56Greg Jenner?

  I mean, I sort of feel bad for him because it almost, it's almost like people just hit undo. They just like, he spent 15 years building a brand new religion, a brand new city. And then they just went, nope. So yeah, so they just hit the Ctrl Z, undo, and that's it. He's wiped from history and now we sort of know about him as a sort of villain of ancient Egyptian history.

• 52:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, like you said, it's so much work. So many people literally broke their backs building that place. All the statues, all the temples, all the palaces, gone, all gone overnight. Used as fell for other buildings.

• 52:25Greg Jenner?

  It happens to us all, you know, okay.

• 52:29Greg Jenner?

  The Nuance Window.

• 52:35Greg Jenner?

  It's time now for the Nuance Window. This is where Sikisa and I sit silently for two minutes, drawing strangely proportioned portraits of each other. While Dr Campbell takes centre stage to tell us something we need to know about Akhenaten and Nefertiti. I'm going to get my stopwatch up.

• 52:48Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 52:49Greg Jenner?

  You've got two minutes on the clock. Let's get that, so there we go. Okay, two minutes on the clock. Take it away, Dr Price.

• 52:56Speaker 04

  So of anything we've been talking about today, I think people will be most familiar with that picture of the Nefertiti painted plaster bust. Long neck, tall, blue crown. It was found in 1912 by a German team and is now in Berlin, although its transport to Germany is a part of a division of archaeological finds has been contested. The Nefertiti bust is, though, perhaps the most weird sculpture of any we have from ancient Egypt. Strangely truncated, it's not part of a larger statue, its function is unclear. But there was a matching Akhenaten. He's very bashed up, so he's almost totally forgotten.

• 53:40Speaker 04

  Nefertiti survives in such perfection that she's been accused of being a fake, which she's not. Nefertiti, because of that bust, is an icon. She's an every woman, she's both an African queen and, in the words of Adolf Hitler, an Aryan. She can be anything to anyone. But I want to emphasise, we'll never really know what the living woman looked like. Because as we've been saying, a lot of this art is highly stylised. She did not look like this. The metrical proportions of the face are totally unnatural, totally unhuman. But what I think accounts for her timeliness is that we can't see her hair.

• 54:23Speaker 04

  She's wearing this tall, blue crown, which if her hair was showing, that would make her more attributable to ancient Egypt. Without the hair, she can be the Bride of Frankenstein. She can be an intergalactic space queen. She can be anything you want her to be. Like the most popular royals today, we can project any identity we want onto her.

• 54:48Greg Jenner?

  Amazing, one minute fifty-four, look at that. So punctual.

• 54:51Speaker 05

  And I drew a picture of you.

• 54:52Speaker 04

  Oh, thanks, Sikisa.

• 54:55Greg Jenner?

  You know, the idea of her as a kind of African queen, but also a beauty standard is interesting.

• 55:01Speaker 04

  Like, people get plastic surgery to look like a face that never existed. You're like, wow.

• 55:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, because obviously people get tattoos and stuff like that of her face. It's just her and Cleopatra. Her and Cleopatra, obviously iconic in like women's, in like queen independence and stuff like that. So I can see why people were so fascinated with her. And obviously the picture that you showed me, it shows like a proper beauty. And obviously when people are like African queens.

• 55:31Speaker 04

  Great cheekbones.

• 55:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, people are like, Nefertiti, she's great. And actually, she's not.

• 55:37Greg Jenner?

  But maybe she was great, but we're not really sure. I mean, as you said, they may find her bones one day. They've been looking, haven't they? They've been sort of hunting her down.

• 55:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, there are candidates out there, but we'll never really be sure because, yeah, DNA is not a magic wand that just tells us exactly what two people were.

• 55:52Greg Jenner?

  But there we go. So that's the story of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Maybe a power couple, maybe a kind of squabbling couple who didn't agree. And, you know, maybe she undid everything he achieved or didn't achieve.

• 56:03Speaker 04

  Your mother-in-law's here again.

• 56:05Speaker 05

  Why is she here? She doesn't even cook.

• 56:10Speaker 04

  She didn't cook, but she ate. She's showing, chowing down on a, on a big steak.

• 56:14Speaker 05

  All she does is eat, doesn't even look after the kids. What's her purpose here?

• 56:20Greg Jenner?

  So what do you know now?

• 56:25Greg Jenner?

  It's time now for our quiz. This is So What Do You Know Now? This is our quickfire quiz for Sikisa to see how much you have learned. Now, Sikisa, you are both a comedian and also an immigration lawyer. You are extremely brainy and very accomplished. You must be good at learning things because, you know, law degrees are hard. So you've been taking notes? Do you feel confident?

• 56:44Speaker 05

  No, I discovered I was dyslexic four years ago. So, so a lot of things may just go in and go out. And also, all these names have been spelt wrong.

• 56:56Greg Jenner?

  In fairness, no one is spelling these names correctly, even with loads, I mean, they are, they are hard, hard names, right?

• 57:01Speaker 05

  Okay, but we'll give it our best shot. I have been listening and I was very intrigued.

• 57:05Greg Jenner?

  Okay, 10 questions. Okay, question one. Akhenaten ruled during the 18th dynasty, during this sort of very famous era, when pharaohs were so rich, gold was said to be as common as what?

• 57:17Speaker 05

  Dust.

• 57:17Greg Jenner?

  Very good, we're up and running. Question two, what did Nefertiti's name literally translate to? Do you remember?

• 57:23Speaker 05

  The really pretty lady.

• 57:25Greg Jenner?

  Who has?

• 57:26Speaker 05

  Who has, oh.

• 57:28Greg Jenner?

  Remember, import bride?

• 57:30Speaker 05

  No, the really pretty lady, that's all I got.

• 57:33Greg Jenner?

  The beautiful lady who has come. I'm going to let you have that because I think it is, you know, a really pretty lady, I think is pretty good. Question three, how was Akhenaten's new favourite god, the Aton, portrayed in ancient Egyptian art?

• 57:45Speaker 05

  Oh, with the, with that, yeah.

• 57:48Greg Jenner?

  It's radio Sikisa, so give us words.

• 57:50Speaker 05

  Oh, sorry, my bad. With the sun and the hands out touching them.

• 57:56Speaker 04

  Touching me, touching you.

• 57:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, because they were only worshipping the royalty.

• 57:59Greg Jenner?

  Very good, yes. And originally a sort of falcon-headed god, but yeah, later on a sun disc with weird little fingers. Question four, how old was Nefertiti when she married Akhenaten? We've got four possibilities.

• 58:10Speaker 05

  Between the ages of eight to 16.

• 58:12Greg Jenner?

  Very good, excellent, brilliant. There you go, that's the lawyer.

• 58:15Speaker 05

  There was a debate about that.

• 58:18Greg Jenner?

  Yes, eight, nine, 12, 16, very good. Question five, Nefertiti and Akhenaten definitely had six daughters, but which of their possible sons has become very famous to history?

• 58:27Speaker 05

  Tutankhamun.

• 58:28Greg Jenner?

  Very good. King Little Touch. Question six, name one strange aspect of how humans are depicted in the famous Amana style of ancient Egyptian art produced during Akhenaten's reign. What is it about their kind of depiction that's weird?

• 58:43Speaker 05

  Oh, that they're not facing sideways.

• 58:45Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, and also in terms of their bodies, their sort of physiology.

• 58:48Speaker 05

  Fat.

• 58:49Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, fat, long necks, the long heads, skulls, yeah, I'll give you that. Question seven, Akhenaten or Akhenaten, the city, was the brand new capital. What was different about the stone blocks used to construct?

• 59:01Speaker 05

  They were smaller.

• 59:02Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, so that individuals could carry them and then be hurt doing so. Question eight, what was unusual about what the royal couple were shown doing in their royal art?

• 59:11Speaker 05

  They were affectionate with each other.

• 59:13Greg Jenner?

  They were, they were kissing, they were snogging, they were sort of.

• 59:15Speaker 05

  They had their kids with them.

• 59:16Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like sort of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and that sort of famous Christmas card. Yeah, absolutely. This is question nine, you're doing so well so far. Name one way in which Akhenaten's religious revolution was undone after his death.

• 59:28Speaker 05

  They took down the pyramids and buildings.

• 59:30Greg Jenner?

  The city, yeah, the temples, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they also trashed his name and wrote him out of history. And this is a perfect ten, Sikisa. What is one possibility for what happened to Nefertiti after her husband died?

• 59:40Speaker 05

  That she became pharaoh and changed.

• 59:43Greg Jenner?

  I'll accept it.

• 59:44Speaker 05

  Yay!

• 59:46Greg Jenner?

  Very good.

• 59:47Speaker 05

  Yay, me!

• 59:48Greg Jenner?

  Very well taught, Dr Price. Very impressive and very well learned, Sikisa, well done.

• 59:53Speaker 05

  I did learn something today.

• 59:54Greg Jenner?

  You did, I mean, your notes obviously were effective and.

• 59:56Speaker 05

  I didn't even look at them. Look at that.

• 1:00:00Greg Jenner?

  Amazing, thank you so much, Sikisa. I hope you've enjoyed that, I mean, I enjoyed that.

• 1:00:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was fun, it was educational.

• 1:00:05Greg Jenner?

  It was.

• 1:00:06Speaker 05

  If you're not laughing, you are learning.

• 1:00:08Greg Jenner?

  Sometimes we did both. Listener, if you want more Ancient Egypt with Campbell, check out our episode on other impressive pharaohs. We had Hatshepsut, the kind of pharaoh queen, and of course, Ramses the Great, the great ego has landed. For more radical rulers from history, we've got episodes on Emperor Nero, you know, we did that with Patton Oswalt. We did Frederick the Great with Stephen Fry. We did Catherine the Great with David Mitchell. We've done some greats, we've done a lot of sort of kings and queens through history, so check out the back catalogue. I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our amazing guests in history corner, in ancient history corner. We had the stellar Dr Campbell Price from Manchester Museum. Thank you, Campbell.

• 1:00:42Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 1:00:45Greg Jenner?

  And in comedy corner, we had sensational Sikisa. Thank you, Sikisa.

• 1:00:48Speaker 05

  Thank you for teaching me something new.

• 1:00:50Greg Jenner?

  Absolutely. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we find more forgotten figures to elevate or relegate, depending on what they did. But for now, I'm off to go and build a new capital city dedicated to BBC broadcasting legend, Akhetatenbra. Bye.

• 1:01:19Speaker 06

  This Cultural Life from BBC Radio 4.

• 1:01:22Speaker 02

  I will never go into anything so deep like that again.

• 1:01:24Speaker 06

  The world's leading artistic figures reveal their creative influences. Disobey, disagree, disavow. I'm John Wilson and my recent guests have included the sculptor Anish Kapoor, photographer Annie Leibowitz, the actor Kristin Scott Thomas. It has made me good at telling stories about people who have a secret suffering. And former children's laureate Frank Cotrell-Bois.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  If art's got one function, it's to point to what's wonderful and say, look, this is your world, it's insane.

• 1:01:52Speaker 06

  Listen to This Cultural Life on BBC Sounds.

• 1:02:00Speaker 02

  Hi, I'm Molly Graham, host of Work Life, a podcast from TED. The most important lessons about work usually aren't the ones anyone teaches you. They come from experience, from uncertainty, from figuring things out as you go. On this show, my expert guest and I explore how careers really unfold. Through change, through doubt, through the decisions that shape who we become over time. Because those moments aren't the exception, they are the work. Listen to Work Life wherever you get your podcasts.