Did not Our Hearts Burn?

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of MPa a chat community discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to MPa Club at www.mpaapoduk.com Hello and welcome to MPa with me, Anisa Arnon. And me, William Durimple. Now in the 12th year of his reign, the Pharaoh Agnaten staged the most spectacular ceremony of his rule. From across the known world, delegations came to the new capital city of Amarna, bearing tribute. Ivory and gold from Nubia, painted pottery from the Eugen, horses and lapis lazuli from the kingdoms of the Near East, exotic animals, bolts of fine cloth, cedar wood from Lebanon, the tomb paintings of Agnaten's officials recorded in extraordinary detail. Dozens of figures prostrated before the king and his queen, the rays of the Arton, pouring down on all of them, Agnaten and Nefertiti, at the absolute zenith of their power, the revolution triumphant. It was also, as it turned out, the last great moment. Within a year, the deaths would begin within five years, Agnaten himself would be dead. Within two decades, his city would be abandoned, his name erased from every single monument in Egypt, and the priests, he had suppressed. Well, they would have taken their revenge so thoroughly, so entirely, that he would be remembered in later Egyptian records when he was remembered at all, as the criminal of Agnaten. Eric Klein brought us the world, Agnaten was born into Lloyd Lwellyn Jones, her brought us the theology of what he built today, the story of how it all fell apart. And there is no better guide to that story than our guest who joins us now for his first appearance in this series. He is the author of the definitive account of this extraordinary collapse, a mana sunset. The world's leading authority and the mana period were very happy to welcome Professor Aiden Dodson of the University of Bristol. Very warm welcome to you, Aiden. And I can't not notice the enormous, and I'm going to call it a sarcophagus because that's what it looks like to me, Aiden, right behind you. If you're listening, trust me, it's enormous. But you're not speaking for the British Museum, but I take it now. If you half inch something precious and put it in your house, what's going on? Sadly, it's an inflatable one. Okay. No, it's not one of those many missing pieces for the British Museum that will keep really bad in the papers. Yes, I know that was quite the scandalous story, Aiden. If you have anything to confess. Another talk, no, this was brought from the museum, shop in St Louis, Missouri many, many years ago. That's very disappointing. So William, where are we starting? Just remind us where we are at the moment. So this is year 12 of the Amarna revolution. The great Der Bar is about to take place and it's worth spending a moment looking at this city at its peak. And Arton has had a built at astonishing speed and some accounts, I'd say it's actually quite Jerry built that when you look inside the kind of gleaming exterior, they've sort of shoved all sorts of rubbish inside. And it's like one of those sort of Indian airports that get built at double speed and then all the bits fall apart. Sure, not flying in. There was a keep up with the Olympics happen. All the crooks in Delhi built these bridges that fell as soon as the big crowds turned up. Anyway, it was that sort of thing. And within a decade, a city of 20 or 30,000 people had risen from the bad desert. And this is a time when there are no other cities of 20 or 30,000 people, because that possibly happened on the Earth, or other 20,000 people cities that there's period in history. One would suspect that Memphis in Egypt certainly is because that's the really ancient capital. And probably parts of probably Thebes is similar kind of size, but probably the idea is that this is not Memphis as an Elvis Presley. No, this is the one just outside Cairo. But now, the basic idea is that amana replaces Thebes and Memphis. Because in the past Thebes have been a religious capital, Memphis, the political capital, and principal royal resident, amana, Akhitarton, as it was called in ancient times, was intended to replace them both as the political and religious capital. And just to describe it, I'd like to just sort of the image of this, this city, and it's center the great temple of Arton, an open air enclosure of unprecedented size. None of the dark inner sanctuaries, traditional Egyptian temples, because Arton required no dynast, and their ritual mystery, you just sunlight, and you have all these complaints to you from foreign dignitaries. It's too hot. Why are we sitting out here? It's too hot and too sunny. But nonetheless, that was the most important thing. It was the light. And you've also got the the cliff tombs cut into the hills on the eastern edge of the city, where Akhitarton's officials were preparing for their eternal resting places. It looked, it felt different. It was all, you know, everywhere around you was the representation of this new religion. And there are scenes of astonishing intimacy as well, kings and queens and chariots, even daughters playing beneath chairs. I mean, they look almost, you know, sort of like the kind of Victorian offerings we have, if you know, mothers dandling their children and everybody loving everyone else. From the prettier than Victorian versions. I mean, I have said that, I know that everyone is looked like down on that land. I think it's the most, the supreme moment of Egyptian art, that the art from this period is astonishingly gorgeous and there's very simple lines. You say that, but I think they all look like eight aliens. They are basically ET's family. I don't like them as well. I think they're weird. So, you know. Now, a minor art is a bit of a, it's a bit of a marmite thing, I think. And I think that most people probably quite likely, what you might call mature, a minor art style, when it's gone beyond, it's real sort of shock value stuff at the very, very beginning of the reign. But certainly some of the early stuff where, that somebody has, it's beautiful as an effetiti and suddenly her later representations and actually have very, very early ones. She's gorgeous. She looks like some kind of famine victim during that during those first few years. And there's that weird head of, I mean, not head, is that colossus of Aknarton himself in the Cairo Museum, isn't there, with these sort of weird lips and tummy, which one originally of seven or eight lined up against the Temple of Arton. More of that. I think we're, we're dozens of them originally. And in fact, they were a mixture of Aknarton and effetiti. Although there's only one effetiti, one surviving in a decent, vaguely decent stage, but yeah, they are heavily distorted. Although somebody has pointed out that if you're standing directly below them and looking up, they're less distorted. They've actually, the artist has actually adjusted things so that when you're at their feet, because these things are about 10, 12 foot tall, if you're standing sort of looking up at them, the everything isn't quite as out of line as- I love that. So it's a perspective thing. So it's actually, it's made for purpose. So that if you're an ant like human, you'll see a pair of hats really interesting, I never thought of that. Yeah. And you said in some other colossal statues from Egypt, some other periods, the ears appear a bit too high. But when you're sort of at the right at the optimum viewing distance, they're okay. Will he use the word apart from Lapis Lazuli? He used the word "dobar" to describe that opening scene of, you know, this splendor and this wealth. And we should explain that the "dobar" is a, it's a show, isn't it? It's a show of gifts. It's a show of a basins, you know, that people are coming and they're bowing to the most powerful. And it's when you put all your glitz and glamour on full display. That's right, isn't it? Yeah. And we've actually, and they're termically, but borrowed from, from, from the Indian Empire, whereby you've got the derbars of George the Fifth and people like that. It's well those, by those cases where we've sort of picked up a word from another culture, and it just seems to be the most appropriate thing for this major, this major event, and with everybody coming to bring gifts to the king. To bend the knee, as it were. So, I mean, you know, this all has a utopian quality, too, is. Yeah. And I think that's the, that was sort of the concept of building this entire new city, was to start from the idea of the art, possibly representing a year zero, but also the idea of building completely new capital city from scratch on a completely virgin site as well, because pre-all the other cities in the Egypt go back thousands of years to, to a ready, incredibly ancient. Yeah. Whereas this was taken and in the text, which I can not provide relating to its foundation, he makes that point, this belonged to the no god or goddess. So he's starting from a clean sheet of paper. And in doing so, he then produces what presumably the city planners of the time thought was the optimum, what, what a capital city should be like. So many ways you could argue it being sort of an ancient Egyptian, brazilia, or Canberra, or perhaps less kindly Milton Keynes, it's what was thought to be it. I could ever look at a bar and say, "Where again?" No, the United States. The United States with plastic cares on them. But that's the idea, but it's even the idea is that clearly it is the opportunity for for his engineers, his town planners to build what they believed would work as a capital city. And it's also important to note it's not just simply the urban area, they've also taken over a whole slice of the Nile Valley on the other bank, which has got lots of fields. So the idea is the whole thing is a self-sustaining community with on the East Bank, the other, what you might call the urban area. And then on the West Bank, many, many acres of fields to support that. And this is all one man's vision, but that contains within it the seeds of its own destruction, right? It's so personal. Yeah. And so centered on on this one extraordinary figure, that when he falters, and he doesn't bring everyone with him either. No, it's very much what a classic case of revolution from above. You've got somebody who has come to a position of absolute power and they decide they can do whatever they like and they do. But of course, yeah, that does mean that often that kind of personal vision may not be shared by everybody or even anybody else. It's imposed while that man is still alive. But after that, it's amazing how rapid the whole thing then just collapses. No, within three years the royal families moved away, back to traditional areas. And within probably a couple of decades, the place is just simply a village with a few rather rather dilapidated, ruinous buildings on the edge of it. Now, is that possibly because this is such a personal revolution? I mean, you know, it is obviously one man's vision. But let me ask you the question that you're never going to be asked in your lectures. Is it because I can not have that issue? Because why? Do you understand why? He suddenly woke up this morning and said, "My father, my father's father, my father's father, and everyone else has got it all wrong, but I know the true way." I mean, do you have any theory as to why? His dad, he was quite keen on art, didn't he? Yeah. Yeah. There's a number of issues here. One I think is that it is that during that period, not only in Egypt but elsewhere in the Middle East, there is a move toward an idea of a singularity of divinity to put it in those terms. No, it's very one god, but the very but the idea that there is a single sort of fundamental divinity and the gods may well be sort of various aspects of that, a bit way in Hinduism where you've got some of these various avatars of deities. So there's sort of a zeitgeist going on. And indeed, his father, Amin Hotepp III, had been particularly keen on elevating the status of the physical sun. Not necessarily to a full-scale god, but in Egypt, there's a little bit of a fine line between being a god and not being a god, because there's only one word for divinity, which embraces what we would go from sort of st. all the way through to the faith of God. So Amin Hotepp III had been very much a promoter of this. And really what Akinat and Adi just takes it one step further, from recognising that these physical globe of the sun is a fundamental building block of life almost. He then takes it further and makes that thing an actual deity in its own right. So nobody had worshipped the art and before Akinat. So, I mean, we talk about this in enormous detail with Lloyd in another podcast. I'd love to know from you, because this is all, you know, the moment of crumbling. When do the first signs of trouble start appearing? Because I mean, if you went to that doorbar, you'd think this is a man who's got it all sewn up, but it's not. So when do you see the first cracks appearing? It looks like it happens almost immediately afterwards. And those cracks you see in the form of the deaths of half of Akinat's daughters within probably two or three years, and probably his mother as well. So he's lost half of his young family almost overnight. And I suspect that that is, that is sort of possibly seen as something of a bad omen to start with, but also by that time, probably people who don't share his vision are becoming more vociferous about it. And also they may will have, there's a more real recognition that the dark underbelly of what's going on at her mariner in the sense that in the last few couple of decades, we found a cemetery's of various workman who clearly have been worked to death at a very young age. The shane signs of malnutrition? Obviously, it's just a disability. They're dying in their 20s with skeletal problems and all these sort of things. I mean, I found the thing in National Geographic was like 2013, where they went to the commoners' cemetery. And they said that they found, I'll quote it to you, because it's just a astonishing, with all of that sort of bling going on in the royal court. The most stressed and disease ridden of ancient skeletons of Egypt that have been reported today. So Egypt, in fact, had never had it so bad as it had under Akinah. So I think what you would got, though, is there's the superficial glamour, but all of the actual cost of that, the human cost of that was vast. And I suspect that once they'd actually got to the point of having the big party, then people start looking at each other and you know, what this, okay, this beautiful city, what's it actually done? And it wouldn't surprise me is if that is when some real whispering against the king, where we've begun. We should say that the same workman who are malnourished and looking at if they're being overworked and having a miserable time, they have as their gods, the old gods. They're not interested in all the sun months since. They're still one-wording in the department's gods and best, if they're giving birth and all the things that they believe in. Their mothers believed, and grandmothers believed, and everything that really matters to these people. Yeah, so when you go to the workman's villages, which are on the outskirts of Amarna, you find that you're finding all these traditional amulets. So it looks as though really that the although of course everybody, or nobility has shown being favorable to the art, and I suspect that most people actually had in their bottom drawers, no, they're the old amulets. So I think most people it was purely a show of devotion to the regime. And that sort of, if everyone looks at history, that's a pretty good example where as soon as the man who has been dictating effectively, what people believe has gone, everybody then reverts as rapidly as possible to what they've always believed. The commoners may have held onto their secret amulets and their eyes warding off the evil eye or whatever it is. But what about the royal family? Because you started talking about the deaths which preceded the collapse. So what are the scenes and the tombs that go along with these deaths? Can you describe the rules? Yeah, well in the royal tomb, there are a number, there's a couple of side chambers which are intended for members of the royal family. There's the King's main burial chamber and there's a number of side ones. And in, there are three examples of the same sort of stereotype scene whereby you've got a dead, a dead princess lying on a bed without, with over, leaning over it, her parents and her surviving sisters all morning. We've got three of those. One of those is labeled as the death of Mechitar and who is the second daughter. And then there are two more, unfortunately, they're too badly damaged so we don't know, they're not labeled which one. However, by approaches of elimination, they have to be the two youngest daughters, Neff and Fruiret and Tatepin Ray, who are likely to only have been sort of, no older than five at the time of their deaths. Mechitar often is probably perhaps ten when she dies. Well, Willie, you dug up this really quite moving passage describing that tomb of Mechitar. I mean, can you, can you, maybe share it? Because you shared it with me earlier. Can you share it now with the class and read it for us in your sonorous voice? Is that all right? Of course, I'd be happy to tell you. In the chamber, prepared for the dead princess, the walls show Aknaten and Nefertiti standing before a buyer. Their bodies bent forward, their arms raised in the gesture of mourning. Beside them, attendance hold their hands to their faces. The king and queen weep openly, an image without precedent in Egyptian royal art, where the ruler was always shown in composed divine authority. Outside the chamber doorway, a nurse holds an infant. Scholars of debate for generations, what that infant signifies, did Mechitarton die in childbirth? Was it a ritual image of the princess reborn? We do not know. We know only that a father and mother stood in that chamber and wept. See, I knew you'd do that very well. And if you wanted to say, it's good, good, good, good. A Jason next town. The thing is, Aiden, what is to me quite striking about this? And I don't know whether it is to you. This is this is the court of Aknaten where every image is so controlled. You know, the way in which people see things is so organized and at a distance. And yet here, you have something that anybody who's ever loved a child or a parent will understand. It's so human. And I think that's a thing about a lot of the art. It is that that you see the king and queen operating as parents, both at this sort of the worst time we've got here, but also in some of these other scenes where the children are shown playing on their laps. There's an amazing painting now in Oxford from other palaces which shows all the various princesses lounging around on cushions at their parents' feet. So that's one of these attractive sides of the whole, a modern episode, is the way it's the humanity shown in the art, which in some ways then makes it even more jarring. When as we've been talking about, it appears that the workmen are dying of starvation. Yeah. The people who were building this vision are actually being treated probably worse than any other period of Egyptian history, which suggests to me something about Akinartan's view of himself as being above everything. Yeah, the most plausible explanation is that the family is sort of dropping like flies, not because of overwork, like the workers and everyone around them, but because of some kind of epidemic disease. I mean, what evidence do you have from that? I think I might get you to read any disease. I think I would have hit it. I've got it. Me? No. Okay, sure. So before we do that, is there actual evidence that there was a plague? She says warming up her vocal cords. Yeah. It's certainly circumstantial. And that we know that within a decade of Akinartan's death, there is certainly a major plague raging in the Hittite lands. Given that we know that there is played a bit later on, we've got this whole set of sudden deaths in Egypt only a couple of years or so after half the known world has actually descended on Egypt. So although we can't prove it, I think a good working hypothesis is that the people who came into Egypt to bring the gifts from diplomatic gifts and so on for the Derbar also brought with them the back tears, the back of the material of virus, which then becomes a major thing. This is like Boris Johnson's 10-dowling Street. This is very slice of it. Yeah. But also then what interesting, he happens, if it's came in there, is then re-exported again at the end of Tatar Hamun's reign when the Hittite plague prayers say that the people who brought in the infection, which kills half the Hittite royal family, actually came from Egypt. So I think what we've got here is a pandemic, which is sort of, there's a wave of it, it comes into either to one direction and then possibly with mutations and so on, then goes back out again and then kills even more people. So this is the perfect cube for our Jane Fonda or that's a Karen reference. It's fine. I'll take it. She's amazing. Okay, let me do this. So this is one of the plague prayers from the Hittites. "Hattien Storm God, my Lord and you gods, my Lord, it is so that people are dying in Hattie land. The plague has been rampant in Hattie land ever since the time of the Egyptians were brought back as prisoners. The matter of plague I have not suppressed. I have told it to the Storm God, my Lord, now the Storm God, my Lord, save me, save me, let the plague cease in Hattie land." Oh, Oscar, Oscar, go away to before we're getting back to the police. I feel we should take a break here. To recover from the perfection of that performance. Join us after the break and when we talk about sort of the rest of this collapse of an extraordinary moment in ancient Egyptian history. Welcome back. So while you were all having a little eye down and recovering from the epic reading, I was informed by my Lord and his kiss. Yes, Anita, Hattie, rather than Hattie land. Hattie land sounds like something out of Alice and Wonderland. Hattie is what I should have said. Anyway, I hope that didn't attract from any of your enjoyment. Willie, let's talk more about this deteriorating situation because we have a really good glimpse into how bad it got, don't we? We do. And we touched on this with our Eric episode about the Amarna Letters, these wonderful little bits of Rae Vita that were dug up as Erucchia likes to put it up. Yes. All these extraordinary letters that were dug up and someone was looking for fertilizer. And they contain the diplomatic archives and what they have over and over again, we believe is that they they they please for help from Egyptian allies further north that remain unanswered and and people write in and in and in without ever getting reply saying what's happened? Where the fairer actually says would you stop writing to me now? It's really not easy. Would you stop? Stop writing now. I think the issue here is actually there's there's an area where we have some scholarly debate as you're probably well aware that we have quite a bit of that is how far these because these play these please for assistance all come from one guy I call to ribaddy. And there's question whether or not he is symptomatic of a canard and some ignoring please for help. Martin didn't like him very much. It was longing for him to be overthrown. Well, the fact that he is simply somebody who is a attention attention see notorious bore of biblos. Basically, that's the other view that that's the other view that actually and all the people who allegedly are his the enemies of the king are actually just his local personal enemies and he simply wants to use Egyptian forces to put down his local quarrels. And this is one of those problems when we're trying to we've just simply got these things. And also, probably with the archive is that by its nature it's only the incoming post. You don't know what the reply is are. Exactly. There's a couple of odd drafts but not nothing to do with ribaddy particularly. So I think we have a there's an issue here of whether or not this represents another aspect of the decline of what's going on in Egypt. Yeah, he's so worried about plague and whatever he's not actually helped doing sending or alternatively. He's just saying, look, we know this guy just has come. It's been it's been winging for years or to forget about him. Okay. I mean, just to give you some idea of ribadders, enthusiastic writing from biblos, 60 or more letters to the fair, each one more desperate than the last. And he is a loyal Egyptian vassal. He claims to be. He claims to be. He's kind of talking about ribaddy. But he's pretty much everything. I mean, I think I quite like him because he is a Mona but he's consisted and he's saying he's watching a city being eaten away and he writes quite poetically about how awful things are. And I put it to you, expert friend, Aiden, that if you have a man in charge like Akinaten who doesn't care about his workers, who doesn't care about the people who are right around him, he's such a stretch to think he doesn't care about people who are further away. I mean, he's not the most caring of we've seen fairies, for example, in the past who have responded to famine in that area who have said, you know, okay, you're having a hard time, I will send grain Egypt is the center for all of this. But here you've got a man who's in charge who doesn't really seem to get much for damn. Yeah. The question is if we knew what might, what letters may have been in the other direction. And this is the trouble. I think we all we're looking at is just one side of the correspondence. And this is the biggest problem in academia in general is that whether one tries to remain even handed over this or whether or not one sort of then becomes more involved with her and sort of is sort of being in support of them from that direction. So it's a tricky, but it's a tricky line. I have made no secret in fact. I don't like this pharaoh. He's my least favourite pharaoh. This is the first argument we've had since Roger Kippellick. Yes, I know. And it's almost as heated. But I don't know whether it's such a stretch, Aiden, to think that a man who didn't care about his workers. But loved his wife. God, but he didn't care about anyone other than his immediate family. I mean, you know, it's Trumpian in many ways. But people are starving in his kingdom. There's plague. He's not really doing very much. So is it such a stretch to think he doesn't really give that much for damn about people further away? Who do you want to know, Aiden? What do you think? Okay. My own view, this is probably being, it's an academic. It's whether you're sort of going with your heart or your head or a combination of all of doing your heart, Aiden. Always go with your heart. I've always taken the view that Ribaddi is over, is over doing it. Right. That's always been my sort of gut reaction to the whole correspondence. However, certainly in the context of Akinat and in general. But also there is a later text of Tatar Hamun's which basically says that Egyptian foreign policy went to rats under his predecessor. We actually have that. Yes. Because we also have the fact that the hitites are clearly making gains. They are moving southwards, aren't they? Indeed. So there is a question, is really whether or not that they're certainly the scenario is that there is problem. There are problems up that end of the Levant. But the question is whether or not Ribaddi's please should we take in that at face value? I, nothing is being done or whether something is being done but not as much as Ribaddi would like there to be. I understand. Do you think Ribaddi is moaning, Mertle? I think. think he's quite justified in speaking for someone who doesn't give a damn. Okay, fine. Fine. Can we then talk about Akinarton's own death? When does that happen? And what do we know about it? All we know is it happens in his 17th Regnall year. Well, that's the last Regnall year we have recorded for him. So we assume it's happened again. Which means he's what about 30, 35? Probably, I suppose the trouble is we don't know how old he was when he came to strike. Although the fact he was unmarried at the time would suggest he's in his late teens. Oh early teens, yeah. Well, someone is teens anyway, but when he comes to his throne. But we have got no real time of marriage for an ancient world was 14 or 15, isn't it? It's certainly somewhere around there, but again, we haven't got enough good to say if we have very, very little data on the actual ages of most ancient Egyptians. We don't know, don't say that I'm 16 years old or whatever. It's very, there's a couple people who we did, as if very unusual to have that stated. So anyway, we've got, so it's, so yeah, that's probably a reasonable kind of saying, you know, from if he gets married around 15, 16 and then he's dying in in the 17, that's a problem that adds up quite well. And as he's dying or as he seems to be approaching the end, there's some sense that there's actually desperation, isn't it? The iconoclasm of previous gods increases that he wipes out everything that's left that he hasn't already wiped out. Yeah, one of the big, one of the big questions about back in Arton is at what point he starts persecuting the god Amun. There's two levels to this because going back into about, when about year five is when the Arton becomes the sole god who he's actually a bother with. Whether he's actually believes he is the sole god or the only god who's going to want to worship is another completely different debate. Then most of the other gods are instantly ignored. They basically in modern terms have their funding withdrawn. But there's no real attempt to actually sort of remove them. People like Patar and all the other great gods, there's no, there's no, then their names aren't erased. The exception is Amun, the previous king of the gods. And my view is the reason why he's got it in for Amun is because Amun's title is King of the Gods, which of course is always blasphemy if he believes that the Arton is the supreme god. The date he starts attacking Amun is another matter for debate. I'm very much of the view that it's very much towards the end of his reign because there are mentions of Amun, sort of around around around about year 12. Does that mean he's getting more fanatical or he's getting desperate? Which, what do you think? I think he's, I think he's, I think it's a bit of both. And I think that he may be deciding that the person to blame for his misfortunes, the death of his mother, his daughters, may be Amun. So I think I'm of the opinion that the attack on Amun, which basically destroys every extent image of the god, also erases every mention of his name on the inscriptions, that should be dated to the last couple of years. And it's possibly part of a mental collapse of Akinat and in the face of the various, these various calamities. Okay. So I mean, look, he does die eventually, very sad. Because I'm not sure that's quite an emotional. No, well, I don't have to. And he's seen through three episodes. I just can't just say what I, what I am very interested in there is at what point do people start turning on him? Because we mentioned at the beginning that he's remembered in ancient Egypt at the time as a criminal of Akinat. So at what point do they start turning on the dead Pharaoh and this visceral defacing that goes on? Tell us about that. I think it's probably, it probably takes a decade or so to get to that level. Because of course, immediately after his death, the power is in the hands of his widow, nifititi, now a female Pharaoh, and also his son, Tutankha-Arton, now later Tutankha-Moon. So I think and what seems to happen is that the dismantling of the idea of the art and being the sole god happens very, very rapidly within the first three years after his death. But actually any attacks on Akinat and himself in the sense of erasure of figures and so on is probably after Tutankha-Moon is safely in his tomb. If not even beyond that. Can we talk about what it was? I mean, there was a mummy that's found in a tomb called KV55 in the Valley of the Kings. And that mummy is clearly subject to deliberate desecration. It looks like. It had his, literally, his face beat at it. Yeah, yeah, just destroyed. And the royal insignia chiseled off. Now, what's that Akinat? Now, I think we're into something which could be about three podcasts worth. All right. Okay. We haven't got that. Okay. Let me rephrase it. What do you think, Hayden? Do you think it was Akinat? I'm not a rap, maybe a decision. No. Oh, okay. Which I'd expect you know, I better explain it, I expand on that. Okay. Okay. But what this tomb KV55, what it originally was, was the evacuation team from a manor. So when a manor is shut down as the capital city, they evacuate the royal tomb. And three of the royal mums of the mummies which were in that royal tomb were moved to KV55. Akinat and is that the girls? No, no, no, the girl, we don't know whether we assume the girls went to another tomb in the same area of the Valley of the Kings. But KV55 has, so he had Akinat in it originally, Queen T, his mother, and the third individual. And T and Akinat and were both removed from the tomb at a later date, leaving one body behind, which as far as I'm concerned is Sven Carre, who is who was Akinat and short-lived co-ruiler around about year 1314. But okay, if you don't think it's Akinat and which made me gasped, it is somebody associated with him. So it does show anger and rage. And we do know that Akinat was called a criminal. So I mean, just how when, just in a nutshell, when do we see that bubble over and change what comes next, if you like? It's either directly following the death of Tataan Khamun or directly following the death of Aai, his immediate successor. And we don't know, we know this is all well underway once you get significantly beyond that. But the exact point, but I don't think anything will happen before Tataan Khamun dies, because while you're not going to start saying, well, you wouldn't, uh, this is sad. And also Aai may actually have been his father in Akinat and his father in law, so possibly not. But certainly much again to the reign of Horimhead, that's definitely happening. But there's been lots of debate over exactly when KB 55 is desecrated. Some people argued within weeks of Tataan Khamun's death, but others have suggested it could be significantly later. And unfortunately, the archaeological evidence, which is all to do with flood debris in the way of the Kings, is there's been, let's think it was all been made clear. And then somebody pointed out some major methodological errors in the assessment. So again, it's going to be somewhere within within five years, probably of Tataan Khamun's death. But whether it's right on his death, or a little bit later on, we just don't know at the moment. Okay, and we're going to do a whole episode on Tataan Khamun. And, you know, get into that mystery, okay, if he still was so loyal to his dad, why do he change his name? And then go back to the Armun bit rather than his dad's son, God, but we'll stay safe for another episode. What actually happens to Amarna after the death of Akinat? Before you know, I'm looking to know if KB 55 isn't him, how have we got his mummy at all? Has it been totally destroyed? My personal view is that what happened when they just when they decided to clear KB 55 is that T is moved off to a new to a new new location. Sven Hare is deprived of his identity, but left in place. And Akinat is taken off and burned. That's my personal view of what happened. There's a graduated sort of view. But T, okay, she had a dodgy son, but she can, she's okay. And her mummy is now, is now in Cairo. Sven Hare probably misled, wasn't the bad lad, will take his names away, but we'll leave his body will survive. Akinat and completely beyond the pale. And the worst thing which can happen to an ancient Egyptian is to be consumed by fire. Because what? They don't enter the underworld then or they're the world. It seems to be that and when you read the book of the dead, one of the things which the dead are terrified, obviously, is fire. So therefore, I think the most logical solution is that he was, that he was taken out and a bonfire kindled in the middle of the kings. That's my personal view. Okay, no, I don't know. I mean, goodness me, you know, more about this than anybody. If you do want more mummy moving chat, we've got a bonus episode about the curse of Tutankhamun, just for our members. So do sign up for our brilliant club and you'll get that extra. So it's a rip-roaring story. But just getting back to the people of Amarna, so after the death of Akinat and what happens to them? Do we know if they thrive after he's gone or do they continue? Down with spy? I think basically with within three years of Akinatan's death, they decided a minor is finished. And therefore, what we have, what seems to happen is that everybody who is living there, royal family downwards, start going back to where they'd always been. So probably the people who had been building the tombs at a minor go back to the workman's village at Thebes, at Luxor, where they've always been. And everybody else starts drifting back to their own to wherever they were. I suspect the majority will have gone back to either Memphis or to Thebes, which are the two older capitals. And then the whole play and in doing so, they start dismantling their houses because there are bits which are made of no good quality imported wood. So gradually the whole thing starts falling into ruin. We know that there is still something going on in the reign of Horim Heb there. The Riverside Temple is still active. It looks as though the whole place rapidly falls down from being the capital city of an empire through down to simply being. The Milton Keynes roundabouts get overgrown. It's getting to that level. And as far as we can tell, it just simply withers away. And by the time a few decades later on, it's basically a tumbleweed is going down the streets. But one of the important point is that by that time, when you're time to the time of the reign of Ramesses, the second, a few decades later, well, they're now knocking down the temples and reusing the stone for the foundations of new temples on the other side of the river. Now, at what point do we get the sensation that the old priesthood, some of whom have been said off to the quarries and really had quite serious punishments and not just some exiled, some exiled, some sent to the Egyptian equivalent to the Goulag. When did they begin to kind of trickle back and immediately? Because we've got the Ammon cult is up and running again within a year or two back and after. So it's quite clear that it's the moment it's one of those cases, a bit like when death of Stalin, when suddenly the bloody Mary in the English Reformation, back to Protestantism again. The moment the tyrant or whatever you call him is dead. I think immediately everybody goes, be to sigh of relief and simply says, "Okay, we're going to forget all that happened. Let's just move on and say, it looks like we've certainly got Ammon cult back without any kind of problems." Almost to mean, the big issue is tidying up the mess because you've had temples which have had no funding for a decade and you've also got the Ammon temples with no statues of Ammon left because they've all been pulverised by Akinaten. So the big thing is that, and this takes decades for them to actually restore all of this. Now, at what point do we get the restoration stellar? Because this is a crucial piece of evidence, isn't it? Yeah, this is the early part of the reign of Tartankhamung. Unfortunately, the year date is broken away. It's typical of these kinds of inscriptions. But people kind of agree it's 1332, that sort of day. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, my view is it's probably year three. So I think year three is the crucial point, I think. So I think that year three is probably when Nefertiti dies. I feel another Gil Goodmohm. Come here, come here, come to keep out with Liz Taylor over there and do another. You're so, you're so current. So catching edge. Just see, but here we go. So my view, and I think the general view is there are other views available, but is the right year three is when it happened. Is the key point because at the point when Nefertiti dies and also with her any sort of moderation, because I've got the feeling I tend to get from what's happening doing those first three years when Nefertiti is still in charge, is in charge. Is she's trying to triangulate between the old and the new? She's keeping wants to keep at the art and going, but also is perfectly happy for him to be coexisting with the older gods. Once she's out of the way, that is the point probably where you've got new people deciding what's happening. Because remember, don't come in as long as child when this is all happening. It will be discovered. Of course, we're exploring this in the in the later in the later podcast. But that's gone. That's when he gets his name changed from to to to to to to to to come on and they start and the art and it starts to be forgotten. I think it's a, I think that point is a question of their simply doing what Akinah and did to all the other gods. Forget about remove. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Funding or whatever. Delete. Delete. Delete. Delete. Delete is what it is. Yeah. But it's not until you then get him dead. And therefore the last blood link with Akinah and gone is when they do right. And now let's let's erase all of this from history. And to some up that kind of decrepitude of a once great civilization, I hand over to William Downrempel who is going to read from the restoration stellar of Tutankhamun. Now when his majesty appeared as king, the temple of the gods and goddesses from a fanteen to the marshes of the delta had fallen into ruin. Their shrines had become desolate and had grown to mounds overgrown with weeds. Their sanctuaries were as though they had never been. Their halls were a footpath. The land was in confusion. The gods had forsaken this land. If an army was sent to Dajahee which is Palestine to extend the boundaries of Egypt, no success of theirs came at all. If one prayed to a god to ask something of him, he did not come. If one besieged any goddess in the same way, she did not come either. Their hearts were weak in their bodies. And they destroyed what was made. The Basil Wrathbone of podcasts. Thank you very much William. Can I ask you Aidan? Just tell us what do you think Akinahton's legacy is? There's a couple of things I suppose. One which is often not often mentioned is the fact that in his public pronouncements he used the current form of the Egyptian language rather than more archaic ones. So actually from that point onwards we have a much more, well it's in some texts, a public text, a much more up-to-date version of Egyptian being used. The other I think is that's quite niche. Yes, but it's quite important. For a man who built this wonderful city and did all this stuff. The other thing though is that his reign represents a very much a water shinn. There is a very much before and after. A bit like almost nowadays we talk about before and after COVID almost. That his reign marks that. And although on the face of things, things return back to normal. In detail they don't. A really good example of that is when you look at the decoration of private tombs in Egypt. Before Akinahton and going back thousands of years, a major part of the decoration of private tomb was representations of agricultural scenes, recreating the world which the dead person wanted to be in in the next world. After Akinahton they've gone completely and never come back. So all scenes in tomb chapels are now to do with ritual, funerary processions and so on. Does that imply that the priesthood has now increased in power? Let's come back with the vengeance? I completely reject the idea of the priesthood power being a major issue here. I think it's actually due to genuine belief. And I think what it is is that having had everything thrown up in the air, people start to re-think to start thinking again about what matters, how should things work and so on and so forth. And I think part of that is re-thinking how tombs should be decorated because they've had a point where no tomb has been decorated in the traditional way for a decade or so. Now they're thinking again. I think there are other areas where again there's a different feel after Akinahton because they've had to restart, start thinking again. Another one, an interesting one is that prior to Akinahton the royal family was very rarely shown on public monuments. After him, and certainly when the new dynasty, the 19th comes in a couple of decades later, the royal family appears regularly in spades. So although the reason why the royal family was being shown by Akinahton was probably due with the theology of the Akinahton, the idea that the royal family was now a thing to be shown on temple walls has now come in and Ramesses II does massively later on. So I think it's a fault line in Egyptian history that things sort of come back to normal but in some ways they don't. Okay, okay, always a good place to end it. Aidan, thank you so much, Professor Aidan Dodson and Akinahton gone, but not forgotten. Amano Sunset is Aidan's brilliant book which covers this period of time, highly readable. Top book, really, really wonderful. It's short, absolutely brilliant. Short but very, not sweet, it's quite awful stuff happens, but it's very interesting. Thank you very much. Our next episode is all about one of the most beautiful and easily recognizable women of all ancient history, Nefertiti. If you want early access to that, then join the Empire Club at empypoduk.com and you'll get exclusive access to our fantastic bonus on the curse of Tutankhamans too. Till the next time we meet there. It's goodbye from me, Anita Arden. And goodbye from me. William Gilgud Durimple. [LAUGHS]