Aidan Dodson

Sadly, it's an inflatable one.

Not at all.

No, this was bought from the museum shop in St.

Louis, Missouri, many, many years ago.

That's very disappointing.

One would suspect that Memphis in Egypt certainly is, because that's the really ancient capital.

And probably Thebes is a similar kind of size.

But probably the idea is that

No, this is one just outside Cairo.

But no, the basic idea is that Amana replaces Thebes and Memphis, because in the past, Thebes had been the religious capital, Memphis the political capital, and principal royal residence.

Amana, Akhetaten, as it was called in ancient times, was intended to replace them both as the political and religious capital.

Now, Amarna is a bit of a Marmite thing, I think.

Mm-hmm.

And I think that most people probably quite like what you might call the mature Amana art style when it's gone beyond its real sort of shock value stuff at the very, very beginning of the reign.

But certainly some of the early stuff where...

Somebody as beautiful as Nefertiti, and certainly her later representations, and actually her very, very early ones, she's gorgeous.

She looks like some kind of famine victim during those first few years.

I think there were dozens of them originally.

And in fact, they were a mixture of Akhenaten and Nefertiti.

Although there's only one Nefertiti one surviving in a vaguely decent state.