Aidan Dodson

It's typical of these kinds of inscriptions.

Wait, wait, wait.

It's probably the year... My view is it's probably year three.

Because I think year three is the crucial point, I think.

Because I think that year three is probably when Nefertiti dies...

So my view, and I think the general view is, there are other views available, but is that 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...

The feeling I tend to get from what's happening during those first three years when Nefertiti is in charge is she's trying to triangulate between the old and the new.

She wants to keep the Aten 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 Tutankhamun is Sloane's child when this is all happening and we'll be exploring this in the later podcast but once that's gone that's when he gets his name changed from Tutankhamun to Tutankhamun and they start and the Aten it starts to be forgotten I think at that point it's a question of they're doing what Akhenaten did to all the other gods forget about it withdraw funding and whatever

But it's not until you then get to him dead and therefore the last blood link with Akhenaten's gone is when they do right.

And now let's erase all of this from history.

There's a couple of things, I suppose.

One, which isn't really 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... It's in some texts, public texts, a much more up-to-date version of Egyptian being used.

The other, I think, is that... That's quite niche.

Yeah.

Yes, but it's quite an important one, I think.

The other thing, though, is his reign represents a very much a watershed.