Anita Arnon

Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon.

It was also, as it turned out, the last great moment.

Within a year, the deaths would begin.

Within five years, Akhenaten 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 Akhenaten.

Eric Klein brought us the world Akhenaten was born into.

Lloyd Llewellyn Jones 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, Amana Sunset, the world's leading authority on the Amana period.

We're very happy to welcome Professor Aidan Dodson of the University of Bristol.

A very warm welcome to you, Aidan.

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, Aidan, right behind you.

If you're listening, trust me, it's enorm.

Have you half-inched something precious and put it in your house?

What's going on?

I know, that was quite the scandalous story.