Francesca Stavrakopoulou
speaker
499 appearances
3 recordings
2 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 23 Jun
Francesca Stavrakopoulou’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 3.
Appearances
Empire: World History · 368. Ancient Egypt: The Origin of Abrahamic Religions? (Ep 7) · 14 Jun 2026
podcast
But yes, the Amman letters, so 14th century, from various kings of the city-states across the southern Levant are writing to our friend Akhenaten and talking about various things.
And the language they use is doing exactly the same thing as we find in Psalm 104.
It's combining this imagery about the sun and the moon and the dangers of the darkness and lions, but also combining it with
Baal imagery, referring to the Pharaoh himself as Baal and talking about him as the thunderer and the warrior god.
So in other words, it was already combining these particular turns of phrase, was already in the kind of ether in the 14th century BCE Southern Levant.
So when they're compiling the Psalms, and the Psalms are basically ancient bits of poetry and ritual texts that have been mishmashed together and reworked and revamped.
It's a natural kind of fit.
Yeah.
So it's not direct influence of Akhenaten on Yahwistic monotheism as such,
But it shows what's kind of culturally appropriate, culturally suitable.
A direction of travel.
And where I think he was particularly helpful is in opening up the possibility that we ought to take really seriously the solar imagery.
That's obviously that Aten is about the solar globe or the solar disk, that manifestation of deity as the highest God.
And I think that was really helpful and has helped scholars really understand
really pick up on the importance of that solar imagery one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the last 100 years when it comes to my sort of stuff was the discovery in a tomb in Ketev Hinnom one of the valleys around Jerusalem a very high status tomb and it's dated to the 7th century BCE so 100 years after we find these inscriptions to Yahweh and Asherah
And they're two little silver scrolls rolled up and they were worn little tiny.
I mean, they're like two centimetres tall rolled up.
I do.
And they were worn by a very high status person in life.
And then, of course, in death as well, because they've been buried with them.
Showing 461–480 of 499 · page 24 of 25
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