William Durand-Poole

It's an overnight change, almost, you know?

I mean, first of all, he has to send his architects and builders to Middle Egypt, and they construct very hastily a very large city, including two palaces, workshops...

and two enormous temples.

And two temples built on a completely different model to the ancient temples of Egypt.

So when the ancient temples, remember I told you about that tiny little shrine in the middle, could be vast, they came in closer and closer and closer, darker and darker and darker until you got to the center, which is the Holy of Holies.

Akhenaten's temples in Amarna are all open to the sky.

That's the whole purpose, of course.

These vast courtyards with no shade whatsoever, apart from one little sunshade where he would stand.

Which ambassadors complain about, don't they?

I'm not a fan of Akhenaten, let's put it that way.

What I see in him is a zealot, an absolute zealot, who gives no room to anybody else for interpretation, belief or unbelief, okay?

It's his relationship with his god.

Even Nefertiti, I get a feeling, doesn't really count.

You know, she's there because he has to have a female principal.

But I think about these sand temples, everybody standing in the open, in the glare of the sun, in the draining.

heat of Middle Egypt.

This is not a kind thing.

This is not about, you know, let's rejoice in this together.

This is absolute oppression of the people.

And one thing that Don Redford, great Egyptologist, noted about the iconography of Akhenaten's reign, I hate him and I'm with him all the way, that Akhenaten's court are always depicted in