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Chapter 1: Why was Akhenaten’s name erased from history?
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Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon.
And me, William de Rimpel. Now, in the 12th year of his reign, the pharaoh Akhenaten staged the most spectacular ceremony of his rule. From across the known world, delegations came to the new capital city of Amarna bearing tribute to
Ivory and gold from Nubia, painted pottery from the Aegean, horses and lapis lazuli from the kingdoms of the Near East, exotic animals, bolts of fine cloth, cedar wood from Lebanon, the tomb paintings of Akhenaten's officials recorded in extraordinary detail. Dozens of figures prostrated before the king and his queen, the rays of the Aten pouring down on all of them, Akhenaten and Nefertiti.
at the absolute zenith of their power. The revolution triumphant.
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.
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Chapter 2: What led to the construction of Akhenaten's city in the desert?
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.
But you're not speaking from the British Museum, I take it though.
Have you half-inched something precious and put it in your house? What's going on?
Sadly, it's an inflatable one.
Okay.
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Chapter 3: How did the Amarna Revolution reach its peak?
No! It's not one of those many missing pieces from the British Museum that we keep reading about in the papers.
I know, that was quite the scandalous story. Aidan, if you have anything to confess?
Not at all. No, this was bought from the museum shop in St. Louis, Missouri, many, many years ago. That's very disappointing.
So, William, where are we starting? Just remind us where we are at the moment.
So this is year 12 of the Amana Revolution. The Great Durbar is about to take place, and it's worth spending a moment looking at this city at its peak. And Nathan's had it built at astonishing speed. And some accounts say it's actually quite jerry-built, that when you look inside the kind of gleaming exterior, they've sort of shoved all sorts of rubbish inside.
And it's like one of those sort of Indian airports that get built at double speed, and then all the bits fall apart.
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Chapter 4: What were the consequences of Akhenaten's reign on Egyptian society?
Yeah.
you're not flying in for some time to come.
There was a, there was a, can you remember when the Olympics happened? Yes. All the, all the, all the crooks in Delhi built these bridges that fell as soon as the Olympic crowds turned up. Anyway, it was that sort of thing. And, um, Within a decade, a city of 20 or 30,000 people had risen from the Bad Desert.
And this is a time when, you know, there are no other cities of 20 or 30,000 people, except possibly Babylon or Ur of the Colossus. Are there any other 20,000 people cities at this period in history?
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
This is not Memphis as in Elvis Presley.
No, this is one just outside Cairo.
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Chapter 5: What were the signs of trouble during Akhenaten's rule?
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.
And just to describe it, I'd like to just sort of the image of this city at its center, the great temple of Aten, an open air enclosure of unprecedented size. None of the dark inner sanctuaries of traditional Egyptian temples because Aten required no darkness, no ritual mystery. You just sunlight and you have all these complaints to foreign dignitaries. It's too hot. Why are we sitting out here?
It's too hot and too sunny. But nonetheless, that was the most important thing. It was the light. And you've also got the cliff tombs cut into the hills on the eastern edge of the city where Akhenaten's officials were preparing for their eternal resting places. It looked, it felt different. Everywhere around you was the representation of this new religion. And there are
Scenes of astonishing intimacy as well.
Chapter 6: How did Akhenaten's family tragedies impact his reign?
Kings and queens in chariots, daughters playing beneath chairs. I mean, they look almost, you know, sort of like the kind of Victorian offerings we have of, you know, mothers dandling their children and everybody loving everyone else.
They're rather prettier than Victorian versions. I mean, I have to say that I know that everyone is down on that. I think it's the most, the supreme moment of Egyptian art. The art from this period is astonishingly gorgeous. And there's very simple lines.
You say that, but I think they all look like aliens. They are basically E.T. 's family. I don't like them at all. I think they look weird. So, you know.
Now, Amarna is a bit of a Marmite thing, I think. Mm-hmm.
Chapter 7: What happened to the city of Amarna after Akhenaten's death?
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.
And there's that weird head of, I mean, not head, there's that colossus of Akhenaten himself in the Cairo Museum, isn't there, with these sort of weird lips and tummy, which was one originally of seven or eight lined up against the Temple of Aten. More of that.
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. But yeah, they are heavily distorted. Although somebody has pointed out that if you're standing directly below them and looking up, they're less distorted. Interesting.
The artist has actually adjusted things so that when you're at their feet, because these things are, what, about 10, 12 foot tall, if you're standing sort of looking up at them, everything isn't quite as out of line as... I love that.
So it's a perspective thing. So it's actually, it's made for purpose.
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Chapter 8: How did Akhenaten's death influence the return of old religious practices?
So that if you're an ant-like human, you'll see a... That's really interesting. I never thought of that.
Yeah. And as you said, in some other colossal statues from Egypt of other periods, the ears appear to be a bit too high. But when you're sort of at the right, at the optimum viewing distance, they're okay.
Willie used the word, apart from lapis lazuli, he used the word Darbar to describe that opening scene of, you know, this splendor and this wealth. And we should explain that the Darbar is, Aidan, it's a show, isn't it? It's a show of gifts. It's a show of abasance, you know, that people are coming and they're bowing to the most powerful.
And it's when you put all your glitz and glamour on full display. That's right, isn't it?
Yeah, and the term is simply borrowed from the Indian Empire, whereby you've got the Durbars of George V and people like that. It's one of those cases where we've sort of picked up a word from another culture, and it just seems to be the most appropriate thing for this major event, with everybody coming to bring gifts to the king.
To bend the knee, as it were. I mean, you know, this all has a utopian quality to it.
Yeah, and I think that was sort of the concept of building this entire new city, was to start from the idea of the art possibly representing a year zero, but also the idea of building a completely new capital city from scratch on a completely virgin site as well, because all the other cities in Egypt go back thousands of years to... Were already incredibly ancient.
Yeah, whereas this was taken, and in the texts which Akhenaten provides relating to its foundation, he makes that point. This belonged to no god or goddess. So he's starting from a clean sheet of paper, and in doing so, he then produces what presumably the city planners of the time thought was the optimum... What a capital city should be like.
So in many ways, you could argue it being sort of an ancient Egyptian Brasilia or Canberra, or perhaps less kindly Milton Keynes. It's what was thought to be it.
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