Akhenaten's Ancient Egyptian Revolution

追加: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]You are an Egyptian priest in the year 1,350 BCEE. Your world is already ancient, 3,000 years old already. Your temple has stood for centuries. Its walls blaze with color. processions of gods, offerings of incense, hymns inscribed in hieroglyphs that will track the movement of the cosmos itself. Your day is structured by ritual. The waking of the god in the sanctuary, the presentation of food and linen, the sealing of the inner chamber at dust, just as goes on in Hindu temples today in India.

[00:00:42]Generations after generations of your family have done this. The god is Ammon, king of the gods, lord of thieves, the hidden one whose breath fills the entire world. And the temple you serve is the greatest religious institution on earth.

[00:01:01]>> But just imagine that all of that, all of it is gone within a decade. Your temple gets closed down. The statue of your god is smashed to pieces.

[00:01:11]Everywhere the name has been chiseled, it is removed by a blunt instrument in Egypt. Everywhere. So the very existence of these gods declared to be lies. A new theology will descend on the country imposed from above by a pharaoh who has renamed himself, moved the capital, built an entirely new city, and decreed that from now on there is only one divinity worthy of worship. only one and that is the sun disck the art. So no more myths, no more statues, no more processions, just this one round shining disc and the light it pours on the world and access to that light, access to the divine itself runs through only one man and that man is the pharaoh Akenatan.

[00:02:05]This is the most radical religious revolution in ancient history. Whether it was the world's first true monotheism, whether it planted a seed that would eventually produce Yahweh, the God of the Hebrew Bible, of Christianity, of Islam, is one of the most debated questions in the study of religion. And that is exactly what we are here to explore today. And we're all very excited about it. This is Empire.

[00:02:30]And I'm William Dupool.

[00:02:32]>> Yes. And I'm Anita Arnold. And you know when you were saying imagine that you are in this place and being venerated and worshiped. I could imagine that quite easily. It doesn't I mean actually quite shocking how easy it was for me to imagine that. Anyway, we are at episode three of our Ammana series. We're diving deeper into the question of what exactly was Akenatan's religion?

[00:02:52]>> Our guest today is someone who brings a quite exceptional combination of qualities to this conversation. It is our old friend Lloyd Llewellyn Jones.

[00:03:03]Welcome back Lloyd.

[00:03:05]>> Hello both. It's good to be back with you. It really is >> very nice to remind everyone who doesn't know Lloyd's extraordinary credentials.

[00:03:12]He is both the professor of ancient history at Cardiff University and the author of The Magnificent Persians, the Age of the Great Kings, which first brought us together. I spent an entire summer driving around the country listening to Lloyd on on his audio book, which I completely loved and wly recommend. But since he first came on the show, Lloyd became a priest.

[00:03:33]>> I mean, it was a a proper calling. Okay.

[00:03:36]It's not like going for a job. It was something that I was moved to do. And I was moved to do it actually when I was very young. When I was in my 20ies, you know, I I first kind of got this call and I thought, "No, no, no. Just put it off. Put it off. Put it off." And then you know one day I was teaching a module on ancient Israel teaching the book of Isaiah to my students and this overwhelming desire this feeling came from deep within me which said okay Lloyd you've been doing this for long enough you need to take this message elsewhere now and that was the start of my journey to towards the church.

[00:04:09]>> When we first actually met in person long after we'd first met on screen you were all clericalled up.

[00:04:14]>> I was I was all dog collared up. Gave us a surprise to everyone. Oh, do you know what? If if it wasn't such a warm day, I'd have had you do that again today.

[00:04:22]>> Mighty fine sight you make. Let's start at the very beginning, Lloyd. Before Akenatan, before the revolution that he brings about, there is a very rich tapestry of a religious world that he's born into where there are pretty much gods for everything. I mean, from the very very small, you'll have a god of the liver to, you know, this sort of pantheon like Hindu gods. if if you come from the the Hindu tradition or Greek mythology. And he is born to that richness, but he's about to destroy all of it.

[00:04:54]>> What's going on? Well, the Egyptian pantheon was vast. When you go to Egypt today, you often hear like local guides, you know, I've overheard them say, "How many gods do the Egyptians worship? I will tell you 777."

[00:05:07]No truth in that. And in fact, I think nobody ever tried to count to tell you the truth. And you're right, Anita, to say that they were great state gods like Ammonray, Isis, Osiris had huge temples and great pilgrimage followers, but also they're the tiny little gods as well. You know, the gods against scorpion bites or the gods of digestion, whatever it might be.

[00:05:31]>> Oh god, I love it. There's a god of arthritis. I mean >> all all sorts of things you know and it says so much doesn't it about ancient perception of self and society that you need this >> not just ancient Lloyd you're paying your first visit to India uh to come to our festival next January and you'll find that there are still gods of kalera for example that that are worshiped here uh little gods as well as great gods like Lord Shiva >> sometimes these gods of course are you worship them as kind of preemptive strikes really don't you you know you worship a god of arthritis to say please don't give me arthritis. You know, you worship the scorpion goddess not because she she's helping you daily, but please please keep the scorpions away from me.

[00:06:11]So, Egyptian polytheism operates on all of these different levels. Well, we could say state religion and domestic religion. But also during the the New Kingdom, and we're in the middle of the New Kingdom at this point, the Egyptians had expanded their empire, and they were happily bringing home foreign gods from Syria, from Canaan, >> saucy goddesses who rather turn the Egyptian gods on. In some of the pictures, >> we have Nubian gods coming up from the south. And you know, one thing I think it's really important to recognize is that in the ancient mind there was no contradiction in doing that. You know, the gods were gods were gods. And it doesn't and everybody acknowledged that different people have different gods.

[00:06:56]But they never say, "Oh, you know, the Hittite gods, they don't exist or um the gods in Canaan don't exist." They they all believe in these things. Listeners might remember that in the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Elijah challenges the prophets of Bal to a competition. Which god is the stronger? Not which god is real, which is the stronger. So even in the Hebrew Bible, the prophets are not saying there aren't any other gods necessarily, there are other people's gods.

[00:07:26]>> It also worked the other way round. I mean, when the Greeks came to Egypt, Lloyd, they they would look at Ammon and say, "Well, that's Zeus, obviously."

[00:07:33]Because the parallels were so maintained and they were so respected that people felt they could intertwine very easily.

[00:07:40]So you had these teeny tiny gods, was there not a god of the temple hinge whose only job was to make sure the hinge opened the door and that had its own god. Isn't that glorious?

[00:07:52]>> Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's evoked in things like the book of the dead, the spells for the dead because if you're hinge sticks at that point, it means the soul can't get through the door. It means disaster for everyone. So yes, my favorite god of all of all the pantheons in antiquity is a goddess called Kryle and she's the goddess of hangovers for the Greeks. I love that. I really do.

[00:08:15]Goddess of hangover. Well, bring her back.

[00:08:17]>> Literally a god we can all pray to at some point or the other. At the center of the system in this period is Aman Ra.

[00:08:23]Flesh Amun Ra out for us because children will have seen the picture. you know that line drawing of you know sort of yeah just describe it >> when he is depicted he is depicted usually in the form of a man his skin tends to be blue a kind of cosmic blue a universal blue as it were he wears a crown with two huge falcon feathers that that come from it and a false beard on his chin sometimes he's depicted as a ram so kind of all the power of the kind of the male ram But interestingly within the theology itself of the new kingdom he is called the invisible one. So although he is represented in iconography people think of him in fact as an abstract the great hidden one. And that's very important because I think lots of people assume that Egyptians are going around worshiping gods who are kind of you know appear before them very often with animal heads and so forth. But the idea of invisibility um is also there as well. It's also part of it.

[00:09:29]>> One thing I've always wanted to know, Lloyd, is that when you see these animal-headed gods, are worshippers being presented by priests with masks on pretending to be the gods? And is that where it comes from or not?

[00:09:41]>> I think there was an element of that, but we don't know much about it. But I think that certainly during imbalming ceremonies for instance when the body was prepared or the tomb I think it's highly likely that a priest would dawn the mask of the the jackal god Anubis for instance but I don't think as we get in kind of Hollywood films that these priests were kind of you know coorting around with the heads of cows and and bulls and >> it's not Brendan Fraser territory.

[00:10:11]>> No exactly love him as I do. No, not quite. And the priests, they were very very powerful. And I mean, not just powerful because they were the gateway to the great gods, but I mean, you also had them controlling, I think, you know, the priests of Ammon at Carac ran what is it 80% of the country's industrial output, you know, all of the arable output. Absolutely. They were like little mini chancellors of the excheer.

[00:10:35]>> Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. So, so the temple of Amun at Karnak in particular, I mean, a vast vast structure, acres upon acres. It's an overaring experience to be there. And right at the heart of it is this tiny little holy of holies which had at the center a little gilded wooden box with little doors to it and inside a little gold statue of Ammon.

[00:10:58]And he was responsible for this huge cosmic creation. I mean and his priesthood were the wealthiest and most powerful priesthood in the whole of Egypt. And the temple itself was not just a place of worship. It was a farm.

[00:11:12]It was a textile industry. Um, it was the center of education. It was the center of artistic production. So, its economy is unfathomable really. I mean, it was so wealthy and many of the gods had this, you know, the temple of Patar in Memphis for instance or the temple of Sobeck in upper Egypt. But nothing equals the temple of Ammon at Carac.

[00:11:39]super structure >> and the pharaoh himself, where did he fit into this whole priesthood and religion?

[00:11:45]>> This is a an interesting question because since the old kingdom, the pyramid age, which as you said in your introduction, Willie, is already 3,000 years old by the New Kingdom period. Since then, pharaohs had been accepted and indeed promoted themselves as living gods. This is a kind of hard concept for us to get our heads around, of course. I guess Stummer could do with that now, couldn't he? Really?

[00:12:10]>> Of course, we have some some leaders who believe that they may well be gods. You know, >> I can't think who you are indicating here. It's a really strange one because of course the Egyptians saw their rulers become old and forgetful and decrepit and you know losing teeth and hair and yet still maintain that they are living gods and eventually they die of course.

[00:12:33]So the way in which this was kind of used in Egyptian theology was to suggest that the kingship the pharaoh himself is forever. The individual may change but the institution of the pharaoh goes on and on and on. So as one pharaoh dies he becomes the new Osiris and his son or heir becomes the new Horus. So there's this constant cycle of life and death, life and death, life and death. But for most people in Egypt, they really did believe that the pharaoh was a god. And that's very different from the kind of things we get in Mesopotamia for instance where kings like Hammurabi, Nebuchadnezzar, this kind, they were the viceroy of God. So they were charged with things you know by God. But here in Egypt, we have a mortal man who is also at the same time an immortal god. And in the iconography, you see the kind of closeness between Pharaoh and the gods.

[00:13:37]They often hug him. They'll kiss him on the lips. He's depicted at the same size as the gods. You know, >> I wonder if it's because they don't get much exposure to the pharaoh. Because if you think about Akenatan's dad and Hotep III, I mean, if you look at his mummy >> it wasn't a beautiful thing to look at.

[00:13:55]I mean, he was he was morbidly obese. He was it suggested that covered in abscesses, you know, riddled with something that looks like arthritis. So, I mean, could they maintain this this godliness because no one saw them? No one saw the the decrepitude of the flesh.

[00:14:10]>> I think there's a lot in that, Anita. I really do. the the kind of mystique of monarchy is held up by that, isn't it?

[00:14:17]The the very invisibility of the monarch, I think, is very important within all of this. And you know, the the the pharaohs of Egypt did not go around pressing the flesh in the manner of sort of modern European monarchs at all. They didn't do their balcony presentations, this kind of thing. There was a mystery around them because they were sacrosanked after all. So you treat them as a god. This distinction you draw between Egypt and Mesopotamia is the same interestingly in the Hindu world between India and Southeast Asia. And in India um kings like Raj Raja Chola are the viceroy of Lord Shiva uh and and and there are pictures of him standing below Lord Shiva in his temple.

[00:14:58]>> But in Cambodia the Kamair temples kings portrayed with divine attributes.

[00:15:04]They're holding the contra Vishnu or >> absolutely and and it's a huge leap between the two of us you know it really is a huge difference there >> so that's the world we're in in feronic Egypt we've got a divine pharaoh >> you've got the dad okay ammonote who is you know this glorious son and all gods and you know divine and and respects all gods you know I I think isn't he responsible for for just hundreds and hundreds of statues of semmet and you know he his iconography is very very strong and you've got his son growing up in the shadow of this man. Is he growing up with ideas beyond his station? Even then, do we have any indication that he's about to basically toss it all out of the window?

[00:15:43]>> We have no indication of this whatsoever because our sources are completely silent on the man who would be Akanatan, >> right?

[00:15:52]>> Until he appears as Akanatan. And that's because generally in the New Kingdom, princes didn't get much of a runin publicly at all.

[00:16:01]>> He wasn't the eldest son. No, no, he wasn't. There was there was somebody else, a prince called Tutmosa who seems to have predesceased his brother. We get no knowledge of him. Although I think it is important to expand your idea of what this world was like under Aman Hutup III and his kind of divine status. The other person who was fundamentally important in Akanatan's life is his mother, Queen T.

[00:16:26]And she was also going through a process of divonization too. In fact, under Queen T Amin Hotep III, her husband creates her as a living goddess too. And we get from Ammon Hotep III a very developed theogy which stated that Aman Hotepi himself was the offspring of Ammon Ra who had slept with his mother Mutua and progenerated Ammon Hotep thei.

[00:16:56]So there is a kind of theoggony that's going on here. All of this is building up the divine status of Pharaoh and the royal women as well. And of course, the royal women become very important in the Ammana period.

[00:17:08]>> And we get some hints towards the end of his father's reign that he is making theological changes and there is a shift to the system. Nothing as radical as what will happen.

[00:17:19]>> The name Arton starts emerging in the last decade of Aman Hotep III's reign.

[00:17:25]Now we can't pin that on aren at all yet because as I say he doesn't appear in the imagery or anything >> and and we should say is just the everyday Egyptian word for disc isn't he >> sundisk a shining disc and so we see for instance Amen Hotep has a beautiful palace built at Malcarta on the west bank and there he has a lake built and it's called the lake of the Arton >> and a bark that floats on the lake is called the bark of the Arton and so this name is getting used more and more and it's kind of interesting as well as this name becomes used so Aman Hototeep III's iconography begins to change and one thing Egyptologists have noticed is in the 10 years before his death his iconography his portraits become more and more youthful all the time so it's almost like if we do want to link this this shining disc with Aman Hotote III there's some kind of rejuvenation going on. It's almost like, you know, he's basking in the sun's rays and it's and it's rejuvenating him and bringing him back a kind of boyhood. But we can't pin any of this on Arenaton just yet cuz he's not there.

[00:18:36]>> But and also I mean there's a huge difference that these discs and this, you know, youthful Benjamin Buttoning of Amanote is is happening alongside. It's not instead of you basically you've just got more pictures and more statues and more carvings and and but all of it is is existing in the same time >> as all of the old polytheistic gods are all there all that's developing as well.

[00:19:00]Absolutely.

[00:19:01]>> Do we then pinpoint the moment some may call sort of tragic madness when you know the son decides everything his father has done is wrong and I'm going to destroy it all and start again. Does it happen when he changes his name?

[00:19:14]Because he's also meant to be an Aman Hotep.

[00:19:16]>> Aman Hotep IVth really is his real title.

[00:19:19]>> He decides no, I'm going to be Akenatan.

[00:19:22]>> We see the change before the name changes in fact. And it was realized back in the 1980s, 1990s when work was being done at Carnack. We discovered inside one of the great pylons, these are these huge kind of towering edififices, that they are often packed with rubble, you know, to make solid fill. And Egyptologists realized that one of these pylons at Carach was actually packed full of small what we call talatat small blocks like bricks which were highly decorated and they belong to the opening years the first five years of the reign of Ammon Hotep IV Arnatan and they show him worshiping this sundisk. So he had actually built a temple for the Arton inside the domain of Ammon which later after his death was then pulled down. And the dramatic thing that we see here is the iconographic change. So no longer that perfect symmetry that we think about in Egyptian art. You know everything's in proportion, everything is in order.

[00:20:24]Suddenly we see this image of Akanatan with this elongated face, long long chin, a swollen belly, long spindly legs and arms and behind him with the same kind of bizarre distortion of her body is Queen Nefertiti and three of their first daughters. So almost from the beginning he has in his mind the iconography is going to change entirely and the attention is going to be on the Arton but then he abandons of course as you said in the introduction thieves itself and relocates up river into middle Egypt and there establishes his new capital Aarton the horizon of the art and with that comes the name change as well >> we're going to go to the new city in a second but just before we do. So, just dwell on that uh body that you mentioned.

[00:21:19]>> It looks feminine, doesn't it, to me?

[00:21:21]The rounded hips and the buttocks in particular and the belly, they're normally the kind of thing we expect on a on a statue of a woman.

[00:21:29]>> Absolutely.

[00:21:30]>> The question is, is it a new aesthetic that he champions? And and I mean, to my eyes, I have to say, I think the whole thing of Nefertiti and her daughters with these same things is very beautiful. I love the style.

[00:21:40]>> I think they're striking. I mean, they they really are and and new and fresh.

[00:21:45]>> If I had one piece of Egyptian art to loot and take into my home, it would be the one of the daughters of Agnatan from the Berlin Museum.

[00:21:54]>> Absolutely. With their elongated skulls and so forth made out of pink granite very often. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:21:59]>> I mean, you say very beautiful. I think they look like sort of protein ETS, extraterrestrial. I I don't find them beautiful.

[00:22:06]>> You could say aliens as well, right? I do find them beautiful but disturbing at the same time you know. So what's going on with Arkan Artton's body then in reality so so much ink has been spilled on this as you can imagine. So people thought for instance he suffered from various diseases you know in which fat deposits were different or there were skeleton deformities or whatever there may be. I don't think any of that applies because we're thinking here we have to look at Aanatan always with theological eyes. what Arkanatan is trying to do here if he's getting rid of all the other deities. Okay, what does he do then with the great female principles of Egyptian religion, Isis, Nephis, Shu, Teotut, all these great goddess types, you know. Well, what he does, I think, is he brings them all into his body. So, he is deliberately kind of sexually ambiguous in that way.

[00:23:03]His body emphasizes both the male and the female within himself >> because it is himself that's the most important thing in Akanarton's world.

[00:23:13]>> So he didn't look like that you're saying >> I don't think so. No, I don't think so at all. If the mummy that we have found in King's Valley 55 is indeed Arkanatan and it's possible then we can say he didn't look anything like that at all.

[00:23:27]>> So that's interesting because in Hinduism you've got the concept of the male and female divine in the same person. Adin Shaki, you know, the power is is both things.

[00:23:35]>> I think something like that's going on.

[00:23:36]>> You've mentioned that he moved the capital. Can we talk about that? Because that sentence is so easy to say, >> isn't it just >> how the hell do you do it? I mean, we're talking about a massive set of edififices and infrastructure and people. So, why does he suddenly decide, I don't like this anymore. I want something different and I want it somewhere else. He wants a virgin site that nobody's built on before. He kind of has a vision from his god. Not, you know, he's not the only person in history to have this. Alexander is a good example, you know, a new place untainted by any other god. That's what he says actually in the great hymn.

[00:24:13]Untainted by any other god, a new place.

[00:24:16]And he goes to this place, middle Egypt. It's about maybe three hours drive south from Cairo today which has a flat base and then there are two mountains with sort of plateaus really rises out of the horizon and this was basically the physical manifestation of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph aet which means horizon. So he saw in the landscape a hieroglyphic which said this is the place >> cuz he really thinks God is talking directly to him.

[00:24:55]>> Oh my goodness me. Yes. I think that's the thing. This is artinism is a personal relationship between Akanatan and the Arton. Nobody else matters.

[00:25:05]We're going to take a break now, but after the break, find out what this private conversation between Arenatan and his god is going to make him do to all the other gods that existed before.

[00:25:16]Join us then.

[00:25:20]We have some very exciting news. After our first sellout empire show, we've got a second show at the Rest is Fest this September. And we've got a brilliant session lined up. We're calling it three Ayatollah, an Iranian dynasty. We're going to be joined by great friend of the show, Ali Sari, one of Britain's foremost experts on Iranian history, but also an excellent storyteller. Together, we're going to unpack one of the most fascinating and urgent stories in the world right now. How has the influence of the Ayatoll has shaped Iran since the 1979 revolution? Does the grip of the Islamic Republic appear to be fracturing? What role have other nations played in shaping Iran's fate? And as the regime faces economic pressures, regional setbacks, and a disillusioned younger generation, what comes next for a civilization that has outlasted empires? Expect sharp analysis and the usual storytelling and uh warmth and wit and the usual mischief that you've come to expect from us two. The rest is fest runs from the 4th to the 6th of September at London South Bank Center.

[00:26:33]Empire members, you can get your tickets on the 28th of May. General sale opens on the 2nd of June at 10 a.m. Visit southbankcenter.co.uk to find out more.

[00:26:49]>> Okay, welcome back. So just before the break, we had Akenatan having private conflabs with God and seeing his messages in the landscape and deciding he's going to build his new capital in the middle of a virgin landscape. Not an easy thing to do. How long does it take him to do it first of all? And what does he create?

[00:27:09]>> Very quickly. Um it's a 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. Aranaton's temples in Amana are all open to the sky. That's the whole purpose. Of course, these vast courtyards with no shade whatsoever, apart from one little sun shade where he would stand, >> which ambassadors complain about, don't they? I'm not a fan of Arkanarton. Let's put it that way.

[00:28:05]>> Thank you. I am also not a fan. Willie, what what about you? You want to steal a statue, but >> I saw the the opera Aartan in 1984 when I was about 19 years old, and it had the most mesmeriic effect of me. And I find it difficult to to sort of divorce the historical ANA from the willy old romantic >> glorious image that I am a romantic.

[00:28:25]>> So, the lines are drawn. You love him. I hate him. And Lloyd's going to be a bit more diplomatic about it. What I see in him is a zealot, an absolute zealot who gives no room to anybody else for interpretation, belief or unbelief.

[00:28:41]Okay, it's his relationship with his god. Even Nefertiti, I get a feeling, doesn't really count. You know, she's there because she has to he has to have a female principle. But I think about these sun 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 Aranart's reign, I hates him and I'm with him all the way, that Aranatan's court are always depicted bent over, doubled over in obsequiousness before him, you know, and crouching on the ground very often as though they're afraid to stand up, you know.

[00:29:34]>> I think he was a real tyrant. Not only did he make them, you know, keel over and die in the sun, ridiculous new place, his new pad, but also, I mean, the things he expected, he wanted an obliteration of any name, any image, any iconography to do with the past gods.

[00:29:53]Some of these things are are difficult to get to. I mean, we're talking about very tall obelisks that he's sending, you know, these poor workers up to right to the top to chisel off names. The pettiness of it feels a bit bonkers to me that it all has to be scrubbed out.

[00:30:09]>> The process of hacking out the name of a deity is important. Um whenever you know those people who could read in Egypt and these are the priests of course whenever they read they had to read aloud. There was no such thing as silent reading. And so immediately they would say you know they saw the hieroglyphs Ammon it would come out by cancelling their names. Of course they cannot say the name of the god. And if the name of the god isn't there, does the god exist in that case?

[00:30:35]Does a tree in a forest fall and make a sound? You know, it's that kind of thing. If we don't say the name of the god, does he exist at all?

[00:30:41]>> We haven't talked about motives. And your friend Don Redford has an inscription where Aknatan seems to be saying because it's a it's a broken inscription and it's fragmentaryary and there's these kind of frustrating gaps, but he seems to be saying the old gods aren't working anymore.

[00:30:56]>> Yes. It's not that he's denying the presence of the old gods, but they are rivals to his new god. I think that's an important thing, you know. Um, and he wants to foreground his new god, which of course is so completely linked to him.

[00:31:11]>> So really, I mean, it it's self arandisement, I think, more than anything else here. It's egomaniacal to the point where actually I mean even if you know you had a name that was associated with the old gods. Let's say your father had a name associated with the old gods he would have that name scrubbed off your father's table.

[00:31:30]>> Absolutely. Absolutely. And what I can't get my head around. Okay. So it's rather like if you think about Britain you know in the 1540s say with you know the way in which the old church images were being whitewashed over or hacked to pieces. But what do we do with the belief? You know, there's been a group of people, you know, worshiping an image of Mary, you know, or at least venerating Mary for centuries and then somebody from the same village says, "I'm only doing my job." And knocks her head off. You know, how did Akenatan bring the people with him? Did he ever bring the people with him? That's the big question. And I think the way in which at his death, the whole revolution was reversed so quickly suggest to me he wasn't successful. Plus they found sort of secret Ammon worshippers in in Amana, haven't they? All their old prayers that they knew were Ammon related or ISIS worship. We found in Amana in private households little votive plaques showing Akanatan Nefertiti and the disc which locals were supposed to worship in their homes and as opposed to the old hippopotamus goddess that they used to worship, you know. But you can't tell me that, okay, they paid lip service and put up these little plaques. But I'm sure the lady of the house when she was pregnant, going through childbirth, still went back in her mind to the hippopotamus goddess, Tawwar.

[00:32:54]>> And we found images of the different gods.

[00:32:56]>> We have indeed. Exactly. So there's there's this tension there.

[00:32:59]>> Lloyd, can we can we talk about the art in itself? This is, you know, sort of the center of this cult. New cult. I mean, it feels to me like a new cult really.

[00:33:08]It's a boy rebelling against his dad and he knows everything and this is going to be the way and it really and it's all about him. The art theologically what is it? Because we know it's a round disc.

[00:33:19]We know it's got these rays that end up in sort of unk shapes. What is it meant to represent? What is it?

[00:33:27]>> It is merely the sun that's all. And Egypt had been following a solar cult since the pyramid age. Okay. So Ra is a sun god. So there's nothing unusual in that per se, apart from the fact that now Aranarton's fetish is actually on the disc itself. So this round ball of energy is the thing that he venerates rather than the abstract concept of the sun giving light and so forth. It is now the disc itself which becomes all consuming for him. And as you say in the iconography, the rays of the sun come down and they often end in hands very stylistically depicted and some of those hands give the an sign, the sign of life to Akanart and Nefertiti and their daughters.

[00:34:17]>> Hang on, how do you say it? I say ank.

[00:34:19]How do you properly say it? An >> ank.

[00:34:23]Okay.

[00:34:23]>> Yeah. So it's an abstract really. I mean it's a strange thing. It's it's the the sun has always been around and in fact I always think with Akanatan oh couldn't you have gone for something more interesting you know it's it's so obvious you know and and of course it's a great benefit but also sun worship provides difficulties so what happens at night for Arenatan what happens when the sun goes well the Egyptians had thought all about that in their previous theologies you know we know that the sun is swallowed by the sky goddess and it travels through her body and she gives birth to the sun every morning. But the Arton doesn't do that because the Arton can't acknowledge a sky goddess. So what happens when darkness comes? You know, >> you've hinted at it before, but he does not believe that there are no other gods. It's just that he's not worshiping other gods. So you could technically still have the sky goddess swallowing.

[00:35:16]>> You could technically >> Now, how do you have a theology that doesn't answer a question? I mean, the thing is a new theology normally has an answer for something.

[00:35:23]>> Yes. Yes, indeed. That's the problem, isn't it?

[00:35:25]>> Yeah. But I think if we were to try to find a question, what's the question Aran Artton is putting for this new theology, it is what am I all about then? That's the feeling I get. You know, that's what he's asking. What am I? Where am I in all of this cosmic thing? And he finds his answer in the sundisk.

[00:35:43]>> It's so interesting. I mean, I I sort of think I wonder if his dad had hugged him more whether we'd got into this situation. The other thing that's really conspicuous is when he builds archet all the courts go up. Obviously, you know, there must have been cohorts of priests of of Ammon left behind wondering what the hell is going on now and what's going to happen to our land and our powers and our families. But he puts around him a cohort of priests and courtiers who are sick of to the letter, you know, which again is something that we see in in current politics as well, isn't it? And if people are not saying to him, are you sure you want to do this? Because we know that international reputation of Egypt just thinks the Ammana letters show that Egypt is in crisis in this period because Aranarten has no interest in pursuing, you know, military pursuits or even just settling the colonial expansions of this period.

[00:36:34]>> There's lots of letters from the king of Biblo saying, "I'd be surrounded by enemies. Please send help. Please send help." Then another one saying, "And they're getting closer. You haven't sent any troops, please."

[00:36:44]>> Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And Pharaoh has not responded. Oh my lord, I crawl upon my belly seven times and seven times like a dog. Please send us troops. And you know, I mean, they just get the answer, I'm sorry, I'm not in the office right now.

[00:37:01]>> He does actually write back to one saying, "Why are you writing to me so often?"

[00:37:06]>> He's uninterested in in any of these things.

[00:37:09]>> Completely uninterested. Yeah.

[00:37:11]>> We haven't mentioned what actually happens to the old priesthood. isn't just that they're out of a job. The head priest is sent to the quaries. I mean, it's it's a goolag situation, isn't it?

[00:37:20]>> Yes. Absolutely. I mean, and and you've got to wonder again, you know, what was Artton's relationship to these men when he was growing up because you I can't get past the feeling of personal vendettas going on here on that kind of Stalinist level as well, you know, really going for the people who matter.

[00:37:36]So I suppose if if we run a scenario that under the age in Aman Hotep III the high priest of of Ammon and the high priest of Petar had inordinate influence at court and maybe we're dismissing Aranatan with his bizarre ways then of course it's all about comeback isn't it you know and retribution >> I'm still trying to understand the theology so Arton simply is the sun and you know we're going to have new architecture and you're all going to be too hot in the daytime because it's all about the sun that's you know that's what we're going to do. Does the son care? Can you as in before you know go and pray and make an offering to the artist and and be blessed and have you is that the relationship or is it just a son which is beyond you and above you and your life doesn't matter at all.

[00:38:20]>> Your life doesn't matter at all. He has no interest in you and really you're not encouraged to offer to the sun. You're encouraged to offer to Akenatan. He is the intercessor. He is the only one who can hear the son and the son speaks to him and he speaks back to the son. So it's not at all this idea of personal faith that he's not asking for that from anyone. And one of the things I think that's really difficult is that mart a concept which is absolutely central to Egypt's theology. Mart means truth, order, balance, justice. She's represented as a young girl with a feather on her head, a delicate thing that could easily be broken. What happens to Mart in this new theology?

[00:39:08]Because there's no real place for it, you know. Does Akenatan therefore become Mart himself? Probably. We are dealing here with an absolute religious zealot and a narcissist, I think, who is piling honors upon himself. Now, just to again exactly get this this theology in our heads and and where it stands on the on the various spectrums of of monotheism or not, tell me if I've got this right.

[00:39:38]Monotheism strictly defined is the belief that only one god exists.

[00:39:43]>> Exists. Yeah. Absolutely.

[00:39:45]>> Then you have is it monolry? Monoliter >> which is the exclusive worship of one god but not denying.

[00:39:51]>> Yeah. Many gods exist, but one tends to be exclusively worshiped, >> which is what you get in early Canaan.

[00:39:59]>> I wouldn't even say early Canaan, but by the 6th century BCE, something like that is happening. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:40:05]>> And then there's henotheism, which is the elevation of one god above all the others as supreme. So where are we?

[00:40:12]Where does artisanism sit on this?

[00:40:14]>> I would say that this is a henotheistic religion. Okay. It doesn't get rid of the other gods. He acknowledge they exist. they're not functioning correctly and there's no power there. I don't think he can ever claim really in monotheism. And of course, Velikovsky and people like that back in the 50s were all over um Arknart and saying, you know, this is the origins of of monotheism.

[00:40:36]>> But I think we're far from that.

[00:40:37]Actually, very far from that.

[00:40:39]>> We need to talk about one of the greatest mysteries and it's delicious.

[00:40:43]The great hymn to the Arton and its relationship with a book that we may be more familiar with.

[00:40:49]>> Right. So, first of all, just tell us um what we're talking about, the words themselves, cuz I I I wrote them out, but I think you probably know them off my heart, don't you?

[00:40:57]>> Yeah. So, found in one of the tombs in Ammana is this glorious composition that we call the great hymn to the Arton.

[00:41:06]Some people think it is the work of Aranarton himself. Others that have caught scribe wrote it. I don't think it makes a difference whether it was Aranart or a scribe. I think the sentiment is what's important and it talks about the supremacy of the creator god the art that when the earth is in darkness there is nothingness but then the light comes forward the rivers are full of fish the deeds of this god are are just purely benevolent this sun shines down not only on Egypt but on all lands which I think is really fascinating >> says every lion comes forth from his den when you rise they live when you set they die. Now the reason I picked that one is because of the parallels with the other book. Okay, which is okay, drum roll, the Bible. So in Psalm 104, there is this line. Okay, so I'll read the one I just read. The great hymn says, "Every lion comes forth from his den. When you rise, they live. When you set, they die." Psalm 104, "The young lions roar after their prey. They seek their meat from God. The sun ariseth. They gather themselves together and they lay them down in their dens.

[00:42:18]>> It's very close, isn't it?

[00:42:20]>> Proximity between stuff that you find in the Bible and in the great hymn.

[00:42:25]>> But there's 600 years between the two.

[00:42:27]>> Yeah. At least 600 years between the two. James Henry Breasted around about 1900, great Egyptologist. He firmly believed that the author of Psalm 104 knew the great art and hymn somehow you know and this is his version of it.

[00:42:46]Nowadays few people think that although there are a couple of adearance still to it. Mirian Lifetime, a great scholar of hieroglyphs in the 1970s, 1980s, she thought that this is really standard or generic creation imagery we have in Egypt, in the Levant, in Mesopotamia. I agree with her on all of that. But what I can't quite qualify is the structural similarities between the two because in fact if you take them verse by verse they do echo one another all the time. I mean there's a constant twoing and throw in between them.

[00:43:24]>> Is there any other Canaanite or any other thing that is you know like like we have many different versions of the flood and we now know that there are there are several flood uh myths. Do we have any other things that talk about lions going out and and all this stuff?

[00:43:39]>> Oh, so many so many the the metaphors and simileies are absolutely standard across the whole of the ancient near east which includes Egypt. Okay. So that's not an issue for me at all >> which itself is interesting because we we kind of think of Egypt as being different.

[00:43:53]>> No, it's it's not so different.

[00:43:55]Honestly, when I speak of the ancient near east, I always include Egypt in it.

[00:43:58]You know, I I think it is part of that world. The zeitgeist is there. And we really see it in things like Song of Songs in the Hebrew Bible and ancient Egyptian love songs draw on the same parallels all the time. Oh my sister, you know, your hair is like a flock of sheep. Your breasts are like twin gazels.

[00:44:16]>> Pomegranates.

[00:44:17]>> Exactly the pomegranates. Absolutely.

[00:44:20]Necks are like the tower of ivory. It's exactly the same imagery that's shed.

[00:44:24]And I I don't find that difficult at all. But I do find it puzzling and I can't answer really why the structure is the same.

[00:44:31]>> No, no, I'm I'm not having that because that's why we booked you.

[00:44:36]>> Your bishop's going to be getting at you now. Come on. I know. I know. I know.

[00:44:38]>> You're basically in the two food groups that matter here. Your clergy and you're a historian of ancient Egypt. So for some people, this is a, you know, actually it's a mic drop moment for those who believe, you know, this is the revelation of God and look at how constant and consistent it is. You know, this message is the same and it may have been diluted in parts, but can you see that line that stretches straight to that one true God? This is where it all starts. And then the atheist going, told you it's basically a bunch of people stitching up pretty poetry. Mic drop.

[00:45:10]>> Here's the difference. And it's the it's in the difference that's fundamental.

[00:45:13]Okay. The great hymn treats the darkness, the absence of the sun, as the enemy, as death, as nothingness.

[00:45:24]Whereas the psalm treats darkness as God's creation as well. It is still God's. God is still there. In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth and he said there to be light and he divided the darkness from the day and he called the light day and he called the darkness night. So dark in Hebrew thought is still part of God's world. Aranatan sees darkness as an absence of his God.

[00:45:51]>> It is a huge though difference. But you're also a scholar of Persia.

[00:45:55]>> I am.

[00:45:55]>> And the light and the dark is a big concept in Persian religion.

[00:45:59]>> Huge concept there as well.

[00:46:01]>> Are we bringing Persia into this?

[00:46:02]>> If we want to do this, yes, we can.

[00:46:05]Because my belief is that much of the Hebrew Bible as it stands >> is written in Persia.

[00:46:12]>> Is written in the Persian period or at least edited in the Persian period. So Persian religion including this polarity of dark and light, truth and the lie gets filtered into all of this. So while we can say oh look there there are bronze age elements here in the psalms most of them had their redaction in the Persian period and that makes a big difference. We cannot just read the Hebrew Bible as you know some old Bronze Age mythology all going on because actually it's being filtered over centuries in fact >> and massively edited and again on the return from from Persia. Yeah.

[00:46:55]>> Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. So it's it's never a question of saying uh you know A plus B equals C. There's also always something that's going to get in the way of that. Um, you you sort of teased us a little bit at the beginning that you were a team Anita.

[00:47:10]>> Yeah, I'm I'm happy to be on I'm happy to be on your team Anita. Yeah, >> but also Sab was all of Egypt. It turns out >> you're sounding a bit like AA now.

[00:47:19]>> I I see the irony in this. Yes.

[00:47:23]>> How soon after he dies, and we'll go into that in more detail in the next episode. How soon do people just say, "Nah, don't like it."

[00:47:30]>> It collapses almost immediately.

[00:47:32]>> So much has been channeled through him, hasn't it? you know, without him, like the MAGA movement, without the leader, the charismatic leader, we hope things will just disappear, you know, as though they never were. And that's the interesting thing. They didn't want to just say, "We've got through this blip."

[00:47:50]Later Egyptians erased him from history, completely and utterly. So if you look at king lists and the Egyptians loved their lists of monarchs, one at Abbidos for instance, showing Seti the first and his son and heir Rammeses the second in front of all the kushes of the pharaohs of Egypt.

[00:48:07]Conspicuous in his absence is Akanatan.

[00:48:11]And we see it far closer to his time with his son Tudan Hammoon as we know him originally had the name T aten and changed his name to Tuton Kamun to take in that old faith again and very famously in in Karnak temple Tuton Kamun this young king under the tutelage of the old priests of Ammon I dare say establishes a huge edict basically is saying, "Okay, back to normal. Let's open the temples again. Let's let's reboot them." Because Egypt was in flux.

[00:48:48]He says, "You know, this this last 10 years have been chaos when Egypt was without its gods. So, we have to restore the order um through getting the old gods back again." One interesting thought though, you know, the people of Egypt decide very quickly they don't want to borrow this anymore, but it does come back and and just maybe this is a good place to end, but Sigman Freud was obsessed with the fact that actually this lived on. I mean, he was he was obsessed with with Egypt apparently and he had little statues from ancient Egypt all over his desk. But he says Moses was the last Egyptian priest of the Artin.

[00:49:26]>> Freud needs a good lie down, I think, to really think that through. No, there's nothing there. But it was very popular in 1900s. Velikovsky in the '50s claiming that Moses the monotheist, Aranartan the montheist and linking the the story of the Exodus to to this period. It was, you know, kind of natural thing to do. There's nothing there. And all this kind of esoteric stuff was going on. You know, there's a brilliant book that was written early in the 2000s by the late Dominic Monserat, a colleague of mine, looking at the traditions of Aranarten since his death, which is a great read. I recommend for anybody. He's been portrayed in film.

[00:50:00]There's a a 1953 movie called The Egyptian which is uh stars Edmund Purdum and Jean Tierney.

[00:50:07]>> Your faces were lighting up one of his widescreen epics you know in which Akren is shown as this kind of monotheist. He chants the hymn with all of these kind of Hollywood singers in the background shaking sister and doing the Rs and of course very famously in um Philip Glass's opera Akartan uh which I think is a masterpiece. I think it's absolute masterpiece.

[00:50:31]>> Everyone who doesn't know this has got to go maybe the Metropolitan Recording that production is staggering.

[00:50:37]>> I saw the first one in 1984.

[00:50:39]>> The hymn to the art and you see is a masterpiece. Whoever wrote it is it is a beautiful beautiful literary work, a lyric work. And what Glass does in that the whole opera is sung in ancient Egyptian until we get to that moment where Arenaton who is sung by a castrato which you know well a counter tenner which of course has all that sexual ambiguity about the voice. He sings the hymn to the art in the language of the audience whoever it will be. So, English or Catalan or Spanish or French or whatever it will be just to bring that closeness, that proximity home. And then Glass does the amazing thing. He puts to the on the end of that wonderful hymn the Hebrew biblical Hebrew singing of Psalm 104. So, it all comes together really beautifully. It Yeah, I really recommend people listen to it.

[00:51:33]>> Now, we love that opera. We we love that hymn, but you have shown us, I think, very persuasively, that he was not really someone you would have wanted as your ruler or indeed as the as the man leading your religious life. Should we think of him actually as the man who brings intolerance into religion that he's the first guy to say you should not worship this, you should worship that?

[00:51:59]>> That's a that's a really good question.

[00:52:02]I'm tempted to say yes, you know, because I I really don't know of any other individual before the late Bronze Age that does that at all because all kings and all priests recognize the authority of other gods and other kings and he just doesn't do that. So, so yes, you know what? I I think you're absolutely right. I I think there is something there. Another nail in his coffin.

[00:52:28]>> This has been such a deep and winding spiritual journey. It's been brilliant and I can't think of anyone else we would rather have done this with.

[00:52:34]>> You were wonderful, Lloyd. Thank you.

[00:52:36]>> Thank you, >> Lloyd. Well Jones, professor of ancient history at Cardiff University, priest of the church of Wales, friend of Empire.

[00:52:44]All of those things matter equally, I find. So lovely to have you. Next time on Empire, the story of how it all fell apart. And if you want to listen to that right now, you don't have to wait. Head to the link in the description. Become a friend of the show today. Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan, >> and goodbye from me, William Dumple.