363. Ancient Egypt: Destroyer Of Gods – Pharaoh Akhenaten (Ep 2)

18:33And we get from Amenhotep III a very developed theogony, which stated that Amenhotep III himself was the offspring of Amun-Ra, who had slept with his mother, Mutemwia, and progenerated Amenhotep III. So there is a kind of theogony 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 Amarna period.

19:03William:And we get some hints towards the end of his father's reign that he is making theological changes. There is a shift to the system. Nothing as radical as what will happen. The name Aten starts emerging in the last decade of Amenhotep III's reign. Now, we can't pin that on Aachen Aten at all yet because, as I say, he doesn't appear in the imagery or anything. And Aten, we should say, is just the everyday Egyptian word for disk, isn't it? Sun disk, a shining disk. And so we see, for instance, Amenhotep has a beautiful palace built at Malkata on the West Bank. And there he has a lake built, and it's called the Lake of the Aten.

19:44And a bark that floats on the lake is called the Bark of the Aten. And so this name is getting used more and more. And it's kind of interesting as well, as this name becomes used, so Amenhotep 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 shining disc with Amenhotep III, there's some kind of rejuvenation going on. It's almost like, He's busking in the sun's rays and it's rejuvenating him, bringing him back a kind of boyhood.

20:27But we can't pin any of this on Akhenaten just yet because he's not there.

20:31Anita:But also, I mean, there's a huge difference that these discs and this youthful Benjamin buttoning of Amenhotep is happening alongside. It's not in Steddle. Basically, you've just got more pictures and more statues and more carvings. Yes. But all of it is existing in the same time. As all of the old polytheistic gods are all there, all that's developing as well, absolutely. Do we then pinpoint the moment, something called sort of tragic madness, when 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? Because he's also meant to be an Amenhotep.

21:11Amenhotep IV really is his real title.

21:14Anita:He decides, no, I'm going to be Akhenaten. We see the change before the name changes, in fact. And it was realised back in the 1980s, 1990s, when work was being done at Karnak, we discovered inside one of the great pylons, these huge kind of towering edifices, that they are often packed with rubble, you know, to make solid fill. And Egyptologists realised that one of these pylons at Karnak was actually packed full of small, what we call talitat, small blocks like bricks, which were highly decorated, and they belonged to the opening years, the first five years of the reign of Amun-hotep IV, and they show him worshipping this sun disk.

21:57So he had actually built a temple for the Aten inside the domain of Amun, 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. suddenly we see this image of Akhenaten with this elongated face, long, long chin, 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 Aten.

22:49But then he abandons, of course, as you said in the introduction, Thebes itself and relocates upriver into Middle Egypt and there establishes his new capital, Arhet Aten, the horizon of the Aten. And with that comes the name change as well.

23:06William:We're going to go to the new city in a second, but just before we do so, just dwell on that body that you mentioned.

23:14Anita:It looks feminine, doesn't it? To me, the rounded hips and the buttocks in particular, and the belly, they're normally the kind of thing we expect on a statue of a woman.

23:24William:Absolutely. The question is, is it a new aesthetic that he champions? 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. I think they're striking. I mean, They really are, and new and fresh. If I had one piece of Egyptian art to loot and take into my home, it would be one of the daughters of Akhenaten from the Berlin Museum. Absolutely, with their elongated skulls and so forth. Made out of pink granite very often, yeah, absolutely.

23:54Anita:I mean, you say very beautiful. I think they look like sort of protein ETs, extraterrestrial. I don't find them beautiful. 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 Akhenaten's body then in reality? 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 Akhenaten always with theological eyes.

24:31What Akhenaten 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, Nephthys, Shu, Tefnut, all these great goddess types, you know? But what he does, I think, is he brings them all into his body. So he is deliberately kind of sexually ambiguous in that way. His body emphasizes both the male and the female within himself, because it is himself that's the most important thing in Akhenaten's world. 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 Akhenaten, and it's possible, then we can say he didn't look anything like that at all.

25:22Anita:So that's interesting, because in Hinduism, you've got the concept of the male and female divine in the same person. Adin Shakti, you know, the power is both things. I think something like that's going on. 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 edifices 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 sight that nobody's built on before.

25:56He kind of has a vision from his god. He's not the only person in history to have this. Alexander is a good example. A new place, untainted by any other god. That's what he says, actually, in the great hymn. Untainted by any other god. A new place. 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, the sort of plateaus really, rises out of the horizon. And this was basically the physical manifestation of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph, Arhet, which means horizon. So he saw in the landscape a hieroglyphic which said, this is the place.

26:47Anita:Because he really thinks God is talking directly to him. Oh my goodness me, yes. I think that's the thing. Artenism is a personal relationship between Archenarten and the Arten. Nobody else matters. We're going to take a break now, but after the break, find out what this private conversation between Akhenaten and his God is going to make him do to all the other gods that existed before. Join us then.

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29:17William: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 Ayatollahs, an Iranian dynasty. We're going to be joined by great friend of the show, Ali Ansari, 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 Ayatollahs shaped Iran since the 1979 revolution? Does the grip of the Islamic Republic appear to be fracturing?

29:56William: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 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's Southbank Centre. Empire members, you can get your tickets on the 28th of May. General sale opens on the 2nd of June at 10am. Visit southbankcentre.co.uk to find out more.

30:44Anita:Okay, welcome back. So just before the break, we had Akhenaten having private conflabs with gold 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? Very quickly. 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.

31:29So 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 centre, 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.

32:00Anita:Thank you. I am also not a fan. Willie, what about you? You want to steal a statue, but...

32:06William:I saw the opera Akhenaten in 1984 when I was about 19 years old, and it had the most mesmeric effect. I find it difficult to sort of divorce the historical Akhenaten from the glorious image. I am a romantic.

32:21Anita: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. It's his relationship with his God. Even Nefertiti, I get a feeling, doesn't really count. She's there because 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 achanaten's reign i hate him and i'm with him all the way that Akhenaten'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.

33:29I think he was a real tyrant.

33:31Anita:Not only did he make them, you know, keel over and die in the sun, ridiculous new place, his new bad, 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. Some of these things 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. The process of hacking out the name of a deity is important. Those people who could read in Egypt, and these are the priests, of course, whenever they read, they had to read aloud.

34:16There was no such thing as silent reading. And so immediately they would say, you know, they saw the hieroglyphs Amun, 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? 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?

34:36William:We haven't talked about motives. And your friend Don Redford has an inscription where Aknarton seems to be saying, because it's a broken inscription, and it's fragmentary, and there's these frustrating gaps. But he seems to be saying the old gods aren't working anymore. 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. and he wants to foreground his new God, which of course is so completely linked to him. So really, I mean, it's self-aggrandisement, I think, more than anything else here.

35:13Anita:It's egomaniacal to the point where actually, I mean, even if 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 tomb. 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, worshipping an image of Mary, you know, or at least venerating Mary for centuries.

35:48And then somebody from the same village says, I'm only doing my job and knocks her head off, you know. How did Akhenaten 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, suggests to me he wasn't successful.

36:07William:Plus, they found sort of secret Amun worshippers in Amarna, haven't they? All their old prayers that they knew were Amun-related or ISIS-worship. We found in Amarna, in private households, little votive plaques showing Akhenaten, 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, Tawaret, And we found images of the different cults.

36:51We have indeed. Exactly. So there's this tension there.

36:55Anita:Lloyd, can we talk about the Aten itself? This is sort of the centre of this cult. I mean, it feels to me like a new cult, really. Yeah, it is. It's a boy rebelling against his dad and he knows everything and this is going to be the way and it's all about him. The Aten, theologically, what is it? Because we know it's a round disc. We know it's got these rays that end up in sort of unk shapes. What is it meant to represent? What is it? It is merely the sun, that's all. And Egypt had been following a solar cult since the Pyramid Age. So Ra is a sun god. So there's nothing unusual in that per se, apart from the fact that now Akhenaten's fetish is actually on the disk itself.

37:41So 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 unkh sign, the sign of life, to Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their daughters.

38:12Anita:hang on how do you say it i say ankh how do you properly say it ah ankh ankh okay so it's an abstract really i mean it's a strange thing it's the the sun has always been around and in fact i always think with achanaten oh couldn't you 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 Akhenaten? What happens when the sun goes? Well, the Egyptians had thought all about that in their previous theologies. 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.

38:54But the Aten doesn't do that because the Aten can't acknowledge a sky goddess. So what happens when darkness comes?

39:02William:You've hinted at it before, but he does not believe believe that there are no other gods. It's just that he's not worshipping other gods. So, you could technically still have the sky goddess swallowing you all. You could technically.

39:13Anita: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. Yes, yes, indeed. That's the problem, isn't it? Yeah. But I think if we were to try to find a question, what's the question Arcanaten 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 sun disk. It's so interesting. I mean, I sort of think, I wonder if his dad had hugged him more, whether we'd got into this situation.

39:44The other thing that's really conspicuous is when he builds Archidak and Amarna, all the courts go up. Obviously, there must have been cohorts of priests of Amun 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 sycophants to the letter, you know, which again is something that we see 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 sinks.

40:18The Amarna letters show that Egypt is in crisis in this period because Akhenaten has no interest in pursuing, you know, military pursuits or even just settling the colonial expansions of this period.

40:30William:There's lots of letters from the king of Byblos 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. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. 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, they just get the answer. I'm sorry, I'm not in the office right now.

40:56Anita:He does actually write back to one saying, why are you writing to me so often? He's uninterested in any of these things.

41:05William:Completely uninterested, yeah. We haven't mentioned what actually happens to the old priesthood. It isn't just that they're out of a job. The head priest is sent to the quarries. I mean, it's a gulag situation, isn't it? Yes, absolutely. I mean, and you've got to wonder again, you know, what was Archenarten's relationship to these men when he was growing up? because 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. So I suppose if we run a scenario that under the age in Amenhotep III, the high priest of Amun and the high priest of Ptar had an inordinate influence at court and maybe were dismissing Akhenaten with his bizarre ways, then of course it's all about comeback, isn't it, you know, and retribution.

41:50Anita:I'm still trying to understand the theology. So Aten simply is the sun and 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 what we're going to do. Does the sun care? Can you, as in before, go and pray and make an offering to the Aten and be blessed? Is that the relationship or is it just a sun which is beyond you and above you and your life doesn't matter at all? Your life doesn't matter at all. It has no interest in you. And really, you're not encouraged to offer to the sun. you're encouraged to offer to Akhenaten. He is the intercessor.

42:26He is the only one who can hear the sun and the sun speaks to him and he speaks back to the sun. So it's not at all this idea of personal faith. 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? Because there's no real place for it, you know? Does Akhenaten therefore become Mart himself? Probably.

43:12We're dealing here with an absolute religious zealot, and a narcissist, I think, who is piling honors upon himself.

43:22William:Now, just to, again, exactly get this theology in our heads and where it stands on the various spectrums of monotheism or not, tell me if I've got this right. Monotheism, strictly defined, is the belief that only one God exists. Exists, yeah, absolutely. Then you have, is it monolotry? Monolotry? Yeah. Which is the exclusive worship of one god, but not denying. Yeah. Many gods exist, but one tends to be exclusively worshipped. Which is what you get in early Canaan. I wouldn't even say early Canaan, but by the 6th century BCE, something like that is happening. Yeah. And then there's henotheism, which is the elevation of one god above all the others as supreme.

44:07William:So where are we? Where does artanism sit on this? I would say that this is a henotheistic religion, okay? He doesn't get rid of the other gods. He acknowledged 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 Akhenaten saying, you know, this is the origins of monotheism. But I think we're far from that, actually, very far from that.

44:34Anita:We need to talk about one of the greatest mysteries, and it's delicious, the great hymn to the Aten and its relationship with a book that we may be more familiar with. So first of all, just tell us what we're talking about, the words themselves. I wrote them out, but I think you probably know them off my heart, don't you? Yeah. So, found in one of the tombs in Amarna is this glorious composition that we call the Great Hymn to the Aten. Some people think it is the work of Akhenaten himself, others that have caught scribe wrote it. I don't think it makes a difference whether it was Akhenaten or a scribe.

45:11I think the sentiment is what's important. And it talks about the supremacy of the creator god, the Aten, 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 just purely benevolent. This sun shines down not only on Egypt, but on all lands, which I think is really fascinating.

45:37Anita:It 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, which is, okay, drum roll, the Bible. In Psalm 104, there is this line. 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.

46:13William:It's very close, isn't it?

46:15Anita:The proximity between stuff that you find in the Bible and in the great hymn. But there's 600 years between the two. 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. nowadays few people think that although there are a couple of adherents still to it mirian liftheim 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.

47:05But 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 to-ing and fro-ing between them.

47:20William:Is there any other Canaanite or any other thing that is, you know, like we have many different versions of the flood, and we now know that there are several flood myths. Do we have any other things that talk about lions going out and all this stuff? Oh, so many. So many. The metaphors and similes 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 kind of think of Egypt as being different. No, it's not so different, honestly. When I speak of the ancient Near East, I always include Egypt in it.

47:54You know, 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 gazelles. Pomegranates. Exactly the same. Pomegranates, absolutely. Necks are like the tower of ivory. It's exactly the same imagery that's shared. And 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.

48:26Anita:No, no, I'm not having that. Because that's why we booked you.

48:31William:Your bishop's going to be getting at you now. Come on. I know, I know, I know.

48:34Anita:You're basically in the two food groups that matter here. You're a clergy and you're a historian of ancient Egypt. So for some people, this is, 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. Here's the difference.

49:06And it's in the difference that's fundamental. The great hymn treats the darkness, the absence of the sun, as the enemy, as death, as nothingness. 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'd 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. Akhenaten sees darkness as an absence of his God.

49:47William:It is a huge, but you're also a scholar of Persia. I am. And the light and the dark is a big concept in Persian religion. Huge concept there as well. Are we bringing Persia into this? If we want to do this, yes, we can, because my belief is that much of the Hebrew Bible, as it stands, 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 are Bronze Age elements here in the Psalms, most of them had their redaction in the Persian period.

50:31And that makes a big difference. We cannot just read the Hebrew Bible as some old Bronze Age mythology all going on, because actually it's being filtered over centuries, in fact.

50:46William:And massively edited, and again, on the return from Persia. Yes. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. So it's never a question of saying, you know, A plus B equals C. There's also always something that's going to get in the way of that.

51:01Anita:You sort of teased us a little bit at the beginning that you were a team Anita. Yeah, I'm happy to be on your team Anita. But also, so was all of Egypt, it turns out. You're sounding a bit like Akhenaten now. I see the irony in this, yes. How soon after he dies, and we'll go into that in more detail in the next episode, how soon do people just say, no, don't like it? It collapses almost immediately. 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.

51:41And that's the interesting thing. They didn't want to just say, we've got through this blip. 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 Abydos, for instance, showing Seti I and his son and heir, Ramesses II, in front of all the katushas of the pharaohs of Egypt. Conspicuous in his absence is Akhenaten. And we see it far closer to his time with his son, Tutankhamun, as we know him, originally had the name Tutankhamun and changed his name to Tutankhamun to take in that old faith again. And very famously in Karnak Temple, Tutankhamun, this young king, under the tutelage of the old priests of Amun, I dare say, establishes a huge edict, basically saying, okay, back to normal.

52:38Let's open the temples again. Let's reboot them. Because Egypt was in flux. He says, you know, this last 10 years have been chaos when Egypt was without its gods. So we have to restore the order through getting the old gods back again.

52:57Anita: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 just maybe this is a good place to end. But Stephen Freud was obsessed with the fact that actually this lived on. I mean, he was obsessed 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 Aten. Freud needs a good lay down, I think, to really think that through. No, there's nothing there. But it was very popular in the 1900s, Velikovsky in the 50s, claiming that Moses the monotheist, archonaten the monotheist and linking 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 montserrat a colleague of mine looking at the traditions of archonaten since his death which is a great read i recommend for anybody he's been portrayed in film there's a 1953 movie called the Egyptian, which stars Edmund Purdom and Jean Tierney.

54:03Your face is lighting up, Lloyd. One of these widescreen epics, you know, in which Akhenaten 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 ahs. And of course, very famously in Philip Glass's opera, Akhenaten, which I think is a masterpiece. I think it's absolutely a masterpiece.

54:26William:Everyone who doesn't know this has got to go. Maybe the Metropolitan recording. That production is staggering. I saw the first one in 1984. The Hymn to the Aachen, you see, is a masterpiece. Whoever wrote it, 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 Akhenaten, who is sung by a castrato, a countertenor, which of course has all that sexual ambiguity about the voice. He sings the hymn to the Aten 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.

55:12And then Glass does the amazing thing. He puts on the end of that wonderful hymn the Hebrew, Biblical Hebrew singing of Psalm 104. So it all comes together really beautifully. Yeah, I really recommend people listen to it.

55:28William:Now, we love that opera. 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 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? That's a really good question. I'm tempted to say yes, you know, because 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 recognise the authority of other gods and other kings, and he just doesn't do that.

56:16So yes, you know what, I think you're absolutely right. I think there is something there. Another nail in his coffin.

56:23Anita: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.

56:30William:You were wonderful, Lloyd. Thank you. Thank you.

56:32Anita:Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Professor of Ancient History at Cardiff University, priest of the Church of Wales, friend of Empire. 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 Arnon. And goodbye from me, William de Rimpol.