366. Ancient Egypt: Tutankhamun The Boy King (Ep 5)

15:33William:So that world collapses when Akhenaten dies, doesn't it? And we've had the description of his death in the episode that we talked about the fall of Amarna. and at that point we assume that what Tata is a child of eight or nine yeah and his world presumably goes into spin at this point yeah I mean because Akhenaten whichever way you you you cut it I mean Akhenaten is a very singular individual he was once described as the first individual in history um he must be quite a commanding guy because he's instituted all these reforms. So then when he disappears, maybe before he disappears, he takes, as is not uncommon, a co-ruler.

16:20So we have the name Smenech Kare, who seems to be a co-ruler of Akhenaten's and who may die, disappear before Akhenaten's death. And then for some people, my colleague, Professor Aidan Dodson included, Nefertiti, the wife of Akhenaten, takes on the role of king. So there's a period, there's a kind of interregnum, you could say, between the death of Akhenaten and Tutankhaten becoming king, before he changes his name, where there's various, yeah, kind of horse trading for power.

16:51Anita:So he doesn't have his father anymore. He's just been living in an age of enormous tumult. Nobody's seen anything like this, where the gods themselves have been destroyed, if you like. He's just a boy. Two very powerful adults come into his life, the muscle and the brain and the political fixer and the military commander. So tell us about Ai and Horemheb. Who are they and what parts do they play in his life? So we probably know rather less about Ai. He seems to be an elder statesman already in the reign of Akhenaten from a powerful family in some way connected to the royal family. We're not quite sure how.

17:35For some people, for some Egyptologists, he's the father of Nefertiti. I'm a little sceptical about that myself. He takes on the slightly mysterious title of God's father. And if you're the God's father, you could say maybe, I don't know, you're the father-in-law of the king, you're kind of acting as a regent, but he appears in Tutankhamen's shadow pretty much at the same scale as the king, which is a great presumption. If you show yourself as the same scale visually as the pharaoh of Egypt, you must be someone quite important. So he's hanging around. And then there's Horamheb, who we know from his extensive and very beautifully decorated tomb at the site of Saqqara, which he was preparing before he eventually became king after Akhenaten's death.

18:18He is the general. He is in charge of the military, the army. He's the Sisi of the day. Yes, and Sisi has been compared to him for sure, the current president of Egypt. And he's interesting. I find Horemheb interesting because he makes great play, which might seem surprising for a military guy, with being able to write. He's got the skills of writing and of organizing.

18:46William:Is that unusual for a general? I think so, yeah. They don't put great emphasis on their penmanship. But he has statues showing him as a writer. There's a, yeah.

18:57Anita:Okay, so he's literary, which is unusual, but also the fact that he still maintains, you know, his position as a commander of the army. Because, let's face it, Tutankhamun's dad wasn't really that fussed about the army, was he? I mean, we know he neglected starvation around him with all those begging letters that we have from the Amarna tablets. which, by the way, we've done some really lovely episodes on, if you want to go back and hear in-depth stuff about both Amarna and indeed Akhenaten. But tell us, I mean, how is it that he still remains this huge sort of muscular figure when the father wasn't really that bothered about armies?

19:34Well, I think the key to Horemheb's success is that he's probably in charge of the army. And if there's an issue...

19:41Anita:Cyclical there, okay. They would bump back and that's been echoed in the more recent history of Egypt itself. But these two courtiers clearly are the ones that are advising, as you said, this small boy of 7, 8, 9. And when he comes to the throne, they must have their own interests. But it's worth emphasising that Tutankhamen, even as a boy, is the son of a previous king. So he has the legitimacy of that position.

20:10William:So are we assuming that this little kid, in the aftermath of this catastrophic revolution that's gone wrong and everyone is peddling back frantically, that he is a puppet which Horemheb is controlling, he's pulling the strings, or not necessarily? Not necessarily. There is really the belief that this child, especially once he is the pharaoh, he's the king of Egypt, that he is divine. the advisors I and Horemheb can claim whatever they want and may have this kind of command of the real politic but they are not anointed living gods so I think you've got to imagine there could be a petulant little nine year old saying I want it this way and you've got to follow what the kid wants but Jim Kamen is in a moment where he must know there is pressure for counter-revolution so it's about managing that transition back to tradition in some ways.

21:08Anita:Okay, so I'm interested on whose idea the counter-reformation is, you know, the putting back of the gods on their pedestal. Because, I mean, at nine, can you really imagine that a little boy would say, you know what we need? What we need in Egypt is our gods back. I mean, could that possibly have come from a child? I mean, it depends, you know, who has an influence on him personally. We know of a royal tutor who doesn't seem to come to much, a guy called Senefer. So if you have that role of being a teacher, a tutor in some way rearing the young future or current king, then you are incredibly powerful because you could influence this child's thinking.

21:52But there must be an atmosphere in the aftermath of Akhenaten's death that the experiment has gone wrong. and so it's about managing, as I say, that transition back to orthodoxy.

22:05Anita:Now we kind of, Willie, do you remember we talked about, you know, the fact that even though Akhenaten was busy smashing up any mention of any of the other gods, people still hid their little statues of little hippos in their homes and I suppose in desperation when times are hard and that man's gone, you can pretty much clamour for what you like. So maybe following the tide rather than having the idea himself. Yeah, I think leaning into what must have been a fairly common thought that the traditional gods of Egypt had existed for thousands of years, and Akhenaten's experiment seems to have pertained mainly to the elite, to the court surrounding the king.

22:45So when the king disappears, you know, the court think, what is in our best interests? So yes, you're right, people in their homes we know of amulets that show all the old traditional gods. And there are economic reasons that closing all the temples, which are huge hubs for agricultural administration, if you do that, you kind of complicate the whole system of taxation, of, you know, governance of the country. So there are good reasons probably to revert those things that maybe a nine-year-old wouldn't understand.

23:20William:Campbell, when we were talking about the fall of Amarna, we dwelt briefly on the Restoration Stella. Does this date from this important document, does this date from Tutankhamen's reign? Do we think that he might have put it out? Yes, although it's later claimed it's edited to suggest that it was later kings that did it. I mean, yeah, Tutankhamen in a way was relatively insignificant, but one of the, if not the most significant thing he did was the counter-reformation, the counter-revolution, the restoration of the old gods. This is a very significant historical document, but it should be seen in the context of the fact that any new power, any new king, says that everything that went before wasn't quite right and I've restored things back to the way they should be.

24:10So that is a literary trope. It is used hundreds of years before. So Tutankhamen in a way is following that. But the language that's used in that inscription, we know of at least two copies of it from Karnak, the home of the traditional god Amun, Amun-Ra. The language in it is quite emotive. And you could imagine people felt pretty disenfranchised. And so the king is doing probably what most people want.

24:37Anita:So, I mean, what we should say is that the Restoration Stelle that we're talking about, it's a deeply interesting political document, as Campbell says. And the kind of thing, Campbell, that you're talking about, the things that it says, it describes temples falling into ruin, the gods' shrines overgrown with weeds, a land in confusion, the divine world inaccessible. So, you know, as you say, I mean, could it be, I mean, because it is so hyperbolic, more propaganda than anything else? I mean, how do you rate it? Right. Well, OK. So I don't like to use the term propaganda for ancient Egypt because it has a set of assumptions in the more modern world that probably aren't appropriate.

25:19most people, you know, 95 % people can't read. So any statement that's written is directed first and foremost to the gods themselves, a metaphysical audience we totally underestimate, and then the few elite people invested with any power to convince them that what the state, such as it is, is doing is the right thing. So I don't think it's propaganda necessarily for the populace.

25:49William:It's a fascinating thought, just to dwell on it. So all the stuff that we're reading, that we assume people can read and is going out there, is actually, a lot of it's directed at the gods. It's not directed at human beings at all. Yes, exactly. So I think that's important to bear in mind in a pre-modern setting. But you're right, the writing is emotional in a way and it does break, kind of formulate customs, although the tropes are echoed from centuries before. And it's very like that Shakespeare sonnet, Bear Runed Choirs, talking about the fallen monasteries of the Reformation. And this is the same sort of...

26:25William:Yes.

26:26Anita:Just sing the tune, Willie, because you've got another extract from it. I'm sure people will want to know what it says.

26:31William:My John Gielgud voice coming up. Yes, here we go. His majesty drove out disorder throughout the two lands, and justice was established in its place. Now, when his majesty appeared as king, the temples of the gods and goddesses from Elephantine down to the marshes of the delta had fallen into ruin. Their shrines had become desolate. The gods turned their backs upon this land. If an army was sent to Jajahi, which is Palestine, to extend the frontiers of Egypt, no success came to them. If one beseeched any god, he would not come. hearts were weak in bodies for what had been made was destroyed.

27:19Anita:Yeah. I mean, it's poetry really, isn't it? It's got that lilting quality to it. So, I mean, again, I'm also obsessed with this idea that this is a message up rather than a message out. But in his life, you know, what he's actually surrounded by, I mean, does he marry? I mean, there's always such a pressure at a young age to marry, particularly if you have. So, I mean, And that, to me, fascinating. It's a message up rather than out. But in the out and about and around him, tell me, you know, is he with somebody? Is he in love? I mean, how has that all worked out? Is he happy? What's going on, Campbell, in his actual life?

27:57Anita:Yeah. Well, we surely, this kind of historical detail is inaccessible. We do know he marries his sister. Or half-sister. A lady called Ankhes Enpaaten, or a girl, really. She might be a bit older than him, but she changes her name to Ankh-Hess-En-Pa-Amun as he changes his name to Tut-Ankh-Amun. So they drop the Aten and they move back to the capital, to Memphis, and they start building at Thebes. So this is expected that a young king will marry a relatively close female relative. Maybe it was for love or affection, more likely just for dynastic reasons. and she features in a number of items from his tomb.

28:44She's named, she's depicted in various ways. So from the get go, I think, you don't just get a king on his own, you get a great royal wife, you get a queen as well.

28:57Anita:Let's take a break. Join us after the break where, I mean, it all sounds marvellous. A new way of doing things that is the old way of doing things. Everybody happy, they've got their gods back. a man married, young boy married to somebody who can build an empire with. It doesn't quite go to plan, though. Join us after the break.

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31:27William:June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college pc.

31:35Anita:Welcome back. Campbell, so you're somebody who thinks particularly carefully about objects and the physical things that survive from the ancient world. Tell us a little bit about the people who made these beautiful things that we now flock to museums to see. Who were they? Who used these objects? Well, I think it's important to say that those craftsmen, those artisans were specialists, not just in the sense of knowing how to work materials and specialists in certain techniques, but also religious specialists. So if you were crafting the statue of the king or a statue of a god, you had to be someone who was initiated into not just a kind of trade guild, but into the initiations and the mysteries of the gods.

32:22And we know around the time of the restoration, Tutankhamen and a couple of reigns later, there are craftsmen who boast about being initiated and going around and restoring, putting back in order all the temples and all the statues that have been smashed up by Akhenaten and his agents. So you've got to imagine there would be a lot of work going about for a specialist stonemason craftsman to set right again what Akhenaten had cast asunder.

32:52William:And one of the things that appears in surprising number in that tomb, when you look behind all these lovely mummies and all the gold and everything, there's a lot of walking sticks. Now, what's going on there? Now, much has been made of this. So Tutankhamen's tomb, remember, is the only royal tomb of the New Kingdom period found intact. so everything seems exceptional because we've got it it survives and Howard Carter as I said in another episode was uniquely placed to know what might be in a tomb because he'd found lots of fragments of these kinds of objects and it's really only been in the last 50 or so years with more medicalised some might say clinicised treatments of Tutankhamen that focus has been on his perceived disability.

33:44And so from this narrative springs the assumption, oh, he had lots of sticks and staves because he needed them.

33:53Anita:Let's spell it out because I mean, you know, I've read things about his club foot, his curved spine, his weak bones, his sort of rickety legs, you know, all of that kind of thing that actually these were walking sticks because this kid needed help to walk. I'm sceptical of this. You're sceptical of quite a lot, Cabal. Yes, you are. Well, that's the fun part of being an Egyptologist. Yeah. To pick apart your colleagues' papers. So, clearly, in ancient Egyptian iconography, holding a big stick means you can beat other less important people up. Having a staff is a sign of authority. So, Tutankhamen is a king.

34:31One of my favourite objects from the tomb is a stick with an inscription that's been added saying, cut by the king's own hand. Really? So a flunky has added this. You know, the king's gone out hunting or whatever in the marshes and cut this down himself. So these are signs of authority. The iconography shows Tutankhamen as the king of the time. There is no implication really that he needs to use a stick any more than any other king.

35:01William:Yeah, I mean, quite the contrary. We see him in his chariot using a bow. He's this sort of heroic sort of young god in some of the pictures. Yeah, there's no reason to suppose he didn't actually go off to active warfare in some kind of foray. The presence of the sticks has been mapped onto perceived evidence of decrepitude of the body, but this is highly subjective. Not everyone agrees on it. You know, it was suggested at some point we may have had a club foot. Again, the jury is out on that. I thought that was settled. That's not settled at all. No, no, I don't think it's settled.

35:36Anita:I also thought it went even further than that, Campbell, that, you know, Marfan syndrome, which is this scully. Oh, look at your face. No, Campbell's not buying this at all. No, very sceptical. Let me just say what Marfan syndrome is. There's a very specific shape of their head that is produced by Marfan, which I thought his father might have had as well, which influenced the whole art aesthetic of the alien chic, as I like to call it. The alien chic. He finds it very beautiful. I find it very beautiful. You keep looking, you're thinking it's E.T. I don't like it at all. Yes, I think it's weird.

36:06Anita:But you're saying no. I'm saying no. I'm saying the aesthetics, I agree, William, they are beautiful and they're of the time, they're highly stylistic and they emphasise the godliness and the separateness of royalty. You cannot diagnose someone based on their appearance on an Egyptian relief or a statue. that is just a fantasy.

36:32So, actually, the evidence is pretty equivocal.

36:35William:This is all complete revelation. I thought this was settled and absolutely... No, no, no. They were all inbred, that they'd gone weird because they were too many cousins marrying each other for generation after generation, and he had curvature of the spine and fell off his chariot and all the rest of it. None of this, you don't buy it.

36:51Anita:This podcast is going to lead to a herd of Egyptologists armed with walking sticks coming for Campbell. I'm just, I'm predicting. It is written in the sand. This may well happen. Can we talk about some of the other things that are maybe less controversial in the tune? Because he had toys. He had, you know, sort of, you know, charming childhood things.

37:12William:But now he's shaking his head. I'm afraid he needs to. No, no. There are no toys.

37:18Anita:No boomerangs. Oh my goodness. This is a really, really important point. and it's quite a sinister and quite pernicious and persistent idea of ancient Egypt that things that we don't understand, and if they're small, they get labelled as toys. Ancient Egyptian experiences of childhood were different in construction, I think. More interesting is the things that were in Tutankhamen's tomb, like heirlooms. There's a lock of his probably grandmother's, maybe great-grandmother's hair, Queen T. That's fascinating that he has that.

37:54William:The Victorians like carrying locks on their grandfathers and grandmothers' hairs around with them in little bracelets. It's only a fashion that's gone out in the last 100 years. Yeah, and there are ritual religious reasons you might want to have that material in your tomb. But more interesting than an interpretation of toys is the fact that there are objects which were used by a child, so child-sized sandals or child-sized furniture, which must be because if you believe the king is a living God, anything which comes into contact with his body is by association sacred. So it has to be kept.

38:35Anita:Okay. Okay. So if you imagine Ramesses II lived till his 90s, his tomb is massive, partly because he needed to have all of his wardrobe kept. And there's also another sense in which if a magician, we know this has happened, if an ill-intentioned magician got a hold of one of the king's personal possessions, they could essentially do black magic on him.

38:59William:That's still very much a thing in Africa today, isn't it? You've got to hide your toenails and stuff when you go to Kenya and hotels because people do all sorts of stuff on it. So keeping all of that material together in the tomb was a way of keeping the king safe for eternity. So I don't think there's any definitive evidence of there being toys. There are games that he used as a young man. There are musical instruments, there are weapons. There's a writing kit with one of his sister's names on, which is quite charming. Back to the idea of female literacy. Clearly that was something that was present in the royal family, at least.

39:36There are little insights into life, but most of the material in the tomb is about the transformation of Tutankhamen into a god, rather than sentimental stuff about his life.

39:46Anita:I just wanted to make the observation, Not since Peter Frankopan have we been beaten up quite so much on a podcast. Not so much since the immortal words of the great Peter Frankopan. You lot don't know what you're talking about.

40:00William:We've got to show this to Anita's mum because she always likes it when Anita's put down.

40:05Anita:She loves it when we get beaten up on a podcast. She absolutely loves it completely.

40:09William:So you don't like Anita's toys, But you presumably do go with the fact that there are, rather sadly, even tragically, two fetuses. Yes, this is a sad but probably not uncommon fact of life in the ancient world. Although those two stillborn children are not named, which is interesting in itself, they are given very careful treatment. Their bodies have been mummified and, like their father, buried in coffins. How many months old are they? They are both, yeah, pre-birth, less than nine months in age. And they are presumably the children of Tutankhamen and Ankesan Eramun, because we don't know of another wife Tutankhamen had.

40:59I guess he didn't live very long. He only reigned for nine years. A fact we know principally from his wine cellar, because the highest attested date on the wine is year nine. So that's how we know Tutankhamen was on the throne for nine years.

41:13William:Amazing how much the wine comes into the story of ancient Egypt. We've had it when we were doing Gaza, about all the wine being sent south from Gaza under seal. We've come into it again on all these episodes of Nomarda. It's a major form of evidence. Yes, yeah, yeah. Because labelling the wine is pretty important. Labelling containers generally is a very useful thing the ancient Egyptians did for future historians. So yes, the two fetuses seem to be the only known children of Tutankhamen and his wife. And then when he dies, his wife is left alone. And there is good evidence of her appealing to foreign powers to help her out.

41:54William:Would that be regarded as traitorous? Because we've come across these letters before. She writes to the Hittites. Yeah, the ancient Egyptians don't seem to have liked the idea of Egyptian royal women marrying non-Egyptian royals. Yeah, we get lots of women sent to marry male pharaohs. Yes. But we don't summon foreign princes to come and sleep with sacred Egyptian women. Yeah, to supplant the sacred male line of Horus kings, Egyptian Horus kings, would not have been viewed positively.

42:25Anita:Now, fully accepting the fact that you're going to beat me up, Can we talk, dare I bring up the fact that, you know, we've talked about the death of the children. Can we talk about the death of Tutankhamen? Because there is a thesis around Campbell, didn't just make it up, Campbell, that he was murdered. Leave the move, there's been a murder.

42:49William:Murdered.

42:49Anita:Yes. Now, now you're going to tell me, no, he died for a happy old man. How did he die? He died a young man. I mean, that's all we can say, really. Lots of theories about this. Again, difficult to say because the evidence is compromised. Not only did Carter extract him so violently from the coffin, but subsequently, between the 1930s and 1960s, some rummaging had gone on and basically the front of Tutankhamen's ribcage had been removed. So a theory that is based on major trauma to the chest is difficult to prove because the evidence isn't there. So lots of theories. Was he munched by a hippo or did he die in a chariot accident?

43:41Which people tend to make much of as if he was a boy racer. In fact, we know from descriptions, from formal religious descriptions of previous tombs, that the royal burial included a chariot hall. So a New Kingdom king would be buried with chariots. That's just a standard thing. It's not that Tutankhamun was particularly into... You come with your garage into the new world. No, exactly. It's not the royal muse transferred into the afterlife. So you've got to imagine also specialists in chariotry have pointed out that you couldn't make an Egyptian chariot go very fast. So it would be a stately thing.

44:23as we see with Akhenaten and Nefertiti, they're snogging in the chariot at Tamarna because there are no processions of God. So you have to watch the king and queen necking instead. So I don't think he died in a chariot accident because it couldn't have gone fast enough. He doesn't seem to have had a club foot. So it's not that he just wobbled off. That was the theory that he had a club foot and he fell backwards out, yeah. We'll never know for sure. It's fun to speculate. I remember being at a book festival and talking about Tutankhamen. And I said as a joke, maybe he'd been drinking before. And then the next day there was a tabloid newspaper said, didn't come and died from drink driving.

45:01It's just nonsense.

45:04Anita:And Willie, you were sort of, you know, scratching your head about the hippo. I've heard the hippo thing, but we should say, and those of you who have grown up in lands of hippos, they're bloody violent. Yes. The most dangerous animal in Africa still. Can we then talk about the woman who, or the girl who is left a widow now, because she's still very young and she hasn't got a living child. That, I'm assuming, is going to make you pretty damn vulnerable.

45:27William:We have her image, don't we? There are pictures of him on the throne with her standing beside her. That is the same girl. Yes, and Kesel Namund. So she's on various objects in the tomb, but no, there are no surviving children. So if she had had a son, of course, she could be the Queen Regent and that could work out well. We've got precedent for that. But there's this extraordinary text from the deeds of Sucliliuma. We love that name. We might even ask you to say it again. Sucliliuma, very un-Egyptian sounding. So the Queen of Egypt, which is, I mean, based on evidence is likely to be, because of the reference to the king's name, to be Ankesanamon, his wife, his widow, writes saying to a foreign king, please send a son.

46:14I don't want to marry a servant of mine. and so whether this was traitorous behaviour or not, she's desperate and it seems that a son is sent but he's murdered on the way. Murdered en route. Yeah. By who? This is death on the Nile all over again. Well, a dash of Agatha Christie for sure. I mean, you can, given what we've said in this episode, there are people hanging around. There is I and Horemheb.

46:41Anita:There are suspects, the Brain and the Brawn, who, you know, it's not in their interest to have another king when they've been, you know, accessed all the power. No, no, exactly. To supplant people who may not be of royal blood, but who in some ways maybe think that they've earned the position. And it's interesting that I, who can only rule for a couple of years, two or three years, doesn't last long. He may be the servant that Ankh-Esanamun's afraid of because there is a ring, a basil of a ring, which it names Ankes-e-Namun and Ai together. So maybe there is a brief marriage of convenience between the two of them.

47:21For ancient Egypt in general, in this period in particular, we've got so much interesting detail and fragmentary evidence. So there are little bits that, you know, nudge your interpretation in a certain way. I mean, undoubtedly, Horemheb comes along and rules for well over, you know, well, probably over 20 years. So he's a success. he kind of stabilises the country.

47:44William:We haven't said that clearly. He becomes the next pharaoh. Yes. Horemheb does, in time, become the next pharaoh. So Ai gets into the bed chamber and Horemheb gets into the throne. That's even more complicated. Yes. I mean, Ai is an old man, for sure, by the time he gets to the throne. So he's only around briefly. And then Horemheb secures and consolidates the Reformation position. and he actually writes out Tutankhamun from the story. So he lumps everyone previous in the Amarna period with negative thoughts, writes them out of history. Horemheb connects himself with Tutankhamun's grandfather, Amunhotep III.

48:28So there's an elision between the two of them and that's what history remembers. The great king's lists of Ramesses II, a few generations later, go from Amenhotep III to Horemheb, and everyone else is forgotten.

48:44William:Campbell, I've got an urgent question here, though, because we know from previous episodes that a lot of the old Amarna crew are quaked out of their tombs and shoved into a sort of holding chamber, and their nice tombs are taken over, and they're not given the honour that we'd expect from a pharaoh. How come Tutankhamen is left when Atenarten and Nefertiti are bundled into a great sort of chamber together with everyone else from that era? Well, you're right there, huicht. I think that's exactly the right word, great word. It's a Billy Connolly word. Yeah. You know the sketch? So, again, there's lots of uncertainty about this, about the identity of the people involved.

49:27There's kind of musical chairs, musical mummies, both from tombs at Atamarna where people are maybe initially buried and then brought back to Thebes and then movement at Thebes. So the reason Tutankhamen is left alone is basically because of the situation, the actually very lucky situation of his tomb being at the base, really the bottom of the Valley of the Kings. So the Valley of the Kings, although it may not seem it if you visited, can occasionally have flash floods that bring in dust and mud and sand and when that dries it's like cement. So if your tomb is in the bottom of the valley, as Tutankhamen's was, it was covered over.

50:08Other kings build higher up on the hills and the chippings from the tomb cover Tutankhamen's sepulcher. And then Tutankhamen, perhaps a benefit of his having been officially forgotten was that he was struck off lists. So if people were going round trying to find tombs, they wouldn't find him.

50:26Anita:In the spirit of my learned friend here, I have an urgent question. Okay, so now that he's been erased, it's an imperative question here, Campbell. Go for it, Anita. So now that all of, you know, that Amarna revolution never happened, now that he's erased every member of the family, even those who tried to reverse it in the shape of Tutankhamen, do the people of Egypt prosper under this new non-royal blooded regime that follows?

50:53William:This military regime, it's an Egyptian military general yet again. difficult to know exactly you know how prosperity trickled down the social pyramid but as far as stability of government goes if you judge the prosperity of a country by the stability of the royal house things do markedly improve because horam head makes plans although he doesn't have children of his own that we know of to inherit he makes plans for a military colleague paramesu who changes his name a bit to become Ramesses I. And Ramesses I is a living son, Seti, and probably a living grandson who becomes Ramesses II. So Horemheb has the foresight, after a fairly successful reign of his own, to set up the next dynasty, Dynasty XIX.

51:40And they again are military colleagues, aren't they? They're generals. Yeah, they're in the military together. And the military and the administration at that period are pretty close, and the religious hierarchy are pretty close. so things are stable strong and stable you could say

51:56William:so at the end of this period of confusion Campbell, the Ramesses who we all know, you go to Cairo it's Ramesses Square they're often regarded as the golden age of ancient Egypt so we are leaving this story with a very happy ending in a sense in a way well that's good after all these disasters very nice And Ramesses II famously is the only Egyptian pharaoh with a passport, isn't he? He needed a passport to go to America.

52:30Anita:Don't start him off again. He just went supposedly. He doesn't like that story. In that way they had. With that sort of, and they all lived happily ever after. We're going to end this episode. Campbell, we're going to have you back then.

52:41William:To destroy more of our theories. Pots and balloons. But I think this is wonderful.

52:46Anita:I think this is so, so useful and interesting. So Campbell, do come back because we're going to talk about Tutmania, where the whole world was gripped with Egypt fever. So do come back for that. Dr. Campbell Price, Brief Histories, Ancient Egypt. It's published by Seven Dials and Ancient Egypt and 50 Discoveries, co-authored with Stephanie Boonstra and it's published by the Egypt Exploration Society. It's also available now. If you have loved Campbell as much as we have, join our club because you'll hear much more of him. Anyway, till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnon. And goodbye from me, William de Ripple.