Episode #210 - Who Killed King Tut? (Part I)

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This story begins with a car crash.

In 1903, a middle-aged British aristocrat was tooling around with a newly bought motor car near Schwalbach, Germany.

The driver, one George Herbert, the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, was as close as one got to being an experienced motorist in 1903.

The wealthy lord was one of the first people in Britain to be issued an official driver's license.

By the turn of the century, he had purchased a small fleet of luxury automobiles and had earned the playful nickname Motor Carnarvon for his unabashed love of the new machines.

He also had a reputation for driving fast.

In fact, some of the very first speeding tickets in the history of the United Kingdom were issued to Ole Leadfoot Motor Carnarvon.

But that day in the German countryside, Lord Carnarvon's luck ran out.

Traveling, as always, at top speed, Carnarvon crested a hill and was surprised by a farmer whose oxcart had stalled on the rural road.

The Earl swerved and nearly missed the man and his ox, but the car careened off the road and rolled several times before being stopped by a tree.

The driver survived, but just barely.

He suffered collapsed lungs, a portion of his skull had been crushed, and his jaw had been severely broken.

Miraculously, Motor Carnarvon was pulled from the wreck and managed to make a good recovery.

But it would be wrong to call it a full recovery.

Amazingly, his brain had remained undamaged even after fracturing his skull, but his lungs were never truly the same.

When he was back on his feet, his doctors recommended that he avoid the famously damp and chilly British winters, and instead decamp somewhere hot and dry to better avoid any added strain on his damaged lungs.

So it was decided that Carnarvon and his lady wife would head to the most interesting, hot, dry place they could think of, Egypt.

The Carnarvons soon fell in love with the country, and before long the Lord had thrown himself enthusiastically into the pastime that obsessed most Western European aristocrats who found themselves on the Nile, the discovery and collection of Egyptian antiquities.

Modern archaeology had more or less been born in Egypt.

Experts will debate what constitutes the first true bet of archaeological work done in the modern era, but there's no doubting the fact that the French savants brought to Egypt by Napoleon during his 1898 invasion of the country kick started a new era in research into Egypt's ancient past.

Unfortunately, this also came with a new wave of plundering of ancient objects deemed valuable by colonial treasure hunters.

In the ensuing century, more archaeological excavations took place in Egypt than in any other part of the planet.

To the point where, by the time Lord Carnarvon started funding excavations, some experts were saying that there were no ancient treasures left to find in Egypt.

In particular, it was believed that the famous Valley of the Kings, the burial place of dozens of Egyptian pharaohs, had been entirely tapped out after decades of exploration.

In fact, in 1912, the famed Egyptologist Theodore Davis, who had led excavations of 24 tombs in the Valley of the Kings, declared in his final book on the topic that he feared that, quote, the Valley of the Kings is now played out, end quote.

That quote is found in Davis's book, The Tombs of Harmhabi and Tutankhamu.

Hamhanu.

In that book, Davis detailed the discovery of a tomb that had been mostly plundered by multiple rounds of grave-robbing since antiquity.

He believed that tomb had originally belonged to one of the most obscure Egyptian pharaohs in the kingdom's long history, a man he identified as Tutankhamanu.

but later Egyptologists would more correctly call Tutankhamun.

King Tut, as he would eventually be nicknamed, had been a puzzle to Egyptologists for decades.

His name and royal cartouche, that is, his hieroglyphic signature, had been found on a handful of objects turned up unexpectedly in various excavations.

But his name was not recorded on the best-known ancient king's list, which had been discovered on the wall of Abydos Temple in 1859.

Research into objects bearing King Tut's name suggested that he must have reigned during the late 18th dynasty.

That's around 1330 BC.

And yet, when the walls of Abydos were consulted, there did not seem to be a King Tutankhamun listed alongside the other 18th dynasty pharaohs.

Where was he?

Had he been forgotten or purposefully written out of history?

The Valley of the Kings held the tombs of all the well-known 18th dynasty monarchs.

Given that Tutankhamun's existence had just been barely suggested by scraps of evidence, it meant that for decades, archaeologists weren't really looking for his tomb.

When Davis discovered a mostly plundered tomb near an object with Tutankhamun's name, he felt like it was likely that the tomb of the most obscure 18th dynasty pharaoh had now been found.

He had now collected a full set of 18th dynasty pharaohs, so he believed that his work was complete.

But

not everyone was convinced that Davis had indeed found the lost tomb of Tutankhamun.

Among the skeptics was old Motor Carnarvon.

You see, since 1907, Carnarvon had been working with the self-made British Egyptologist Howard Carter.

Carter was the middle-class son of London artists who had learned the art of tomb excavation while working as a copyist, making faithful reproductions of hieroglyphic inscriptions for more established archaeologists.

Over the years, he worked his way up to being a respected excavator in his own right.

But when he met Lord Carnarvon, he was at a low point.

Carter had been dismissed from his role in the Egyptian Antiquities Service after being caught in a diplomatic row.

He had taken the side of the Egyptian guards who had physically defended themselves against some drunk French tourists trying to illegally push their way into a tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

Carter had insisted that the guards had done nothing wrong and therefore did not need to humiliate themselves by apologizing.

But at that particular moment, the Egyptian Antiquities Service was controlled by the French, and colonial politics being what they were, Carter found himself out of a job for taking a principled stand.

When Carter met Carnarvon, both men were looking for redemption.

They had been hobbled, in one case physically, in another, professionally.

So they began a partnership.

Carnarvon was the money man, and Carter was the man on the ground, doing his utmost to both further research into ancient Egypt and discover something special.

They worked for a few years in and around the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes and made a handful of small but noteworthy archaeological finds.

But when Theodore Davis and his team left the Valley of the Kings in 1913, Carnarvon and Carter smelt an opportunity.

The next year, they were granted the permits to undertake their own excavations, the hope being that they might find something that Davis had overlooked, perhaps even the real tomb of the mysterious king Tutankhamun.

But progress was slow.

First, the entire excavation was delayed by four years by the calamity that was the First World War.

But even when the team returned after the war, progress was still slow going.

Perhaps Davis had been right, and the Valley of the Kings was truly played out.

When they began their season in the Valley of the Kings in 1922, it was acknowledged that this was going to be the last kick at the can.

If nothing was found in that year, then Carnarvon was officially out as Carter's patron.

Carter would have to fund all future projects by himself.

So Carter focused his efforts on a small triangular patch of land near the already explored tomb of Ramses VI.

The area had been the location of some ancient workmen's tents and was piled with limestone chips apparently quarried from the large tomb of Ramses.

After three days of digging, an Egyptian water boy who had been working with the team noticed something, the outline of a step, apparently leading down into the earth.

He alerted the other workers, who in turn alerted Carter.

As more earth and stone was cleared away, it became obvious that this was indeed the entrance to a yet undiscovered tomb.

As they revealed the doorway to the tomb, it was clear that the seal had been violated by tomb robbers in antiquity,

but it had also clearly been resealed in ancient times as well.

This was a good sign.

If there was an ancient seal still on a tomb, even a secondary ancient seal, that usually meant that there would be things to find inside.

On the 27th of November, 1922, the tomb was officially opened.

Carnarvon made the journey from his estate in Britain so he could be there to witness the opening.

Using a chisel gifted to him on his 70th birthday, Carter chiseled away at the corner of the sealed door, breaking away just enough so he could stick his head in with a candle and peer at what was inside.

Carter would later describe the moment like this: quote,

As my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist.

Strange animals, statues, and gold, everywhere the glint of gold.

For the moment, an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by, I was struck dumb with amazement.

And when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, Can you see anything?

It was all I could do to get out the words, Yes, wonderful things,

end quote.

Despite the fact that the tomb showed signs of being robbed not once but twice, those ancient thieves had not managed to get much from the resting pharaoh.

Carter and Carnarvon had just unearthed the most intact ancient Egyptian tomb yet discovered.

The golden room Carter was peering at was just the antechamber, one of four rooms in the tomb, including a burial chamber that appeared to have never been unsealed.

The tomb would ultimately contain over 5,000 priceless ancient artifacts, including many made of ivory, gold, and other precious metals.

It would take seven weeks for Carter's team to photograph, carefully remove, and catalog all the objects from that first antechamber.

But it was immediately clear that this was indeed the tomb of King Tutankhamun.

His royal signature was found throughout, including on a remarkably preserved gold gilded throne.

Large gilded statues of the 18th dynasty king also guarded the entrance to the burial chamber.

Davis had been wrong.

King Tut had been waiting in the Valley of the Kings.

After painstakingly clearing the antechamber, on February 17th, 1923, the archaeologists were finally ready to enter Tutankhamun's burial chamber.

For the occasion, the team invited a group of august dignitaries and ran electric lights into the tomb to produce the most theatrical effect possible.

The burial chamber did not disappoint.

The small room was dominated by a massive shrine covered in gold leaf.

This proved to simply be the outside layer of a series of shrines that fit together like a Russian nesting doll.

The researchers would later learn that the shrine would contain a series of gilded sarcophagi, culminating in a final coffin made from solid gold.

The death mask found on the final golden coffin would go on to become one of the most iconic and enduring images associated with the ancient Egyptian pharaohs.

The tomb was easily the most spectacular that had ever been discovered.

However, the celebratory atmosphere did not last long.

Just a few weeks after opening the burial chamber, Lord Carnarvon fell terribly ill.

He had been bitten by a mosquito and then nicked the wound while shaving.

This led to an infection and eventually blood poisoning.

This was all then complicated by a nasty bout of pneumonia, to which he was especially vulnerable, giving the lasting damage to his lungs from his car accident.

By April 5th, not quite two months after Carnarvon had first beheld King Tut's glittering burial shrine, the Lord was dead.

The rumors started almost immediately.

A writer for England's Daily Express would explain, quote, The queer atmosphere which clings to all things Egyptian is responsible for the widespread story that in opening the tomb of Tutankhamun, Lord Carnarvon exposed himself to the fury of some malignant influence, or he was poisoned by materials left in the tomb thousands of years ago.

For many, Carnarvon's untimely death was not simply a strange coincidence.

The Earl had clearly been the victim of a mummy's curse.

The quote-unquote malignant influence of Tut's restless spirit had done to motor Carnarvon what a brutal automobile accident could not.

The tale of King Tut's curse would soon be elaborated on by countless publications, whose readers were hungry for anything related to the blockbuster archaeological find.

A type of tut mania was sweeping through Europe and America and expressed itself in popular songs, knickknacks, commemorative postcards, and Egyptian-themed soirees among the smart set.

Soon, a robust body of myth surrounding Tutankhamun and his tomb was in full circulation.

Now, there are many reasons why the tale of King Tut's curse was able to get so much traction and has remained remarkably enduring.

But certainly, part of it has to do with the mystery surrounding the Pharaoh himself.

Who was this young king?

What led to his untimely death around the age of twenty?

Could it be that Tut's spirit was so full of malignant influence because the king did not meet a natural death?

Was the boy the victim of foul play?

Why was his name erased from the king's list and his cartouche carved out of monuments erected during his reign?

Could it be that the mummy's curse was actually the supernatural fallout of a 3,000-year-old palace coup?

Let's get into it today on our fake history.

Episode number 210: Who Killed King Tut, Part 1.

Hello, and welcome to Our Fake History.

My name is Sebastian Major, and this is the podcast where we explore historical myths and try to determine what's fact, what's fiction, and what is such a good story, it simply must be told.

Welcome, one and all, to the start of season 10.

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This week, we are kicking off the 10th season by exploring the many mysteries associated with the 18th dynasty Egyptian pharaoh, King Tutankhamun.

I think it's safe to say that thanks to Carter and Carnarvon's 1922 discovery of King Tutankhamun's final resting place in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, he has become far and away the best-remembered Egyptian pharaoh.

Now, don't get me wrong, there are certainly other ancient Egyptian leaders with strong name recognition.

Many people know Ramses the Great, or Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid, but I would argue that you need to have at least a passing interest in history to be aware of those leaders.

Tutankhamun, on the other hand, has a place in modern pop culture, such that even people who know nothing else about ancient Egypt have at least heard the name King Tut.

The fact that Tutankhamun has that cute little nickname, I think, says it all.

Although, I want to start a movement to start calling Ramses II Rama Lamma Ding Dong.

Who's with me?

No one?

Okay.

The reason for Tutankhamun's fame has little to do with his actual reign and everything to do with his remarkable tomb.

One thing you need to understand was just how rare it was to find a pharaonic tomb that was almost perfectly intact.

Grave robbing seems to have been as old as the tombs themselves.

The so-called Valley of the Kings, located near modern-day Luxor, was the preferred spot for pharaonic burials for nearly 500 years, from Egypt's 18th to 20th dynasties.

But when archaeologists started exploring these tombs, starting in the late 18th century, they discovered that many of them had been entirely cleared out of any movable wealth.

This was thanks to many waves of grave grave robberies that had taken place over the course of millennia.

Some of the most accessible tombs had even functioned as tourist destinations as far back as the Greek era.

But we know from Greek graffiti found in these tombs, dating from around the time of Alexander the Great, that even those ancient visitors were disappointed by just how empty the tombs were.

One bit of graffiti scrawled in Greek translates roughly to, quote, I was here and I wasn't impressed, end quote.

As better hidden and as a result better preserved tombs began to be excavated in the late 1800s, archaeologists began to find more burial goods, including sarcophagi with intact mummies.

But even the second most complete tomb discovered in the Valley of the Kings before 1922 contained only a fraction of the objects later found with King Tut.

Now, interestingly, in 1939, the French archaeologist Pierre Monté discovered the first completely intact pharaonic tombs near the ruins of ancient Tannis in the Nile Delta, which included remarkable silver coffins and gold funerary masks.

The so-called Tannis treasures are well known among Egyptology nuts, but remain relatively obscure compared to the treasures of King Tut.

So, why does Tutankhamon get so much more attention?

Well, part of it had to do with the pop culture phenomenon that spontaneously erupted as news of Carter and Carnarvon's finds made their way around the world.

This so-called Tut mania seemed to be especially acute in the United States, where the world of fashion was temporarily taken over by Egyptian trends.

Egyptian-style makeup, jewelry, hairstyles, and interior decorating were all the rage in 1923.

This also came with a wave of chintzy collector's items modeled off objects found in King Tut's tomb.

There was even a hit song.

In 1923, Harry von Tilser's Old King Tut was known as a good song to dance the Charleston to.

The lyrics seemed to underscore the weird consumerist fascination people had with the tomb.

It went, quote, they opened his tomb the other day and jumped with glee.

They learned a lot about ancient history.

His tomb, instead of tears, was full of souvenirs, end quote.

Even Herbert Hoover, President of the United States from 1929 to 1933, named his dog King Tut.

Tutmania wasn't just confined to the 1920s either.

The contents of Tut's tomb eventually became one of the most successful touring museum exhibits in all of history.

When the treasures were first brought to the Louvre in 1962, they attracted roughly 1.12 million visitors.

A few years later in Tokyo, the exhibit drew in roughly 1.7 million visitors.

In 1972, almost the same number took in the treasures of King Tut at the British Museum in London.

Between 1976 and 1979, the exhibit toured six major cities in the United States and was visited by over 8 million Americans.

The hype around this American tour was so intense that it inspired Steve Martin to create one of his best-loved bits, his over-the-top ode to a historical tut mania, King Tut.

Now, when he was a young man, he never thought it seemed.

People standing live to see the boy a king.

King Tut,

how'd you get so funky?

Did you do the funky?

Born in Arizona, moved into Babylonia.

King Tut.

Now, I hate to kill the comedy by over-explaining a joke, but one of the reasons why Steve Martin's bit worked so well was because it sent up just how superficial Tutmania could be.

Despite the millions of visitors who crowded to see the remarkable gold objects found in Tutankhamun's tomb, one got the impression that not a lot of learning actually took place at the exhibits.

King Tutankhamun might have excellent name recognition, but when it comes to understanding his place in Egyptian history, all but the most dedicated Egypt enthusiasts might be at a loss.

The deep irony of King Tutankhamun's modern celebrity is the fact that his successors did their utmost to erase him from history.

Part of the reason why King Tut's tomb remained relatively undisturbed all those

was because Tutankhamun had been purposely forgotten.

The pharaohs that followed him tried to scrub his memory from the public record.

The famous kings list commissioned by Pharaoh Seti I from the dynasty that came directly after Tutankhamun's did not include Tut, his father Akhnaten, and his immediate successor, King Ai.

The question is why?

Why were Tutankhamun's successors so keen to write him out of history?

Well, coming to a deeper understanding of that question might also help us understand King Tut's untimely death.

Analysis of Tutankhamun's mummy has determined that the king was only around 20 years old when he died, maybe even younger.

It seems strange that such a young king with such a brief reign would be treated so harshly in retrospect.

What could he have possibly done as a child ruler for his reign to be subsequently covered up?

Or is it that King Tutankhamun did not meet a natural death?

Could it be that he was murdered in an elaborate plot to usurp the throne?

To answer those questions, we need to go back to one of the most fascinating periods in ancient Egyptian history.

During the late 18th dynasty, Tutankhamun's father, the pharaoh Akhenaten, attempted to completely revolutionize Egyptian religion and society.

This came with a radically new style of art, poetic expression, and civic philosophy.

King Tutankhamun wasn't just any random pharaoh.

He was the son of the most radical and controversial pharaoh in over 2,000 years of Egyptian history.

To understand the mystery of King Tut, we first need to understand the upheaval of his father's reign.

So let's head back some 3,000 years into the very distant past to see what we can find out.

And we're back live during a flex alert.

Oh, we're pre-cooling before 4 p.m., folks.

And that's the end of the third.

Time to set it back to 78 from 4 to 9 p.m.

What a performance by Team California.

The power is ours.

To understand this story, I think we need to orient ourselves on the historical timeline.

One of the challenges when exploring Egyptian history is the sheer ancientness of Egyptian civilization and its remarkable longevity.

This, paired with the fact that Egyptian social structure, religion, art, and architecture were remarkably consistent over the course of thousands of years, can make it even harder for a newcomer to get a sense of what makes the new kingdom distinct from the old kingdom.

The history of what we think of as quote-unquote ancient Egypt is roughly 3,000 years long.

Now, that fact alone is bananas.

Our dating system, tethered as it is to Christian belief, is clumsy when used for Egyptian history.

So, let me set some historical signposts here.

The reign of King Tutankhamun began around 1332 BC during a period known as Egypt's New Kingdom.

This places him right around the middle of Egypt's 3,000-year run.

When he was king, the Great Pyramid of Giza was already over 1,000 years old.

To King Tut, the pyramids were already ancient monuments, if you can imagine that.

But Tutankhamun also lives roughly 1,000 years before Alexander the Great would invade Egypt and inaugurate a new Greek Macedonian chapter of Egyptian history.

So Tut is a thousand years after the pyramids and a thousand years before Alexander the Great.

And I know a lot can happen in a thousand years.

1332 BC is right in the middle of what's been called the Late Bronze Age.

This was a period that has been remembered as an early high watermark for Mediterranean and Near Eastern civilization.

This was the heyday of the famous Minoan civilization with their sprawling palace complexes on the island of Crete.

The Proto-Greek civilization, who likely inspired the stories of the Iliad, known as the Mycenaeans, were building their Cyclopean walls around this time.

In Anatolia, the Hittite civilization was also flourishing.

But arguably the grandest of all the late Bronze Age societies was Egypt.

The German scholar Baron von Bundsen famously declared that Egypt's new kingdom was the last of three golden ages that occurred along the Nile.

The new kingdom is traditionally believed to have started around 1570 BC, some 200 years before Tutankhamun.

This was when Tutankhamun's ancestors, the first pharaohs of Egypt's 18th dynasty, expelled a group of foreign invaders known as the Hyksos and reinstated native Egyptian rule.

Over the next 200 years, the pharaohs of the 18th dynasty would lead Egypt to new military and economic highs.

Pharaoh Tutmos III would undertake a series of remarkable military campaigns that would extend Egyptian power deep into Syria and the Levant.

This pushed Egypt to its largest known territorial extent.

In those years, the Egyptian army was by far the most dominant force in the region, and as a result, the 18th dynasty reaped the benefit of a steady stream of tribute and plunder.

It's been guessed that Tutankhamun's grandfather, Pharaoh Amonhotep III, may have been the wealthiest king in the history of Egypt.

This is where our story really begins.

When Amenhotep III was the Pharaoh of Egypt, the state of the kingdom could not have been better, especially if you were among the Egyptian ruling class.

They were now 200 years into an incredibly successful dynasty.

The military was strong, and there were really no viable foreign threats.

The treasury was full, and new buildings, temples, and monuments to the Pharaoh were being erected everywhere.

Then, Amenhotep III decided to bring his son on as a co-regent.

It's not exactly clear why he decided to do this, but this sort of thing was not completely out of the ordinary.

An analysis of Amenhotep III's mummy has has shown that he had some pretty nasty dental issues.

So it's possible that in the last few years of his reign he was in serious pain and was looking to defer many of his responsibilities to his successor.

That successor was named Amenhotep IV,

but when his father died, he would change his name and along with it, almost everything about Egyptian society.

Amenhotep IV is better known to history as Akhenaten, sometimes called the heretic pharaoh.

The great Egyptologist Bob Breyer has commented that ancient Egypt may have been one of the most conservative societies ever to exist on earth.

Change was not considered good in ancient Egypt.

The styles of fashion, architecture, and art that were developed in the Old Kingdom remained in fashion for literally thousands of years.

This is why it can be hard for non-experts to differentiate images of the pharaohs, even when they lived centuries apart from one another.

But significantly, according to Breyer, there were three pillars of Egyptian society that were extremely dangerous to meddle with.

Those were religion, the military, and the role of the Pharaoh.

Akhenaten messed with all of them.

First and foremost was his radical reimagining of Egyptian religion.

By the reign of Akhenaten, the Egyptians had been worshiping the same gods for around two thousand years.

Deities such as Amun, Osiris, Isis, Horus, and Thoth, along with countless others, were central to Egyptian identity and the rituals of daily life.

At the center of this religion was the Pharaoh himself, who is seen as the most important intermediary between mortals and the gods.

So you can imagine how disorienting it would have been when the Pharaoh declared that the pantheon of gods that had ensured Egyptian prosperity for millennia actually

did not exist.

Akhenaten was convinced that there was only one God,

and that God was the Aten.

The Aten was the sun, sometimes represented as a solar disk or the sun's rays.

The worship of the Aten had been gaining popularity throughout the 18th dynasty, but Akhenaten's complete reorientation of Egyptian religion towards this god could not have been predicted.

Even Akhenaten's name signified this huge change.

The name Amunhotep translates as Amun is pleased.

So it connected the Pharaoh and his father to Amun, one of the traditional gods of Egypt.

Akhenaten, on the other hand, means beneficial to the Aten.

Now, it's not so crazy for the Pharaoh to pick a new patron deity.

In fact, this happened all the time.

Some pharaohs favored Amun, while others favored the god Seth, for instance.

But Akhenaten was going a step further.

He wasn't simply picking a new favorite.

He was declaring that all the other old gods did not exist.

The Pharaoh would no longer be patronizing any of the old temples.

No new images of those gods would be created.

As far as he was concerned, the old religion was out of business.

New temples would be built that were almost always the inverse of traditional Egyptian temples.

Whereas traditional temples led a visitor deep into a dark and sheltered sanctum where an image of the patron deity would be held in the innermost chamber, Akhenaten's temples were open to the sun's rays, a concept designed to let the Aten in.

Further, Akhenaten proclaimed that no statues or images would be made of his god beyond the holy symbol of the solar disk.

Egyptians were used to having anthropomorphic and animal-headed gods.

Images of these gods were essential to their religious worship.

By contrast, the Aten was as amorphous as a sunbeam.

That can be a lot to wrap your head around if you're not used to it.

The Pharaoh himself personally wrote poetry and religious hymns describing the ineffable quality of this new God.

Now, again, this was incredibly radical.

For thousands of years, sacred poetry, intonations, and religious music had been prescribed by the priesthood and largely had not changed.

People did not write new religious poetry,

but this Pharaoh did.

Akhenaten was writing things like,

O soul God, like whom there is no other, thou didst create the world according to thy desire, whilst thou wert alone, all men, cattle, and wild beasts, whatever is on earth going upon its feet, and what is on high flying with its wings, the countries of Syria and Nubia, the land of Egypt, thou settest every man in his place, thou suppliest their necessities.

End quote.

In that passage, Akhenaten is not only saying that Aten is the only God,

he's also saying that the Aten is the God of all lands.

The Aten doesn't just look after Egypt, he's also shining down on Syria, Nubia, and every other country on earth.

This was another strange and radical idea for Egyptians, who had previously subscribed to the idea of my God can beat up your God, which was a pretty common style of worship in the Mediterranean and Near East at the time.

The idea of a common God for all people, no matter their place of origin, was

new.

So all this raises the question, was Akhenaten the first monotheist, and is Atenism the first religion that recognized one and only one God?

Well, many scholars do believe that Akhenaten was the first monotheist, but that's not without some controversy.

The other big contender is, of course, the first patriarch of the Jewish religion, Abraham.

If you accept that Abraham was indeed a real historical figure, then he's thought to predate Akhenaten by between 700 and 300 years.

But of course, there's a fairly robust debate around whether or not Abraham was a verifiable historical figure.

I know I have a few rabbis and rabbinical students who listen to this show, and I'm sure any one of them could make a very persuasive case for an historical Abraham.

So if you want the full breakdown of that, please reach out to your local rabbi.

But if you do not accept the traditional dates given for the life of Abraham, then Akhenaten might just be the first ever monotheist.

What's more, Akhenaten claimed that he was the son of this God and the only person on earth who truly knew the mind of the Aten.

Now, again, it's very common all over the world for kings to claim that they were descended from a god, but for a leader to claim that they were the son of the one and only God,

once again, that was new.

Around five years into Akhenaten's reign and this religious revolution, he decided to leave the traditional capital of Thebes and found a new capital city.

Now, it's hard to know what exactly inspired this move, but some Egyptologists, among them the aforementioned Bob Breyer, think it's possible that Akhenaten was encouraged to leave Thebes by a group of disgruntled former priests.

You see, the Pharaoh may have had enormous power, but that doesn't mean that some folks didn't resist this religious revolution.

Like I said, Egypt was incredibly conservative, so these changes obviously were not embraced by everyone.

Further, up until Akhenaten's reign, the Egyptian priesthood had been incredibly wealthy and powerful.

Just because Akhenaten was closing temples, that didn't mean that the priesthood's wealth and power went away overnight.

In fact, it seems like Akhenaten's religious revolution never fully succeeded in supplanting the traditional system of belief.

So it's quite possible that powerful Egyptians associated with the old priesthood encouraged their eccentric pharaoh to get out of Thebes.

If the Pharaoh wanted to have an all-new religion, he needed to do it away from the traditional center of Egyptian power.

So Akhenaten took a few thousand followers and made a trek into the desert east of the Nile.

He stopped when he claimed that he had been sent a vision from the Aten, that he had reached the location of a new holy city.

Now, the vision from God story really feels like classic cult leader stuff, doesn't it?

But Egyptologist Bob Breyer has a much more grounded explanation for this story.

This new city was founded in a part of Egypt that's now called Tel Amarna.

And as such, Akhnaten's entire reign is sometimes called the Amarna period.

But Akhnaten did not call this city Amarna.

He called it Akhet Aten, which means the horizon of Aten.

Now, this is where things get interesting.

You see, the Egyptian hieroglyph for the word horizon depicts the circle of the sun rising over a notch in a mountain.

Now if you look dead east from the city of Achet Aten, the horizon of Aten, you will see a small mountain range.

The sun is known to rise directly between a notch in those mountains.

Bob Breyer believes that Akhenaten saw the sun rise in a spot that made it look like the hieroglyph for the word horizon.

And that was his vision from the Aten.

The sun literally told him where to build the city, and he called it the horizon of the Aten.

I love that explanation.

I think that makes a lot of sense.

So let's pause there.

And when we come come back, we'll explore how a decade in the isolated holy city of Aten set the stage for the reign of King Tutankhamun.

If you know someone who is convinced that extraterrestrials were behind all the amazing achievements of the Egyptians, then whatever you do, do not show them the art that was created during the reign of Akhenaten.

Out of context, it would be easy to look at some of the images created during the so-called Amarna period and jump to the conclusions that aliens had indeed visited Earth, and one of them managed to become the Pharaoh of Egypt.

You see, along with completely reimagining Egyptian religion, Akhenaten also encouraged his artists to break with over a millennia's worth of Egyptian artistic traditions.

Now, as I keep saying, Egypt was a remarkably conservative society, and this was very much reflected in their art.

What we think of as ancient Egyptian art more or less came into being in the Old Kingdom and remained largely the same from that point onward.

Innovation and change were were actively discouraged.

Most Egyptian art had a ritual purpose, so changing the art was akin to changing a sacred scripture.

By the New Kingdom, the images that adorned temple walls had become so prescribed that it had essentially become a type of paint by numbers.

Artists had templates that they used to guide them as they worked.

But of course, in the Amarna period, all bets were off, and the Egyptian artists, favored by the Pharaoh, really started trying things.

The most obvious difference was how they showed human forms, and in particular, the body of the Pharaoh.

In paintings and sculptures, Akhenaten and other figures were shown with distinctively elongated features.

Akhenaten has a swooping jawline, a long nose, and an almost bulbous cranium.

He's also depicted with wide hips, a small pot belly, long, spindly arms, and just the hint of breasts.

In other words, he kind of looks like an alien.

The fact that a lot of the art also features Akhenaten worshiping the Aten, which is represented as a giant disc in the sky, I mean, if you were looking for an extraterrestrial, you wouldn't have to squint too hard to see one in those images.

Now, if you haven't seen this stuff and you're curious, I will post some examples of this art on the Facebook group and on the page for this episode at ourfakehistory.com.

But of course, Akhenaten was not from outer space.

But he was such an aesthetic radical that his contemporaries may have thought that he was from outer space.

Now, there's a debate in the world of Egyptology around whether Akhenaten's body really was a little unusual, and that was being represented and idealized in the art, or if those were simply artistic choices.

The truth is that we don't really know.

However, I'm more swayed by the argument that this art was more about drastically rethinking aesthetics than it was about accurately showing the Pharaoh's body.

First, you should remember that the Pharaoh had traditionally been presented as a perfect, idealized human form.

If you see a sculpture of literally any other Egyptian pharaoh, they are shown as these perfectly proportioned, well-muscled athletes with broad shoulders.

Their arms are usually stiffly at their sides, and their faces always have the same placid expression.

Akhenaten's sculptures and paintings aren't so much realistic as they are obvious rejections of that old type of idealism.

It's a new ideal that seems to be about combining the masculine and the feminine.

It's also important to know that Akhenaten was not the only one who was being represented with these unique, exaggerated features.

His wives and his children are also shown in art with the same large heads and wide hips.

Now, Akhenaten had at least two wives, but his most important queen, or the so-called great wife, was the famous Queen Nefertiti.

One of the reasons Queen Nefertiti is so famous is because of the remarkable bust of her that was recovered from the ruins of Amarna.

Now I will post an image of that bust as well if you've never seen it, but you probably have because it's one of the best known pieces of Egyptian art.

It's a life-size rendering of the queen's head and shoulders, but only one of the eyes has been fully painted.

The legend being that after completing one perfectly beautiful eye, the artist laid down his brush, claiming that he could not repeat the same perfection.

This is a total historical myth.

This story is a modern invention.

We actually don't really know why the eye was not finished.

That story does not come from the ancient past.

But that bust demonstrates that the Amarna sculptors were capable of exceptional realism.

And in that realistic depiction, Nefertiti is shown as a conventionally beautiful woman, with none of the exaggerated features found in other more stylized depictions of the queen.

Now, that doesn't necessarily prove anything, but it's a small piece of evidence that suggests that Akhenaten's art likely did not reflect real physical abnormalities.

Now, one other unique feature from the art of this period is the types of scenes that you see depicted.

Akhenaten liked showing himself in loving domestic situations with his wives and children.

The royals are often shown in relaxed poses and touching each other affectionately.

They'll have their children on their knees, or they're playing games with their kids.

There's one famous painting where one of the pharaoh's daughters is eating what looks like a glazed duck and she has sticky fingers.

Once again, again, there was no precedent for this in the history of Egyptian art.

Before this period, pharaohs were shown exclusively doing official kingly business.

They are sitting on thrones, or they are leading armies, or they are presiding over religious rituals.

You never see them playing with their kids.

So, for the last 10 years of Akhenaten's reign, you have a strange situation where the king has taken a group of his most devoted followers and has headed off to build a city in the desert.

There he worshipped the sun, wrote poetry, and patronized artists who were creating an entirely new form of Egyptian expression.

But the problem was that he had dropped out of society.

Normally, when a leader starts presenting themselves as a messianic messenger from God,

that often goes hand in hand with a type of authoritarianism.

Those types of figures usually like to clamp down and really assert their power so they can transform society in their new image.

Akhenaten seems more like the leader of a hippie LSD cult.

He's happy to write poetry and host music festivals at his funky artists' commune as the rest of the world goes on by.

That may have been easier than fighting the deeply entrenched priesthood of the old religion back in Thebes.

The only problem was that the Egyptian system of government really could not function with an absentee pharaoh.

This was especially true when it came to military matters.

In ancient Egypt, the pharaoh Pharaoh was expected to personally lead his armies.

Now, of course, there were other generals and sub-commanders who could be ordered about, but the military could not take any meaningful action without the direction of the Pharaoh.

For his part, Akhenaten was deeply uninterested in the Egyptian military.

His focus was on the Aten, and the Aten was love.

This meant that Egypt's traditional enemies, who for many generations had gotten used to regular demonstrations of Egyptian military might and looting campaigns, slowly started realizing that the Pharaoh wasn't interested in leading the army.

Soon, many of Egypt's neighbors started testing their formerly dominant neighbor by orchestrating small raids, just to see what would happen.

When they didn't get a response, response, some groups became emboldened enough that they started raiding Egyptian territory at their leisure.

We know about this because of letters baked on clay tablets that have been found in the ruins of Amarna.

These were written by desperate Egyptian officials trying to get the Pharaoh to stop staring at the sun and defend the country.

One letter plainly states:

We are not respected anymore, send the the army, end quote.

A year later, we get another letter demonstrating just how badly things had deteriorated, saying,

They are attacking my house.

Send the army, end quote.

One official named Rebadi sent Akhenaten ten letters that have been found in the ruins of Amarna, each one more desperate than the last.

One reads, quote, I am like a bird in a net.

I am caught.

Save me.

Why don't you answer my letters?

End quote.

As far as we can tell, Akhnaten simply was not interested in the work of being Pharaoh.

He was totally invested in his religious revolution.

But it seems like he was content if it never really spread beyond the walls of his new city.

The rest of Egypt?

That really didn't concern him.

Then, in the seventeenth year of his reign, he died.

We know nothing about the circumstances of his death.

The record of his reign simply stops after the seventeenth year.

The big question now was what comes next?

Akhenaten had turned Egyptian life upside down.

Would his successor double down on his religious revolution, or would this signal a return to tradition?

This situation was made even more complicated by the fact that Akhenaten's successor was an eight-year-old boy.

Egypt really needed some vision in that moment, and they were in a situation where their new leader was a child who had been raised in a desert hippie cult.

This new king was, of course, the young Tutankhamun.

When he was elevated to the throne, King Tut Tut was the only surviving son of Akhenaten.

We know for sure that Akhenaten fathered six daughters, and there's some evidence that he may have had as many as eight.

He also likely sired two sons.

There are some inscriptions that attest to a prince named Smenkare, who may have even briefly preceded King Tut as pharaoh.

But that reign, if it happened at all, was clearly very short, and we know next to nothing about it.

The boy who would be king had originally been named Tutankhoten, which means the living image of Aten.

His name obviously reflected his father's new religion.

But by the time the boy became king, he had changed his name.

Tutankhamun means the living image of Amun.

Amun, the traditional god from the Egyptian pantheon that had been favored by his grandfather, Amunhotep III.

This name change signaled something big.

Atenism, the new religion of Akhenaten, was dead.

This new pharaoh, Tutankhamun, was taking Egypt back to the old ways.

The boy had been the son of Akhenaten and a lower-ranking wife, a woman named Kia.

So to really ensure his royal credentials, he was married to his half-sister, who was the daughter of the king's so-called great wife, Nefertiti.

She was born Ankh Hasen Paten, which means she lives for the Aten, but she too changed her name to suit the changing times, becoming Ankh Hassin Amun, or she lives for Amun.

The couple were only around nine years old when they were made man and wife.

Now, I'm sure some of you are thinking, wow, these two kids had the gumption and religious conviction to completely reverse two decades' worth of religious transformation.

These two children who had been raised in the new city of Aten and had been taught that he was the one and only God,

those kids believed that the whole monotheistic experiment should be abandoned?

Well,

as you might expect, these kids were getting advice.

There were powerful people close to the throne who were keen to see this new religion abandoned, the old temples reinvigorated, and the capital moved back to Thebes.

Chief among these advisors was a man known to history as I.

In the old regime, he had held many court posts, including the overseer of horses and the fan-bearer on the right side of the king.

Now that second post may sound humble, but it was recognized as quite influential, as the right fan-bearer could easily whisper in the ear of the Pharaoh.

But under Tutankhamun, I would be promoted to vizier, the highest of all court positions.

But within a decade, this vizier would find himself sitting on the throne of Egypt and calling himself Pharaoh.

So, what exactly happened here?

Perhaps this vizier was pulling the strings of Tutankhamun's regime while the king was still a boy.

The only question is,

what happens when that boy becomes a man?

Okay,

that's all for this week.

Join us again in two weeks' time when we will wrap up our series on King Tutankhamun.

Before we go this week, as always, I need to give some shout outs.

Big ups to

Eric Martin to M.

Goodrich to Lise Spiral to Apop7 Tagema B, to

Latin Marks,

to Daniel Duval, to Michael Malone, to Matt Oliva, to Scribbles,

to Bob Franklin, to Mark Vincent, to Hannah, to Stephen Robert Bund, to Nina, to Matt Walker, to Terry Cook, to Jay, to Cassie,

to Zach Abada,

to Christina Rivera, to Mike Torrance,

to Kevin Shannon, to Mindy Lou Who,

to Mark, to Victoria McGlone,

to Andrew Liu,

to Elemental P

to

Timothy Patrick, to Quinn Collard, to Oz and Jenna,

to H.

Schliemann Jr.

Benfante,

to

Jesus Velez, or is that Jesus Velez

to

Damien,

to Andre Ruvo,

to

Alyssa Hunchak,

to Gwendolyn K.

Binderscholl,

to Lucas R.

San Pedro, to Sebastian, good name, and finally to Caleb.

All of these people have decided to pledge at $5

or more on Patreon every month.

So you know what that means.

They are beautiful human beings.

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for your support.

I know that was a long list of names, but I was just catching up after my summer break.

Thanks to everyone who supports this show in all ways and at all levels.

If you ever want to get in touch with me, please send me an email at ourfakehistory at gmail.com.

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As always, the theme music for our show comes to us from Dirty Church.

Check out more from Dirty Church at dirtychurch.bandcamp.com.

And all the other music you heard on the show today was written and recorded by me.

My name is Sebastian Major.

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