Legends of the Pharaohs | Episode 4: Akhenaton, the Enigma | Free Documentary History

He was one of the most controversial figures of all antiquity. Crowned pharaoh as Amenhotep IV, he changed his name to Akhenaten whilst repudiating the gods of his ancestors. His reign was one of radical reform, as grandiose as it was chaotic. Was he a crank or a visionary? What role did the enigmatic Akhenaten really play in the history of Egypt? November 26, 1922, British Egyptologist Howard Carter discovered the intact tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamen. He revealed one of archaeology's most famous finds. Tutankhamen was only a child when he took the Egyptian throne over 3,300 years ago. As the last in line of a family that had ruled Egypt for eight generations, he was descended from some of the most fascinating characters of antiquity. The pharaoh queen Hatshepsut. Amenhotep III, the great builder. Or the enigmatic Akhenaten. Egyptologists know this family as the 18th dynasty that saw Egypt become the richest and most powerful realm in the world. This is the story of their incredible golden age, the founders of the new kingdom. Akhenaten's health had rapidly declined, and the royal doctor was at his bedside. His two remaining daughters and those close to him gathered round. But not even the hymns chanted by the great seer and faithful Marere could change the outcome. Early in the 17th year of his reign, Akhenaten, 10th pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, breathed his last. News of his death spread rapidly throughout the realm. Quite soon the name of Akhenaten, his depictions, and any trace of his reign were systematically eliminated. He was subjected to what is called a damnatio memoriae, or historical negationism. It's a Latin term, first used by the Roman senate to condemn those judged as bad emperors after their death. Their statues were destroyed and their names wiped from official inscriptions. All mention of Akhenaten, considered a bad king, was thus wiped from Egyptian history. During his reign there was a plague and a military defeat, seen by the Egyptians as divine retribution. He had failed to play his role as king and deserved oblivion. By a stroke of luck, and despite the efforts of his peers to make him vanish, Akhenaten was unearthed by archaeologists some three and a half millennia later. From the end of the 19th century and throughout the 20th, archaeologists rediscovered him whilst digging at Amarna, the Mardin name for the site that had been the pharaoh's capital, Akhetaten, meaning the horizon of the Aten. But why were the Egyptians in such a hurry to eradicate any trace of Akhenaten? Let's look at the destiny of the pharaoh that started his reign as Amenhotep IV. The prince was born around 1356 BCE. He was the last child of Amenhotep III and his great royal wife, Queen Tiye. He had four elder sisters and a brother, Prince Thutmose. His elder brother, Prince Thutmose, was the designated heir. But he predeceased his father. Thus, Amenhotep would become the next pharaoh. In ancient Egypt, during the period of the 18th dynasty, princes passed mostly beneath the radar. They were not shown on any monuments, as they had no ideological role to play, which was the purpose of these structures. However, princesses had a theological role to play beside their fathers. The princes didn't appear until coronation. Amenhotep was of no importance before becoming pharaoh. He was also very young when he acceded to the throne. The prince was probably between eight and twelve when his father died, but had already been considerably influenced by this great pharaoh's character. At the end of his reign, Amenhotep III organized grand celebrations in his honor. These festivities must have made an impression on young Amenhotep. It's almost certain that he saw Amenhotep's grandiose end-of-reign celebrations. He must have seen his father taking himself for God. He had essentially become the new god of Egypt. This is quite revealing and gives us an insight into the mindset of the soon-to-be Akhenaten. For the time being, the prince who shouldn't have been king reigned as Amenhotep IV. His mother, Queen Tiye, was close to the throne. With the political experience gained at her husband's side, she was able to ensure her son the new king's education. At first, she probably played a vital role as regent, particularly at a diplomatic level. When he became pharaoh at too young an age, she would have informed him on political and geopolitical matters. At his coronation, the young king received homage from vassal states and allies. The most diplomatic were careful to make reference to his mother, Queen Tiye. To accompany his gifts, this is a message sent by Tusrata, king of Mitanni, an ancient kingdom where Syria is now. For you and for the good of your household, your mother Tiye knows what passed between me and your father. Your mother will tell you that your father always considered me a friend. Mayati, prince of Tyre, a port in modern day southern Lebanon, also hoped to gain the new pharaoh's favors by affirming his devotion. I fall at your feet, my king, and wipe the dust from your sandals. My master, you are the sun that lights the land each day. These genuine messages were found thanks to a miraculous discovery in 1887. They were found in the place where the young Amenhotep IV, later Akhenaten, built the new capital for his court several years after his coronation, close to modern day Tell el Amarna. A local woman was digging for sabak, a known fertilizer made from decomposed mud bricks, when she came upon clay tablets written in cuneiform. She tried to sell them but had no takers because they weren't written in Egyptian. Unknown to her, this local woman had found the royal correspondence of pharaoh Akhenaten. She had just unearthed about 15 clay tablets of an eventual total of 380, making up the complete royal Egyptian correspondence dating back to Amenhotep III. The tablets in question were written in Akkadian, a language spoken in what is now southern Iraq in the region of Babylon. The language was transcribed in cuneiform, quite unlike hieroglyphics. The characters looked like small nails. It was the regional language of diplomacy at the time. The tablets contained all the correspondence from Egypt's vassal states, but also from the great kings of the Hittites, the Mitannians, the Babylonians, and later on the Assyrians. In fact, these tablets have enabled us to understand the geopolitical context of Akhenaten's reign. These are stamped. They are fairly illegible, but say, Pharaoh's Bureau of Correspondence. In the early years of his reign, under his mother's guidance, Amenhotep IV did what was expected of a good pharaoh. He prayed to his ancestors' gods. Egyptians were polytheistic. They believed in numerous divinities. However, one of them dominated what can be called a pantheon, the god Amun. Amun was the god of this royal family's dynasty. He is recognizably crowned with two plumes. The priests of Amun were the second richest group in the country, after the pharaohs. They were powerful and influential men of noble birth. Being still very young, it's hard to say whether it was really he who decided to honor Amun. And the traditional gods. In the early years of his reign, he was depicted worshiping Amun and respecting the polytheism of the religion. Not only was it the pharaoh's duty to ensure that the gods preserved Egypt from chaos, it was also his duty to leave his mark on history. Thus, Amenhotep IV started construction work in the temple of Karnak, the very seat of all tradition. Luckily, an epithet was found referring to him as he who was great during his lifetime. This was typical of Amenhotep IV and was not used by any other pharaoh. Yet he often employed it. This bas-relief can thus be attributed to the start of his reign. He had an unusual physiognomy. One can see his double chin. He also has a thick, short neck. Obviously, as a boy, Amenhotep IV was rather tubby, quite unlike his later appearance. There is very little left of Amenhotep IV's constructions at Karnak. But Marc Gabold showed us a chiseled inner doorway engraved in antiquity. This is one of Amenhotep IV's first monuments at Karnak. He was finishing what his father had begun, a third pylon. The inner doorway was decorated with traditional images of killing prisoners. He appeared as the all-conquering pharaoh, holding prisoners by the hair with one hand, while massacring them with the other. At Karnak, all the pharaohs preceding him had depicted themselves in this characteristic representation. As we find here, seven generations earlier, his ancestor Amenhotep I or his great-great-grandfather Thutmose III. It was essentially a symbolic scene, showing the destruction of an outside enemy. What's relevant is that it demonstrated continuity and tradition, nothing revolutionary here. It's also at the entrance to the temple of Amon, meaning that he still worshipped the god Amon. However, the young pharaoh suddenly stopped the work. He'd started the work in the god Amon's name, but then he stopped and never resumed it. It looks as if the workers just downed tools and left, seemingly an impulsive decision by the king. Why did Amenhotep IV suddenly change plans? Was it a youthful caprice? Did the young man want to affirm himself, or were there other reasons? Something happened before the end of his first year. Exactly what it was, we can't know because it was never transcribed. However, Amenhotep IV alluded to horrifying remarks that he never again wanted to hear repeated. It seems he learned of some kind of political opposition, obviously from the elite. To silence any opposition, Amenhotep IV put Egypt to work. He ordered building work that bore his own touch. 200 kilometers to the south of Karnak is Gebel el-Sisla, home to some of the largest quarries of ancient Egypt. The landscape still bears the scars of the intense activity of Amenhotep IV's reign. Meredith Brand is an archaeologist and our guide to the place where all the stone was cut for the young pharaoh's work at Karnak. Right now, this is a peaceful, quiet space. But in the time of Amenhotep IV, this would have been filled with thousands of workers hammering loudly, pieces of debris and dust from the sandstone falling everywhere. It was full of voices and sounds. The sheer size of this space, and knowing that this is just one of several caverns of sandstone mining, shows how vast this project was. It almost boggles the mind in terms of scale. Amenhotep wanted to move fast, and encouraged his architects to innovate. The big blocks, previously in use, weighing several tons, were replaced by smaller, easier-to-move, standard-sized blocks, known as talatats. Oh, this is really great. Okay. So, here are the remnants of the talatat blocks. And from these cuts and marks, we can see the way that Amenhotep IV's miners would have carved rocks from this mountain, in the step of talatat production. So, step one, from these lines, is first, the length of the talatat block was defined. The miners measured out 52 centimeters, which is roughly a cubit, around the length of a forearm. And then, the second step was to define each individual block. So, they cut a block around half a cubit, and they would have cut each one going backwards. Then, step three, the miners defined another set of measurements, from here down, again, half a cubit, and they would have cut underneath to remove the blocks from the parent rock. These blocks should be between 40 and 50 kilos, which is heavy, but heavy enough where one person who is experienced can carry it. In all of Egyptian history, it was only ever Amenhotep IV that built with talatats. Each block thus bears his stamp. At the Temple of Karnak, it was long thought that nothing remained of this pharaoh's constructions, until archaeologists discovered tens of thousands of talatats during restoration work during the 20th century. The talatats were hidden within the structures built by Amenhotep's successors, such as in this pylon built ten years after his death by King Horemheb. The ninth pylon, here in Karnak, was built by King Horemheb. He did something pretty unique in this pylon. While he constructed a beautiful outside facade decorated with all the normal temple scenes you would expect to find, inside, Horemheb used rubble blocks from Amenhotep IV's temples in East Karnak. And we can see here in the ninth pylon, talatat blocks are still here, embedded in the fill. For the first time, Meredith was allowed to take us into this generally inaccessible area. Oh, wow. This is impressive. So this is just row after row of talatat block. So these are the ones that Horemheb would have dismantled and would have used as fill in his pylon. And so they've been taken out by archaeologists and put in this storeroom, and this is one of several. This now is a jumble and kind of a puzzle waiting to be solved and put back together. These scenes would have been part of vast, tall, tall images and would have covered the entire walls of the open court temple. I mean, this is so fun for me because you see these small pieces and it's this fun brain puzzle. And it's just like an archaeologist's dream to think about how these scenes would have looked and the way that they could have been put together. It's fun. Some ten years later, King Horemheb had hoped to destroy all trace of Amenhotep IV's reign but, ironically, ended up preserving its most distinctive elements. Thanks to their remaining decorations, Egyptologists now know that the talatats were assembled by a cross-wall system, ensuring its solidity. By reassembling the designs, archaeologists discovered that Amenhotep's temples were unlike any other Egyptian temples. Amen's temple was closed to the public. The liturgy was practiced in secret within the shrine's confines. However, Amenhotep IV's liturgy was an open-air one. There were no roofs and worship took place in full sunlight. Amenhotep IV did not want classical Egyptian temples, with their heavy ceilings and dark sanctuaries, because his god was a new god who manifested himself in sunlight and was named Aten. Aten was mentioned in old empire texts, but the word referred to the sun god Ra's solar disk. However, following Amenhotep's reformation, Aten became the name of a god. This god was not represented in the same way as traditional Egyptian gods, in human, animal, or hybrid form. He was shown as a radiant solar disk with, at the end of each sunbeam, the hieroglyphs symbolizing life, thus showing that this great god was the source of all life. Amenhotep IV was already imagining the future Aten by creating a new god that upheld his reign. This was his god, not tradition's. Was it really an epiphany? It's possible, but could it also have been strategic? A means of breaking the Amun priesthood's power? That's equally possible. It was somewhere between epiphany and political strategy. Aten was an alternative to Amun, although Aten said nothing, whereas the other gods of the Egyptian pantheon said a great deal. Aten only communicated with his son and high priest, Amenhotep IV. For the young pharaoh, the new religion became a new way of wielding power. Barely three years after taking the throne, the young pharaoh radicalized. He turned his back on Karnak and Amun's powerful priesthood. It was nearly over for the second richest group of the realm. There followed a virtual persecution of the cult of Amun. Amun's temple at Thebes was closed and the priests were expelled, but apparently without violence. No one was made to suffer for their beliefs. The pharaoh simply outlawed the worship of Amun and all others. But Amenhotep IV did not merely turn away from god Amun. Attaining manhood, he also turned away from his mother, Queen Tiye. With a new woman in his life, he no longer needed her. During the fourth year of his reign, the great royal wife Nefertiti entered his life and history. Nefertiti was absent from any earlier sources, but from this time on became omnipresent. The marriage was linked to this new phase in his reign. In Egypt, it was necessary for a couple to reign. A pharaoh with a queen at his side to embody the complementary and essential feminine principle. According to remaining texts, Aten, Amenhotep's new god, filled the world with light, love, and beauty. Nefertiti embodied the sun god's perfect beauty, and the love that united her to Amenhotep IV was also an earthly manifestation of the god Aten. The ideology was put in place to prove Aten's existence. Shortly after, a happy event yet further confirmed the god Aten's presence as source of all earthly life. Less than a year after their marriage, a baby was born to the couple, Princess Meritaten. She was soon followed by several sisters. It's around this time that Amenhotep IV changed his name, which meant Amun is satisfied. He realized that his name was in contradiction with his religious policy. So, he officially changed his name to Akhenaten, meaning he who is useful to god Aten. With the new name came a new identity. Egyptian art changed under Akhenaten, who introduced new aesthetic codes. In the aisles of the Luxor Museum, Egyptologist Stephen Harvey helped us understand them. This statue of Akhenaten is extraordinary. It's one of many that were found in 1925. And when they were found, I think the world was quite stunned to see the physical features, the very almost feminine body, and the particularly long, elongated face. Akhenaten almost doesn't look human to us in these images. And in fact, many Egyptologists think that he was trying to represent himself as a divine being who has exaggerated features because he is the divine child of the Aten. Maybe the artist was told by the pharaoh, I really need a change, I want to see it as different as possible, express my divinity. This was a radical artistic departure from the traditional ideal. His body seems deformed. He has breasts, broad hips, and a belly that swells over his loin cloth. Why would the pharaoh have chosen to appear like this? One can only assume that Akhenaten wanted to unite masculine and feminine principles in one person. Himself. It has been thought that he may have suffered from some deformity. However, it's highly unlikely, as Egyptian art was essentially symbolic. This overt androgyny suggests the union of masculine and feminine principles, a representation of perfection, basically. The new style of art represented Akhenaten, but also his wife and children. The young princesses have excessively elongated heads. This is another way of affirming their divine nature. The couple and the royal family had become idols, their images being central to the new religion. Following his marriage, name change, and religious reformation, Akhenaten pursued his reforms. Towards the fifth year of his reign, he took a further step. The pharaoh, now named Akhenaten, decided to leave Thebes, the city of the hated god, the Antiaten. The separation with Amun's clergy was definitive. Did the priesthood take umbrage at being sidelined? Or did the pharaoh no longer wish to see them? We do not know. What we do know is that Akhenaten sought to build a new capital, a city where Aten would reign exclusively. It was merely a question of finding a site. He chose a site in Middle Egypt, Amarna or Tell el-Armana today. There he founded Akhetaten, the horizon of the Aten. It was a thoughtfully chosen site, as the new capital would be central, halfway between Memphis in the north and Thebes in the south. He also sought a virgin state, one that hadn't been consecrated to any god before Aten. We know quite precisely when and how Akhenaten chose the site, thanks to inscriptions on enormous boundary stelae cut into the cliffs surrounding Amarna. The god Aten told him to build the city at dawn on the 13th day of the fourth month of Peret, in the fifth year of his reign. That's when it all started. It's here that Akhenaten watched the sun rise on March 3rd, 1342 BCE. Akhen made his offerings to the solar disk Aten and chose to establish his new capital here. The first sign of settlement at Tell el-Armana is the small temple at the Aten, the first religious structure built, directly aligned with the small altar here, which is actually quite large. This is where Akhenaten first worshipped the solar disk, as it rose above the horizon. The ritual consisted of the presentation of offerings on the central, but also the side altars. There are several on both sides. It's moving to think that, one morning, he decided everything would begin here, and this is the spot. Akhenaten did not only construct a city, he also allocated a whole area to Aten, a fertile plain 11 kilometers long and 5 kilometers wide, stretching from the cliffs on the east bank of the Nile. Akhenaten demarcated this sacred space by cutting a series of boundary stelae around the site over a 20 kilometer perimeter. This is one of the best preserved stelae of Tell el-Armana, at 7 meters high. It was made to be seen. There were about 12 of them around the site. Akhenaten used them to delimit his city and lay out his plans for it. They are highly relevant, as they help us to understand what he planned and what he actually succeeded in doing on the land behind me. He realized about 80% of his program. If not bad for a politician, really quite surprising. On the boundary stelae, Akhenaten laid out his urbanization program, describing temples, palaces, apartments and tombs to be built. The city was built around a main thoroughfare about 6 kilometers long, running beside the Nile. It is still visible and in use. This site was built around a central thoroughfare of unknown name, which we call the Royal Avenue, and is, at its largest, as wide as the Champs-Élysées, to give an idea of scale. Clues suggest that it took 3 years for the architects and builders to construct sufficient palaces and other structures to house the royal family and the elite. That's not long, so the speed of construction must have been astounding. If the court followed him, so indeed would all the nobles and servants. This led to an enormous city in ancient Egyptian terms. Between 40,000 and 50,000 people lived there. The city was designed for the king to take center stage before an ample audience. Akhenaten intended to replace Thebes as the religious capital and Memphis as the economic capital. However, the pharaoh failed to convince all of his grandees to uproot and join him in the new capital. In order to convince them to stay, he had to regularly offer rewards and privileges. On this day, for instance, Mary Rae and I, two loyal courtiers, were being honored in an awards ceremony. Close to the king, assisted him every day with the worship of Aten, whereas I ran the king's cavalry and had the honorific title of divine father. They were both high-ranking officials that had chosen Akhenaten's camp and adopted his religion. To thank them and ensure continued loyalty, the king could be extremely generous. In his unfinished tomb, dug into the cliffs of Amarna, I had this special day immortalized. The pharaoh rewarded him with gold, necklaces made of gold rings, bracelets, and cups. This was quite some reward, and one can see I's pride in receiving these gifts from his king. A king whose appearance has now replaced the traditional divinities, Akhenaten became a living god, dispensing his bounty to the faithful. As much as these moments were important to his courtiers, Akhenaten also had the best years of his reign in the city built for his god. Aten had given him a large family of six daughters, born to his great royal wife Nefertiti. Four years after moving to his city, in the twelfth year of his reign, the pharaoh was at the height of his power. He received foreign princes, vassals, political allies, or princes from submissive states. They all came to pay homage to the pharaoh in gold, livestock, arms, or prisoners. It was the high point of Akhenaten's reign. This was a key event for the royal family, and sadly, the last, as things went downhill thereafter. The royal family suffered a series of deaths. The little princesses died, one after another. Three of the royal couple's daughters died suddenly in the fourteenth year of his reign. Queen Ti also died. She was between sixty and sixty-five, as was expected, but it devastated the pharaoh. Even the recent birth of a son, Tutankhaten, perhaps to Nefertiti, could not ease Akhenaten's grief. How can the royal family's multiple deaths be explained? According to Hittite sources, there was a terrible plague, like the Black Death in Europe, decimating large parts of the Middle Eastern population. They said the plague came from Egypt. Transmitted by rat fleas, the plague reached the royal palace. It is believed that in the sixteenth year, Queen Nefertiti was a victim. She suddenly disappeared from all Egyptian records without explanation. After Nefertiti died, Meretaten, their oldest daughter, had to replace her dead mother. She became the great royal wife to the pharaoh. Was the marriage purely symbolic? Did incest take place? We have no idea. Then, Akhenaten also died at the end of a seventeen-year reign. All that we know is that the king died suddenly. There was no prior illness that might have explained it. What's more, Egypt suffered a military defeat, a border struggle with the Hittites, a growing expansionist force. An expeditionary force was sent to northern Syria, or Jahi in Egyptian, and was defeated. It had been over a hundred years since Egypt had last suffered defeat, which made it problematic. The Egyptians took it badly, thinking, all these deaths, military defeat, the plague, what if the one god, Aten, has betrayed us? Akhenaten began to be seen as a dangerous heretic, endangering Egypt and the Egyptian people by severing them from their traditional gods. The elites and the general populace reacted rapidly. Soon, any representation of Akhenaten was systematically defaced. If you come closer, you can see the chisel marks where Akhenaten's name was removed. However, there is usually always enough left for an Egyptologist to go on. Yet in this case, it was quite efficient. In some places, the names are practically illegible. It's been deeply chiseled here. In ancient Egypt, the name was part of the person, thus removing someone's name caused them harm. The face also was a kind of doorway to the soul, so it was also chiseled away. The bodies were left intact, however. Just to widen the gap a little further between the pharaoh and his people, Akhenaten's new religion made no mention of an afterlife. This was a bitter pill to swallow for the people. Where was the promise of resurrection in paradise? The good life was meant to be lived on earth beneath the sun, but it wasn't looking so good anymore. The gods had turned away from Egypt, and they had to return. Without their cooperation, Egypt, which was an order-based world, would descend into chaos. The biggest mistake that Akhenaten did, that he made all the Egyptians to worship Aten through him, and then when he died, everything was finished. Today, with his one god, Akhenaten is considered to be the pioneer of monotheism. However, in his own era, he failed to convince his subjects to worship differently. His reign was considered not only a failure, but also a traumatism. After his death, the capital he built for Aten in just three years was progressively abandoned, after only 15 years of inhabitation. The court returned to Thebes, and the traditional Egyptian gods were worshipped once more. And his powerful priesthood took back the reins of power alongside a mysterious pharaoh queen whose identity is open to speculation. She represented the indispensable feminine principle besides Akhenaten, his great royal wife, perfect in shape and appearance. But was Nefertiti more than just the icon of beauty that her famous bust suggests? The question is a valid one, as recent discoveries have overturned old certainties. Wow, this is something pretty amazing. Did Nefertiti live longer than was supposed? Was she more than just a mere queen? What do you think?