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A stelae by any other name is still a stelae - Ep 9
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This month boasts a very exciting episode as Matilda travels back to ancient Egypt with Egyptologist Dr Colleen Darnell, to look at the fascinating world of stelae and discuss the famous golden couple of Egypt: Akhenaten and Nefertiti. What happens when you send someone illiterate to score out words? How many different types of stelae are there? Who was Nefertiti? Join in with this month's trip back in time to find out the answers to these questions and much more!
Links
- Egypt's Golden Couple goodreads page
- Depiction of Cairo stelae
- Vintage Egyptologist YouTube
- Dr Colleen Darnell: insta @vintage_egyptologist
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- Email: matilda@thearchaeologiststeacup.com
- https://www.thearchaeologiststeacup.com
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- fb: /TheArchaeologistsTeacup
- twitter: @ArchaeoTeacup
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to Tea Break Time Travel, where every month we look at a different archaeological object and take you on a journey into their past.
Meet the Hosts and Guests
00:00:17
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to episode nine of Tea Break Time Travel. I'm your host, Matilda Ziebrecht, and today I am savoring a chamomile tea.
Debating Tea Preparation
00:00:25
Speaker
I don't usually drink chamomile, but there it is. It's that kind of day today. And joining me on my tea break is Egyptologist, Dr. Colleen Darnell. And are you drinking a hot beverage as well today? I am indeed a ginger jasmine green tea from Deal and Marcus.
00:00:42
Speaker
That sounds fantastic. I have to admit, green tea and now, are you of the frame of thought, and this is something that I've always found interesting, that green tea should never be served with boiling water? Oh, interesting. I had not heard that. This is something that I had come to because I found a kettle when I was somewhere and they had all these different buttons that you could press, depending on which kind of tea you were deciding to drink. So if it was a green tea, it doesn't boil it to 100 degrees centigrade, it boils it instead to 80 or something
Egyptology's Appeal and Dr. Darnell's Journey
00:01:11
Speaker
like that.
00:01:11
Speaker
I must investigate this further. I personally don't see a difference, but anyway. Anyway, good. OK, good. Come by line green. We're wearing a mellow mood today then, I feel, which is always nice. And of course, Dr. Carline Darnell, a very famous Egyptologist. And I am really thrilled that we have an Egyptologist on the podcast. You are our first one. Because Egyptology, I feel, is one of those topics that so often hooks
00:01:38
Speaker
people who then later maybe go on to do archaeology or some form of ancient history. But Egyptology is quite often the subject that kind of first get you involved and what first hooked you into this topic or into this theme.
Approaches in Egyptology
00:01:52
Speaker
Boy, I have really been fascinated by ancient Egypt ever since I was a child, especially I wanted to be able to read the hieroglyphic text. And so that was one of the driving interests was wanting to read words written thousands of years ago. And so I went to both my undergraduate and
00:02:11
Speaker
and PhD degrees in Egyptology, specifically focusing on texts, although I've been delighted to be able to both direct and participate in archaeological expeditions in Egypt. So I really am a firm believer in combining as many primary sources as possible, both material and
00:02:31
Speaker
text-based. And despite the fact that I've been interested in Egypt since I was a child, my scholarship and specific focus in Egyptology has really shifted over the decades, I can say.
Shifts in Dr. Darnell's Focus
00:02:46
Speaker
So it hasn't, because I must say, I admit fully, I was never particularly interested in Egyptology, not necessarily because I didn't find it dull or anything, it just was never anything that particularly crossed my mind or something to be interested in, if that makes sense. And so my knowledge of Egyptology and of the kind of various threads that can be involved in it is very, very limited.
00:03:09
Speaker
But so you already mentioned that there are so many different ways to approach it. You can look at the primary sources, you can look at physical excavations, you can look at all sorts of things.
Publications and Research
00:03:17
Speaker
So how has your journey altered? How many different aspects of Egyptology are there? Many of my publications have focused on Egyptian military history as well as religious texts. So in 2018, for example, my husband, Professor John Darnell,
00:03:34
Speaker
And I published the first single volume English translation of the hieroglyphic texts in the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, the so-called Netherworld books. And I had actually worked on, in my dissertation that was published, the late Egyptian copies of the Netherworld books. So essentially texts a thousand years apart, but that are copies of one another. And this idea of ancient Egyptian fascination with their own
00:04:03
Speaker
history has emerged as one of my main themes of research, and in 2013, I published Imagining the Past, which was a new edition of four works of historical fiction written in ancient Egypt. So, text from the reign of Ramses II as well as the 20th Dynasty and Ramses III looking back to or even 300 years in the past.
Translating Hieroglyphs: Challenges and Insights
00:04:28
Speaker
Amazing. So almost an archaeology within Egyptology. It's an archaeologist, which is fantastic. Oh my gosh, that's so amazing. And our hieroglyphs, I mean, you mentioned that you have been one of the main people who have published, for example, several books deciphering certain hieroglyphs. How many, it's one of those things that I imagine, okay, well, we've, we've deciphered all the hieroglyphs now. We know what everything says, but then there are still texts out there that people aren't sure what they say, or they're still kind of undeciphered objects in places.
00:04:58
Speaker
So there are certainly attacks that have not been translated that are in museum collections, particularly papyri. All the number of those is decreasing. So in terms of decipherment, the basic understanding of how the hieroglyphic system works, what values particular signs have, as well as the grammatical system has been well known for quite some time. And so my research has focused on the meaning and the historical context of particular
00:05:28
Speaker
tax. So the Karnak inscription number Neptune describing a year five Libyan campaign had been translated, but did not have a full edition, including a grammatical analysis of kind of the interesting use of
00:05:44
Speaker
verbal forms, kind of really getting into the weeds of Egyptian grammar. And the same was true with the text that I translated in Imagining the Past as well as the joint work of the Netherworld book. So it's not decipherment for the first time, but it's presenting it in either a new way or new translations that offer perspectives on what the ancient Egyptians were talking about with regards to military history or religion that are really new.
Time Travel Wishes
00:06:11
Speaker
Amazing. Oh, sounds so fascinating. I've always, whenever I hear about what people are specialising, I think, I got into the wrong topic. But I mean, yeah, if you think about that with everything, I guess. So one of the standard questions, obviously, we are here on a time travel journey today. One of the standard questions that I ask my guests is, if you could travel back in time, where would you go and why? Now, I imagine I probably can guess where you might travel back to, but perhaps you would like to say in your own words.
00:06:36
Speaker
Well, having spent the last two years in the company of Akhenaten and Nefertiti in the writing of Egypt's Golden Couple, also co-authored with my husband, John Darnell.
00:06:50
Speaker
I think that would be where I would go. I would love to interview Akhnaten and Nefertiti and fill in the gaps of the textual and archaeological records that are left from their reign, particularly because Akhnaten's successors attempted to erase him from history. So a interview would be one of the most exciting things I can imagine in terms of time travel.
00:07:17
Speaker
Well, you may be in luck because on our tea break today, we will indeed be traveling back in time. And we're traveling today back to 1339 BC and to the ancient Egyptian city of Amana, which back then was known as, now I'm probably going to butcher the pronunciation, Akutaten. Yes, Akutaten.
00:07:37
Speaker
Okay, so at this point when we're back here, the city is still fresh, very recently constructed, and the limestone walls are still very bright without the grime of decades of inhabitation to mar their shine. The huge walls of the palace stand like a beacon in the northern part of the city, shadowing the walls of the administrative buildings in the center.
00:07:55
Speaker
but we find ourselves in the southern part of the city, surrounded by flat-roofed houses, busy artist studios. We enter one of these houses, following the directions of our beckoning host, and enter a small private chapel. In front of us is a carved stone panel depicting the royal family themselves, Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and their children, topped by the standard depiction of Aten, the sun disc, and the only god worshipped in this new city.
Exploring Egyptian Stelae
00:08:21
Speaker
So, this gives us a little bit of a hint of what we're talking about today, which is Egyptian now. This pronunciation as well, is it stelae? Stelae, yes. Stella? Basically, just say stela, and that'll work for the singular and the plural. Stella, stelae, really either way is fine.
00:08:45
Speaker
Exactly how we pronounce this is still something that I'm unsure about. I've heard it many times. Egyptian, Stella, Stile, and we'll get into the details of this object type soon. But first, I always like to have a very quick look at the most asked questions of the internet, courtesy of Google Search Autofill. There were surprisingly few actually related to Stile. First question, I'm going to completely butcher this pronunciation, by the way, throughout this whole podcast. And I apologize profusely to any one listening who's going, Oh, why is she saying it like that?
00:09:15
Speaker
So, what are stile, first of all, for those of us like me who are probably ignorant of this fact? Basically, I think a working definition would be a stone slab with carved images and or text. So for Egypt, this would be typically images of
00:09:37
Speaker
say, a private person and their family, if we're talking about a stele included in a tomb, and that would have hieroglyphic texts, for example, a funerary offering, as well as the titles and names of the individual. There are also royal stele, where we see a king offering to a god, and then typically a lengthy text that touts an accomplishment of the king, and it can be a building inscription, it can be
00:10:03
Speaker
a military victory that is being celebrated, or it can be a religious text, a hymn to a particular god. For example, the wonderful poetic steely to the god Amun dating to the reign of Thutmose III, although probably my favorite stella, stela. Sorry, I've ruined you as well now.
00:10:29
Speaker
Either one, it works. He's between the paws of the Sphinx and it dates to the reign of Thutmose IV of the 18th Dynasty. And it describes how as a prince, Thutmose was riding in his chariot around the Giza
00:10:46
Speaker
So the pyramids had become a royal playground of swords, and Thutmose falls asleep in the shadow of the head of the sphinx, because at this point in time, the sphinx is covered up to its neck in sand. And so the god Rachorachti, the sun god, which is also the first part of the name of Aten in the reign of Akhenaten and Nefertiti.
00:11:10
Speaker
Rakhal Rakhti comes to Prince Thutmose in a dream and says, basically, if you clear the sand from my body, I will make you the next king of Egypt. And so he makes this happen and commemorates this entire event and dream sequence on a stela that he erects between the paws of the Sphinx.
Roles and Evolution of Stelae
00:11:31
Speaker
Amazing. So I imagine, and yes, indeed, I should specify, Stila are found in many different cultures, but today we are focusing, as we have a famed Egyptologist with us on the Egyptian Stila. And so it sounds like the majority of the kind of inscriptions that are on them would be something official or something kind of declarative. They weren't used for just everyday announcements, for example.
00:11:54
Speaker
That's true. They are official monuments either in the private or the public sphere. Although John did translate for the first time a stela that was found by the Egyptian military based close to core core oasis. So modern Egyptian soldiers finding an ancient stela. And amazingly, it preserves a conversation between an Egyptian
00:12:21
Speaker
commander in Nubia, particularly of a Nubian fortress, and a Nubian patrolman. And it's fascinating to see this conversation, this back and forth between a Nubian soldier and an Egyptian commander. And so you can find these totally surprising texts on steely. That's one of the great things is that you can never predict what's going to be discovered. And that stela dates to the reign of
00:12:50
Speaker
to don't comment. So quite exciting. Okay, amazing. And I mean, that links a little bit with the next question, which was where are Stila found? So I mean, you've already spoken about a few different places. But if you were, for example, wanting to, to assess a site to survey a site and think, right, where would be the most likely place for Stila to be? Where could they be found?
00:13:10
Speaker
So typically in tombs, that would be one of the prime locations, but you can find them in town contacts, particularly votive stelae that might be in a household shrine, like we're discussing with the stela from Akhda Atan.
00:13:27
Speaker
There are also even steely out in the desert for example at a mining site and that can occur everywhere from the cyanide peninsula along the coast of the Mediterranean sea and in the western desert.
00:13:43
Speaker
Okay, amazing. So I mean, they are really a very universal object, it sounds like. But then I'm curious, and that relates actually nicely to the next question, which was who did Stila belong to? So you mentioned that they were kind of declarations from kings or stories about important subjects, or even just people chatting, apparently, in an army situation. But were they seen as belonging to someone, or were they just kind of public property?
00:14:08
Speaker
Oh, absolutely, they would have been commissioned by individual people, either private or royal. And so in a temple context, they could have been dedicated to a god, and in a tomb context, then to the deceased.
00:14:26
Speaker
So sometimes they are public proclamations made by the king, actually a whole set of steely from the end of the old kingdom, beginning of the first intermediate period. They are tax decrees exempting temples from paying taxes to the royal administration. So it really is an incredibly diverse set of tax and people commissioning them.
00:14:53
Speaker
Gosh, well it sounds like, I mean, I thought I was being specific with this kind of object, but it sounds like actually I couldn't have picked a more diverse object type if I wanted to. It's like statues. Yeah, it sounds like it. I was about to say it's like statues or, you know, indeed sort of tombstones, like as it would be the modern equivalent almost, it sounds like, or just general posters.
00:15:15
Speaker
They certainly can be. I mean, sometimes they really are tombstones. And yes, I like that idea of kind of propaganda posters or billboards.
00:15:27
Speaker
But do you, is there any, I mean, I guess, yeah, because they're so varied, it's sort of hard to maybe say, but do you see, for example, a development in the style of Stile in general, or is it very kind of the style is, I say style, but I mean, I don't know what I mean by that, I guess design or method of manufacturer or something like that. Is that sort of city dependent or time dependent or regional? It's really all of those things.
00:15:52
Speaker
Some of the earliest stelae are included in royal burials from Abydos. So there can be stelae that have the king's name and they're very official. They're very well carved and the hieroglyphs are definitely the highest style of the day, the most official looking signs. But then from those same royal tombs, we have stelae that belong to courtiers in both men and women.
00:16:22
Speaker
as well as some of the king's dogs. And I love that when it has the dog's name and a little determinative, a little sign indicating that this dealer really did belong to a royal.
00:16:34
Speaker
And then it really runs the gamut of steely in tombs that can be very well carved in the first intermediate period where there are fewer centrally trained artists that are coming from the capital city. You can have steely that look very odd and are simply painted on. So they are incredibly versatile objects and we even have them from
00:17:03
Speaker
abidos by private individuals because it became essentially a pilgrimage site where people would visit abidos during the festivals of the god Osiris. And sometimes they're a few inches high and just have names written in a cursive script in ink.
Boundary Stelae and Historical Contexts
00:17:23
Speaker
So, that type of monument can be, and I get monument in quotes, really, it's really, but that dedicated votive object has the same function as a very elaborately carved hieroglyphic text. And in fact, the word stela in ancient Egyptian is ouj, and that can also be applied to rock inscriptions.
00:17:49
Speaker
So it doesn't have to be a freestanding monument. You can carve on stone in the desert and essentially call it a stela because it has that same function of memorializing an individual, their lives, and their accomplishment.
00:18:05
Speaker
Which, actually, I was going to ask this later, but because when I was looking up about Amarna or Akatatin, they mentioned the boundary stela, stela, stela, and sometimes they're classified under another name, but would they still, would they also still just be counted as stela?
00:18:20
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. So the way they carve the boundary steely into the rock, some of them have a semi-circular lunat, and that is very distinctive. So some steely are rectangular and have no rounded elements.
00:18:39
Speaker
But what we think of as kind of the classic steely, and for example, even the rosetta stone, although it has this kind of iconic shape now, it's just broken. It would have originally been rectangular with a rounded top. And that's sort of the classic stela shape. And some of the boundaries steely do have that shape. And so what they're thinking is a monument, and rather than being a freestanding stone,
00:19:05
Speaker
It is carved into the living rock, but that does not change at all the function of the monument. And the boundaries, Steely, are fascinating because they preserve a speech by Akhenaten at the founding of the city of Akhenaten in year five of his reign. And the grammar is quite different.
00:19:27
Speaker
from earlier royal steely of the 18th dynasty that still follow what we call Middle Egyptian, which would have been the spoken and written language between about 2000 and 1700.
00:19:39
Speaker
BCE, although changes are already starting to happen. But then you're talking about the reign of Akhenaten in the 14th century BCE, and he's using idioms and grammar that represent the actual living spoken language of the time, what we call late Egyptian. And so it's really as if it is a transcript or so we're supposed to think of Akhenaten's declarations at the founding of the city.
00:20:07
Speaker
I'm mad at the people. He just spoke their language. I'm not sure that was his intent because he's pretty good at elevating himself around everyone. The additional title to Egypt's Golden Couple is When Akhnaten and Nefertiti War Gods on Earth.
00:20:28
Speaker
Okay, so we know a little bit more about Stella. Well, what we know is that there's so much to know about Stella that we can't possibly fit all of it into one podcast. But it seems that anything could be called a Stella. I can imagine if you would look at a catalogue and just see Stella, Stella, Stella, Stella, Stella listed, it could be so varied, which must be interesting, I guess, to try and decipher just a catalogue of finds and work out what exactly it is that you're looking at.
00:20:53
Speaker
And from an ancient Egyptian perspective, what I think is so cool about the concept of a stele is how different objects that seem to be so diverse can have a similar function. And I think that's often missing from an understanding of ancient Egypt that we think, oh, an elaborate tomb is going to get you into the afterlife quicker and in a more spectacular fashion than a really simple pit tomb.
00:21:21
Speaker
And yet, just a little offering table made of clay can function the same way as an elaborately decorated tomb. Yeah. And so just out of curiosity, from an Egyptological point of view, you then, this is a very strange question, but do you assign them also sort of similar levels of importance in terms of interpreting the past in terms of Egyptology? Or is it, are there still some sort of subcategories within Stella, if that makes sense?
00:21:51
Speaker
There are certainly steely with longer and unique hieroglyphic tax that are much more significant in terms of adding information about the past. For example, there's a stela of an artist and scribe named Yirti Sen.
00:22:07
Speaker
who lived during the Middle Kingdom, so about 4,000 years ago. And he talks about what it's like to be an artist and what he knows and his craft. And that single Stila is incredibly significant.
00:22:23
Speaker
for understanding artistry in ancient Egypt. The status of an artist and how you were trained, what you were expected to know, and how he presents himself is unique. So, that would definitely be in a catalogue of all potential steely in the world, one of the most significant. You hope when you're looking through a catalogue and you just see the category of steely, you hope, oh, hopefully this is a good one.
00:22:53
Speaker
Well, so I mean, indeed, I can imagine that there's thousands or hundreds of thousands out there, but considering that we're travelling back in time to Akhenaten at the moment, perhaps we can try to focus on a particular stele and sort of interpret indeed what you would learn from that one. And as indeed you've mentioned already, your focus at the moment is on Akhenaten and Nefertiti.
00:23:15
Speaker
And I know a little bit, I must admit, the only thing I know about this couple is from reading the Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters, because they are mentioned at some point. But so who actually were? How can that never did he?
00:23:30
Speaker
So, Akhnaten was a king of the 18th dynasty. He is the son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tia. He is born Amenhotep, and so we conventionally refer to him as Amenhotep IV. Now, those Roman numerals are just a modern designation. So,
00:23:49
Speaker
the ancient Egyptians distinguished the different Amenhotep because they had both a birth name and a coronation name. So, Akhnatan has his own coronation name of Nefer Heberu Ra. Beautiful are the manifestations of Re. And that's different then from his father's coronation name, Neb Mat Ra. The lord of truth or justice is Re. So that's how they would have done it. But he starts his reign as King Amenhotep.
00:24:18
Speaker
And even though within the first five years of his reign, there are dramatic changes to the art of the royal family, because Mary Dutton, their first daughter, seems to be born already by year five, because she appears on monuments of that date. And
00:24:37
Speaker
Around year four, we first see Nefertiti, and Nefertiti is something of a mystery. In terms of her origins, we don't know, in fact, if Nefertiti was her birth name, it means the beautiful one, Neferet, has come, E-E-T, has arrived. And this actually is a name that is perfect
00:24:59
Speaker
for associating the queen with the goddess Hathor, who was believed to travel south into Nubia during the winter and then needed to be coaxed back to Egypt to literally return or arrive back in Egypt in the summer. And she heralded the rising
00:25:15
Speaker
of the floodwaters of the inundation and that annual flood was what gave Egypt its tremendous agricultural productivity because rich black soil would have been deposited onto the fields every year and it made irrigation and farming
00:25:34
Speaker
very straightforward and enabled just a tremendous agricultural surplus nearly every year. Now, there could be low Nile floods for extended periods of time, and then you do have distribution from the royal storehouses and from the temple storehouses during these times of less productivity.
00:25:58
Speaker
By the founding of Akhed Atten in Middle Egypt, which takes place during year five of his reign, Amenhotep becomes Akhenaten, he who is effective for Atten the Sundisk. And in terms of the family origins of Nefertiti, it is possible that Akhenaten and Nefertiti were first cousins on both sides of their family. Oh wow.
00:26:24
Speaker
Nefertiti's father may have been Ai, and Ai was most likely related to a very important family from Middle Egypt that is also the family of Queen Ti.
00:26:38
Speaker
I mean, and also from what I vaguely remember from reading about this, this was quite common in sort of Egyptian royalty and that side of things. There was a lot of intermarriage going on between the families, or was this very different in this case? So it comes and goes in ancient Egyptian history. And there are a few cases in the very beginning of the 18th dynasty when the Egyptians are reestablishing a unified control of the country following the Second Intermediate Period and the invasion.
00:27:06
Speaker
establishment of a separate dynasty called the Hyksos dynasty, which is the 15th dynasty typically in chronologies of ancient Egypt. And those are foreigners ruling in the Delta and the northern part of Middle Egypt. And so full brother-sister marriages seem to be relatively rare in pharaonic Egypt, although marrying a first cousin really throughout the course of history isn't that
00:27:32
Speaker
unusual and until relatively recently. Yeah. I mean, look at British nobility. I mean, that it's just not that odd. And so but the full brother sister marriages are unusual in the pharaonic period and yet they become the norm in the Ptolemaic
00:27:53
Speaker
dynasty where you have Macedonian Greek kings ruling from Alexander after the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE. So it's actually unusual that the, or I would say ironic in a way, that the brother-sister marriage that we associate in sort of common
00:28:13
Speaker
conceptions of ancient Egypt is not an ancient Egyptian practice but rather a Macedonian Greek practice when they are among this family of the Ptolemies that ends ultimately with the reign of Cleopatra VII. At the very beginning of Cleopatra's reign, she's married to her brother Ptolemy XIII and then they very shortly try to kill each other.
00:28:37
Speaker
I mean, can you imagine like your brother, you know, and sister, that relationship is always volatile. Imagine them throwing marriage into the mix. Oh, gosh. They did not consummate the marriage. But when you do know earlier told me, he's definitely, definitely consecrated those marriages.
00:28:55
Speaker
Oh, gosh, interesting. Okay, no, but that's really interesting to know. And am I right in thinking that Akhenaten and Nefertiti also had quite a famous offspring or descendant thereof that is the most famous? Should we say ancient Egyptian? They certainly did.
00:29:10
Speaker
No, Ahnana and Nefertiti have six daughters and a son, and when their son is born, he is named Tutankh Aten, the living image of Aten, and following the death of his father, the rule possibly of his sister as king, he then becomes Tutankh Amen. So, the famous King Tut.
00:29:34
Speaker
They're the parents of Tutankhamun, however, and we mentioned this a little bit before, you mentioned that his name and his family was raised from history by future generations, or ancient Egyptians, shall we say. Why was that?
00:29:53
Speaker
So, Akhenaten's changes to Egyptian religion, and we can even say Akhenaten and Nefertini's changes to Egyptian religion, because there's some evidence that she was involved from the time they were ruling from Luxor, from ancient Wasit, that she was an active participant in the cult of Aten.
00:30:14
Speaker
And it's actually accepted in, expected, I should say, in ancient Egyptian religious practice, that the king is the chief priest of the solar cult. And Akhnaten's father, Amenidib III, also makes some pretty striking changes and developments in solar religion, although those seem to have been within the bounds of acceptability.
00:30:43
Speaker
for an ancient Egyptian king. Where Akhenaten really crosses the line is towards the end of his reign, likely around year 12, Akhenaten embarks on a program of iconoclasm, where he is sending out minions to hack
00:31:03
Speaker
out the names of Amun and Mut, the chief gods of Thebes, and in fact very important deities, particularly Amun throughout all of Egypt. And this name is hacked out from statues, it's hacked out from private tombs, it's even hacked out from temples in Nubia. And he commands that the plural noun gods even be hacked out. But we refer to them as minions in a way because it's interesting, there's a
00:31:30
Speaker
abundant proof that the people that were charged with doing the hacking out of carrying out this program of iconoclasm were not fully literate. Because the name Amun, for example, has two letters, M-N, and that is represented by what we call a bilateral or a hieroglyphic sign that represents two consonants.
00:31:50
Speaker
and men appears in multiple additional words for example the word men not for breast and. That also sometimes gets hacked out so it's as if they have these little cards with the hieroglyphs to hack out and sometimes a little uncertain.
00:32:09
Speaker
So Egypt's golden couple, we reconstruct two of these guys who are supposed to be hacking out names and use a tomb, an actual known tomb, where instead of the goddess Woot,
00:32:24
Speaker
What they hacked out is part of the word for black eye paint. And so the priest that's kind of checking in on this entire process just explains to the two guys that they impinged on the two-monor supply of Galena, of black eye paint in the afterlife. And we try to get across kind of a little bit of the humor, which the ancient Egyptians themselves
00:32:49
Speaker
had, but it was very much not a humorous event for most of the Egyptian population. It was probably quite traumatic to have festivals cancelled. And so that's where Akhnaten steps over the line, not even the changes to solar religion inherently.
00:33:09
Speaker
but the iconoclasm. And for that, his reign is removed from history. His name is not mentioned. He's simply called the enemy or the rebel of Ahid-Atun. And because Tutankhamun was his son, his reign also is part of the removal of
00:33:29
Speaker
And even put on common successor I possibly the father of never TV who also was the tutor of so he's probably in his early sixties when he comes to the throne and he's also part of the removal campaign.
00:33:49
Speaker
So I mean, although you could say that, you know, Akhenaten started it then. It's definitely his fault. I also just love indeed that image of two guys set out to hack out some words and they have their little picture of what the symbol looks like. They're like, right, there's one. OK, let's take that one out.
00:34:08
Speaker
It's hard to estimate how many people overall were involved in the iconoclasm and the hacking out. It's probably dozens if not a hundred or more people and possibly some of them really did know what they were doing because a lot of times they are rather surgically removing the name Amun, but there are enough examples of these.
00:34:32
Speaker
just kind of silly removals. For example, even of a goose that has perched on the prow of a ship and because the goose is one of the sacred animals of Amun, although that particular goose is just hanging out on the ship.
00:34:52
Speaker
also got removed. Do we know how people felt about this? Because it sounds like the kind of removal of Akhenaten's history and name, et cetera, only happened after he had died. So was it that during his life, people just kind of put up with it and grumbling under their breath and going, oh, just you wait until he's dead? Or were there rebellions or revolts or anything during his reign?
00:35:16
Speaker
So no evidence at all of an official revolt or rebellion. And even at Agedaten, for example, the steely that show the royal family, those are in the tombs of elite members of the bureaucracy and the priesthood of Agedaten. So it seems like if you were in the higher echelons
00:35:38
Speaker
at Akhenaten, you were expected to worship the royal family because you could not worship Aten directly. You worship the royal family who in turn worshiped Aten. And that also seemed to strike the ancient Egyptians as an unwelcome imposition, although the high officials of Akhenaten would not have said that because I imagine they wanted to keep their jobs. In the Berkman's village,
00:36:06
Speaker
the people who would have been building the excavating and decorating the royal tomb, they still have steely of traditional Egyptian deities set up in the workman's village. And that doesn't seem to have been a punishable offense.
00:36:24
Speaker
So we know that elsewhere worship of gods other than Amun and Mut could have continued and did continue, although certainly without the royal patronage that had existed prior to the reign of Akhnatin and Nefertiti.
00:36:45
Speaker
And there is one hieratic girth that though in a tomb in Luxor that does describe this time of darkness and longing for the god Amun. And that is one of the few indications we have of someone's private thoughts from this unusual period in time. Interesting.
00:37:09
Speaker
And I mean, so in that case, so for example, we briefly mentioned this, this Stella in the city, which depicts the royal family sitting there with their children as well, and the sun shining down on them. Are these kinds of objects then the only remains that we have of them? How do we know what we do know about them?
00:37:27
Speaker
So from the ancient city of Akhedaten, precisely because it was abandoned in antiquity, ironically, it is incredibly well preserved because no one lived there for thousands of years. And also the temples of when he was still called Amenhotep in Luxor, they were dismantled and used as fill in later buildings. And so we can take those blocks out from the inside of
00:37:54
Speaker
some of the pylons at Karnak temple and incredibly well preserved reliefs now it's kind of a giant puzzle to put some of them together and the work there has been really remarkable in terms of reconstructing some of the decoration.
00:38:10
Speaker
But at Akhenaten, we have private tombs that show lots of images of the royal family. In fact, that's the main theme of private tomb decoration is yet again what the royal family is doing. Akhenaten is even lording over people in death. And that is quite
00:38:32
Speaker
shocking from an ancient Egyptian perspective. The king can appear in private tombs, but shouldn't take over the decoration to the, I would say, detriment of the private person in terms of appearing in their own tomb.
00:38:52
Speaker
And so that's another unusual thing, but the royal family steely are set up as part of these shrines in houses, but we have the houses themselves. We have the workman's studio, we have the tombs, we have temple decoration. Again, the blocks were reused in later temples, and so all of this has to be reconstructed, but there is
00:39:19
Speaker
there's probably more information about the urban environment during the reign of Akhnat and Nefertiti at their capital city than any other city in Egypt. And that's kind of the irony is once it was recovered archaeologically, we had huge amounts of information and yet major gaps remain. Like, why did Akhnat do what he did? We have to piece all of that together.
00:39:48
Speaker
Oh, fascinating. And out of curiosity, these, so for example, you mentioned in private chapels or tombs as well, there were lots of depictions of the royal family on these stelastella. I know, I'm very sorry, I keep pronouncing it wrong. I hope that people who are listening know which ones to pick out by Colleen as the correct versions. These stelae, would they have been, for example,
00:40:09
Speaker
commissioned by the individual families as, you know, oh, I want this depiction of the king and queen with the king of queen have been sending them out to people being like, hey, you know, why don't you just put this up? Or would artists have kind of been creating a bulk order and then people go and order it from them?
00:40:26
Speaker
That is a fantastic question. And each one is a little bit different. So not the bulk orders, for example, that we have with Book of the Dead papyri, where sometimes they just left a blank. And then once you purchased it, you would have your name put in.
00:40:43
Speaker
It's a residual squeezing in because the blink wasn't quite big enough. They are not consistent enough where that is the case. However, you bring up a really interesting point. Would it have been a gift by the king of, here, put this up in your house. That'd be a passive aggressive gift.
00:41:02
Speaker
That's exactly. Or would it have been commissioned by the individuals? That we don't know. It does seem like tombs were paid for by individual people, but you raise a really interesting question about the steely, and that's the sort of evidence where it doesn't survive. We don't have a receipt saying who paid for one of the steely. If anyone's listening and needs a research project, there you go. There's something to explore further, perhaps.
00:41:33
Speaker
Well, so to sort of backtrack a little bit, Colleen, we did already introduce you in the first section of this episode, but we perhaps we could go into a little more detail now and in particular sort of talk about why this object that we focused on today or the region or the royal couple relevant to what you do. So you have already mentioned this particular couple or the subject of a new book that you and your husband have co-authored. And I mean, I can probably imagine why it's the case, but why do you think that
00:42:02
Speaker
this couple, Akhenaten and Nefertiti are just so fascinating or deserve, shall we say, to have a whole book dedicated to them. Really, since their rediscovery at the end of the 19th century, Akhenaten and Nefertiti have absolutely fascinated people for all sorts of reasons. I think the combination of a tremendous amount of artistic and archaeological remains, as well as the lengthy texts,
00:42:29
Speaker
of the Hymn to Otten, as well as the Boundary Steely, have provided enough material for people to come up with all kinds of interpretations of what Otten and Nefertiti are doing, and yet there are enough gaps in the evidence that book after book after book can be published. So our approach was really to go back to each source
00:42:55
Speaker
whether it be a stela or the hymn to Aten, and really think about what is Akhenaten attempting to say. Sadly, we have no direct quotes by Nefertiti. We only have her in art and worshipping Aten directly in the mansion of the Benben, the solar monument at Karnak. But with a source-based approach, our goal was to write a biography where Akhenaten and Nefertiti would really recognize themselves.
00:43:24
Speaker
And not so much discuss, well, what might they mean to the modern world? I think people can individually draw those sorts of connections, but
00:43:36
Speaker
There was quite a lot of room for new interpretations and translations. For example, the understanding of this fragmentary block from Karnak Temple that for nearly 40 years had been interpreted as Akhnatan's revelation, that the text said that the statues of the gods had ceased to exist.
00:43:58
Speaker
Yet, by looking again at the hieroglyphic tanks, it turns out that the verb to cease is most likely the verb to desire, and that Akhenaten is making the statues that the gods desire. And so early on in his reign, he is still
00:44:15
Speaker
creating statues, funding the manufacture of divine images, and yet on those same blocks, emphasizing the unique power of the Sun God of Aten. So there really seems to be a more gradual development, and we attempted to look at his reign without knowing necessarily what would come later.
00:44:40
Speaker
that what happens, the founding of Akhenaten, the iconoclasm, this isn't necessarily fated. Akhenaten could have made any number of different decisions. So we follow step by step what Akhenaten and Nefertiti do with a very close attention to the primary sources and our own new translations and understanding of the texts and images. And sometimes you really do have to look before or after Akhenaten's reign, for example, with the family Stili.
00:45:10
Speaker
What are the daughters doing there? Why are they constantly accompanying Akhenaten and Nefertiti? And some of the answers to those questions can be found in love poetry, particularly in the affectionate gestures between the king and the queen.
00:45:27
Speaker
as well as these really interesting scenes from the reign of Ramses III at Medina Habu temple where the king is interacting with his daughters. And so by pulling all of these different sources together, we were able to present a new conception of Akhenaten and Nefertiti's reign where they are truly attempting to rule as gods on earth.
00:45:52
Speaker
This idea of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, ruling as gods on earth, also solves one of the central mysteries of Akhenaten's reign. And one of the primary reasons why he has fascinated so many Egyptologists and people outside of Egyptology who study the ancient world is that from early on Akhenaten was identified as the world's first monotheist.
00:46:15
Speaker
and Sigmund Freud, for example, associated Akhenaten and Moses. And so Akhenaten has been drawn into this much larger discussion of monotheism in antiquity. But the fact that both he and Nefertiti were also considered gods at Akhenaten indicates that, no, he didn't actually worship a single god. He considered himself and his wife to also be deities. So you can't say Akhenaten is a monotheist.
00:46:45
Speaker
Oh, hot take.
00:46:49
Speaker
You heard it here first, people. No, that is. I mean, that's so interesting. And I mean, like you say, we have all these amazing sources and archaeological, but also the records and the preservation has been astounding. I mean, how much, for example, information do we have about this couple then and the reign of this couple, even though they were deleted, shall we say, they were cancelled by the following cultures in comparison to royal couples of other Egyptian dynasties, dynasties, etc.
00:47:17
Speaker
a couple, and this is why we wrote the biography of Akhnaten and Nefertiti together, because sometimes Akhnaten gets considered, Nefertiti gets considered as the prime characters of academic books or more popular books, but really you can't understand one without the other. So Akhnaten and Nefertiti are unusual in showing themselves as a couple, in showing themselves accompanied by their daughters.
00:47:46
Speaker
And we show in Egypt's Golden Couple how the presence of the daughters enhances the divinity of the parents. Just how Aten, the sun god, has multiple rays and multiple hands, grammatically in ancient Egyptian, the word for ray and the word for hand, is feminine. And so Akhenaten and Nefertiti, surrounded by their daughters, Tutankhaten never makes an appearance in their arts because he is a boy and that would not
00:48:15
Speaker
fit with Akhnet and Nefertiti having these feminine emanations of their own offspring. And that, again, is really different from what other pharaohs did. So certainly as a family unit, Akhnet and Nefertiti have far more evidence because they're actually showing their offspring.
00:48:41
Speaker
Ramses II and, as I mentioned, Ramses III also do that, but they do it in a different way. They don't show the family altogether, and they certainly don't show royal children as young children playing with their parents, for example. That's really interesting, and also very sweet, actually. It suggests that they were indeed very devoted to each other, devoted to their family, or the females within, at least.
00:49:08
Speaker
I don't think they ignore Tutankhaten. I think he's just not there in the art. And that's a really important point, is that was Akhnaten a loving father and was he in a romantic relationship the way we think of it in the modern world with Nefertiti? That is possible, but we don't think that those steely are necessarily evidence of that because it is all on a theological realm.
00:49:36
Speaker
Now, again, maybe the reason why he used that as a theological statement is because he was particularly in love with Nefertiti. He was particularly involved with his daughters. But we can't really judge from what survives of the ancient sources. Although I will say that the love poetry of the 19th dynasty of the Ramazid era
00:50:01
Speaker
is absolutely beautiful. The protagonist of the love poetry, the man and the woman and sometimes
00:50:09
Speaker
they're probably lovestruck teenagers, even in the text. Those are not royalty, but it certainly could have been something used by members of the royal family as well. So there's nothing that says that it wouldn't be appropriate for Akhnat and Nefertiti. And in one of our reconstructions at the beginning of a chapter, we do have Akhnat and recite to Nefertiti a bit of love poetry.
00:50:34
Speaker
And it's, I think, a fun detail to imagine. And that's the great thing about the reconstructions of the beginning of each chapter of Egypt's Golden Couple, is we can talk about a potential way in which we can see their lives. And then in the following chapter, we present this sober evidence of, yes, this is what we know for certain. This is what is less certain, but certainly plausible.
00:51:00
Speaker
And then in our bibliographic essays, we provide all the evidence that backs up our series and our presentation of Akhenaten and Nefertiti as the golden couple because the skin of the gods was gold. And Nefertiti being related to the goddess Hathor, Hathor is also called the golden one. So there are these multiple places where gold certainly is part of their presentation.
00:51:30
Speaker
Oh, no, that sounds really fascinating. And indeed, I love that idea that each chapter starts out with a sort of almost a step back in time, as you say, to sort of witness it for yourself. That's really fascinating. I wanted to ask as well, just before we run out of time, because to make the most, shall we say, of having such an experienced Egyptologist on the show, ancient Egypt, I mean, it was such a big place. It's all of these things. I mean, we've just talked today about one specific
00:51:55
Speaker
family in one particular city, and I mean, obviously some of the context surrounding that, but is it normal in Egyptology because it's so, so big and so complex to focus on a particular time period or royal family, or when you're entering sort of the Egyptological, I don't know how you would say that out of specialization, do you sort of have to know a little bit of everything? How does that work in terms of the knowledge base of an Egyptologist?
00:52:20
Speaker
it really, it's up to each individual person. So some Egyptologists focus more on the archaeological materials, say ceramics or flints or particular classes of objects. Some people are very much philologically oriented where they're focusing more on grammar or cursive scripts. I've really tried in my own career to look broadly at the evidence we have. And I think
00:52:48
Speaker
because we're talking about events and people and places from three, four thousand years ago or even further back if you're talking about the pre-dynastic era, I believe that it is significant to try to incorporate as many different classes of evidence as possible to build up a holistic picture. A broad basis. This is a good place to start.
00:53:16
Speaker
And I also wanted to ask, so how I first heard about you, I must say, and I think probably how a lot of people who are listening might know of you is through your very successful social media presence as the vintage Egyptologist. And I mean, this account is just so beautiful, and it gives such a gorgeous and very kind of romantic view of Egyptology, but I imagine that perhaps
00:53:37
Speaker
In reality, in modern day, it doesn't compare as much with actual everyday life as an Egyptologist. If there are people listening in who are interested in potentially pursuing a career in Egyptology, what could you expect to experience? How has the world of Egyptological research changed since the early days of it, shall we say?
00:53:59
Speaker
Well, fortunately it has changed very significantly. The rigor of academic pursuits and the collaborations that all archaeological expeditions have
00:54:12
Speaker
with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and Egyptian Egyptologists. And we are so fortunate to work with really incredible colleagues in the field who are based in Egypt, both in day-to-day excavations as well as in publications and the overall presentation.
00:54:32
Speaker
of the material. And I do have to say through my Instagram account, vintage Egyptologists, where I do present things from a vintage fashion lens. And so in the field, and you see this more in my stories, particularly when we're in Egypt, I get very dirty.
00:54:54
Speaker
When you're doing a pic or fee, when you're copying inscriptions, you're not excavating. And so there it's a little bit of a different experience. So I would say in that regard,
00:55:05
Speaker
It differs from some other expeditions where it's just full-time excavating. But we do excavate in the desert, although most of the fill, for example, in a settlement context, like a late Roman settlement, we've excavated a number of those through John's expedition, the Elkhab Desert Survey Project. The fill tends to be sand.
00:55:28
Speaker
So it's not the same as a lot of settlement remains in the Nile Valley where it really is mud and it's a little bit and soil. So that also differs working in a desert environment.
00:55:46
Speaker
is a bit different from in the Nile Valley itself. And in that case, I'm not wearing vintage from a while ago. I'm wearing something from the 80s or it's consignment, it's shopping at Goodwill. I'm all for not purchasing new clothes because of a sustainability approach as well. But I would say that that's one of the major changes most recently and a very important one.
00:56:14
Speaker
Yes, no, fantastic. Because indeed, I mean, that's with all archaeology, I suppose. You have this kind of very romantic view of it, but that has a lot of issues, as you mentioned. It's nice to just highlight that when you think about something like archaeology in Deanna Jones, or Egyptology, I suppose, don't assume that you will be living necessarily the same experience. It's definitely progressed a lot more since then.
00:56:36
Speaker
Yes, yes. And oh, I do remember now the other thing I was going to say about the Instagram account is that not only do we collaborate with Egyptian colleagues in the field, but because of the fashion and photography angle, I've gotten to work with incredible photographers in Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt. So it's really fun to have those collaborations in Egypt.
00:56:59
Speaker
with artists and videographers and photographers. And that's been one of my favorite and I think most special aspects of my Instagram. Yeah, yeah. Oh, and it is, I mean, it's just beautiful to look at as well. But anyway, well, I think that unfortunately marks the end of our tea break. Sounds like there's a lot of things to do. So we should probably go back to work, but thank you so much for joining me today, Colleen. It was really interesting to chat to you and I appreciate you taking the time to come and talk to me today.
00:57:26
Speaker
And thank you so much for the invitation. And if anyone would like to find out more about the work that's been mentioned today, the life of Akhenaten on Nefertiti, do check out the show notes and I will post lots of links to information pages and of course links to where you can read Colleen and her husband's upcoming book. Sorry, what was the name again? Egypt's golden couple when Akhenaten and Nefertiti were gods on earth.
00:57:55
Speaker
And it is published by St. Martin's Press and available wherever books are sold. Perfect. Excellent. And I will be posting some links as well so that you can have quick access if you like. I hope that you enjoyed our journey today and see you next month for another episode of Tea Break Time Travel. I hope that you enjoyed our journey today. If you did, make sure to like, follow, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And I'll see you next month for another episode of Tea Break Time Travel.
00:58:21
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.