362. Ancient Egypt: Great Kings of The Bronze Age (Ep 1)

Summary

EMPIRE: WORLD HISTORY
Episode 362: Ancient Egypt – Great Kings of The Bronze Age (Ep 1)
Original air date: May 24, 2026
Hosts: William Dalrymple & Anita Anand
Guest: Eric Cline

---

Brief Overview

The first episode of the new six-part Empire miniseries dives into the golden age of Ancient Egypt – the era immediately preceding Akhenaten’s dramatic religious revolution. Hosts William Dalrymple and Anita Anand are joined by acclaimed archaeologist and historian Eric Cline. The focus is on the international world revealed by the 1887 discovery of the Amarna Letters: clay tablets chronicling the high-stakes diplomacy, commerce, rivalries, and personalities of the Late Bronze Age.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

Setting the Stage: Akhenaten’s Revolution & Egypt’s Golden Age

• The miniseries will explore Akhenaten, his queen Nefertiti, and his son Tutankhamun, but this episode focuses on the world they inherited.
• Akhenaten’s religious revolution – a dramatic shift from polytheism to a form of monotheism centered on the sun disk, the Aten – is framed by the preceding era's political and economic might.
  • “Egypt’s treasury overflowed with Nubian gold. Its armies were undefeated. Its pharaoh corresponded as a brother with the other mighty rulers of the age.” (William Dalrymple, 03:44)
• This stability and interconnectedness are especially striking in contrast to the chaos Akhenaten’s revolution would later unleash.

---

The Discovery of the Amarna Letters

• Myth versus Reality
  • The famous story is that a woman searching for fertilizer discovered the tablets in 1887, but Eric Cline suggests it's likely a cover story, fabricated by an antiquities dealer seeking to hide illicit excavation. (Eric Cline, 06:35–10:57)
  • “I think the antiquities dealer who then was the main guy hawking these … might have made her up." (Cline, 10:00)
  • Many tablets were lost or damaged—both in transit (donkey bags slamming together) and possibly crushed for fertilizer.
• Significance of the Find
  • Over 400 tablets survive (of what were probably 600–700 originally), offering a uniquely detailed glimpse into Late Bronze Age diplomacy, politics, and personalities.

“We have 400 … but that would mean there should have been 600, 700 originally.” (Cline, 10:13)

---

Scholarly Rivalry: Translating the Tablets

• Eric’s book, Love, War and Diplomacy, traces both the ancient world and the modern scholarly race to understand it.
  • British scholars E.A. Wallis Budge and Archibald Henry Sayce made early attempts at translation—with limited success.
    • Sayce was obsessed with finding biblical figures (David, Solomon) in the texts but failed.
    • Budge, of humble background, rose to be Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum, using questionable methods to acquire objects, including (allegedly) tunnelling through customs warehouses. (Anita Anand, 15:32)
  • "He was known for acquiring objects any way he could ... shipping back to the British Museum with the approval of the trustees." (Cline, 15:32)
• German scholars ("the Young Berliners," incl. Hugo Winckler) and Norwegian Jørgen Alexander Knudtzon produced superior translations and scholarly editions, making the archives accessible worldwide by 1896.

Notable Quote:

“They are the most important things we knew about the ancient Near East at that time, apart from the Bible.” (Cline, 18:34, quoting Sayce)

---

Revolutionary Insights: A Globalized Late Bronze Age

• The Amarna Letters reveal an extensively interconnected world, challenging the earlier view of isolated civilizations.
  • Egypt, Hittites (Anatolia), Assyrians/Babylonians (Mesopotamia), Cyprus, and many vassal states formed a "G8" of the ancient world.
  • Intimate correspondence, diplomatic marriages, gift exchanges—not trade, which was considered beneath the great kings.
  • Egypt, rich due to Nubian gold, was the apex power—other nations constantly petitioned for gold.
    • “Gold is like dust in your land. Gold is like dirt in your land. Just give me some.” (Eric Cline, 27:37)

---

Amarna Letters: Diplomacy, Dowries, and Family Dramas

• Great Kings addressed each other as "brother" and arranged dynastic marriages.
  • Many foreign princesses lived long lives in Egyptian royal harems.
  • Correspondence included complaints – e.g., Babylonian king lamenting his missing sister, royal wives swapped for gold.
    • “What kind of a man are you that would give away your daughter for some nuggets of gold?” (Cline, 27:59)
• Vassal kings constantly petitioned the pharaoh for help—often desperately so.
  • Rib-Hadda of Byblos sent 60–70 letters, so prolific that the pharaoh eventually told him to stop writing.
    • “Why do you alone keep writing to me?” (Pharaoh to Rib-Hadda, paraphrased by Anita Anand, 31:01)
  • Vivid, poetic metaphors communicate famine, danger, and familial loss.
    • “I am like a bird in a trap. My field is a wife without a husband.” (Rib-Hadda, cited by Anand, 31:06)

---

The World Beneath the Empires: Vassals, Proxies, & Perpetual Conflict

• Vassal kings (in places like Canaan, Megiddo, Jerusalem) were in constant turmoil, acting out proxy wars between Egypt and the Hittites.
  • "They're like kids in a schoolyard in a daycare. They're all fighting and they're running to Daddy." (Cline, 35:06)
  • These tablet letters provide the only surviving first-hand accounts of this region—sometimes missing beginnings or endings due to loss in transit.
• Example: King Abdi-Heba of Jerusalem calls himself “a ship in the midst of a sea, surrounded by enemies.”

---

Ancient Religion: Plurality, Transition & Coming Revolution

• Late Bronze Age Egypt and its “G8” neighbors hosted a bewildering collection of gods (~1500 in Egypt alone).
  • Egyptians often absorbed deities from neighbors; major examples include Baal and El from the Canaanite pantheon.
  • The Aten—the sun disk—would become Akhenaten’s focus in the coming revolution.
• Akhenaten’s narrowing focus on the Aten may have had roots in Amenhotep III’s reign.

---

Amenhotep III: Egypt’s Diplomatic & Cultural Apex

• Amenhotep III, whose colossal sculptures fill museum galleries worldwide, is depicted as both a warrior and diplomat—charming rivals and reigning over the wealthiest, most stable Egypt.
  • Married to Queen Tiye (possibly for love), who played significant diplomatic roles in her own right. (Cline, 45:08)
  • The king’s sculpted image always appears youthful, even as he aged—unlike the “alien” realism embraced by his son Akhenaten.

---

Akhenaten’s Radical Break—Foreshadowed

• Akhenaten’s depictions feature elongated skulls and bodies—possibly a form of stylistic realism or even medical conditions (e.g., Marfan’s, Frohlich’s syndromes).
  • “It’s also been suggested he may have been female and not male.” (Cline, 49:34)
• Akhenaten monopolized both religion and the state, closing temples and absorbing their wealth.
  • “There is nothing he doesn't control … in closing the temples, he took all of their treasuries.” (Cline, 51:26)

---

Preparing for Next Episode: Egypt on the Eve of Revolution

• The world Akhenaten inherited was "literally the golden age … the culmination" of millennia of Egyptian power and culture.
  • “Egypt is at the pinnacle of its success. It controls all the gold. They are in control. … Egypt is in charge.” (Cline, 52:09)
• The show closes by foreshadowing the coming episode: “Why would you want to change everything? Well, join us to the next episode where it changes everything. Absolutely upends the whole caboosh.” (Anand, 53:08)

---

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “I wish I knew who said it: how many she had pulverized and grown into leeks and cucumbers and melons will never be known.” (Anand, 08:05)
• “Gold is like dust in your land. Gold is like dirt in your land. Just give me some.” (Cline, 27:37)
• “Why do you alone keep writing to me?” (Pharaoh to Rib-Hadda, paraphrased by Anand, 31:01)
• “They're like kids in a schoolyard in a daycare. They're all fighting and they're running to Daddy.” (Cline, 35:06)
• “On the one hand, it’s kind of funny to make fun of them, that they’re like kids squabbling. But you’re right, it’s 3400 years ago, but in a way that also brings out the human element. … Nothing has changed.” (Cline, 36:17)
• “It’s also been suggested he may have been female and not male.” (Cline, 49:34)

---

Important Timestamps

• 02:36 — Introduction of Akhenaten and the upcoming miniseries' focus
• 03:44 — The world before Akhenaten: stability, wealth, and connectivity
• 06:35–10:57 — The discovery of the Amarna tablets and myth-busting of the fertilizer woman story
• 12:39 — Scholarly rivalry: British vs. German (and Norwegian) translators
• 18:34 — Why the Amarna tablets revolutionized our understanding of the ancient world
• 22:12 — The major world powers: Egypt, Hittites, Assyria, Babylonia, Cyprus
• 27:14–28:13 — Diplomatic marriages, harems, and negotiations between “brother” kings
• 31:01–33:06 — Rib-Hadda: the vassal king who wouldn’t stop writing
• 35:06 — The vassal kings’ endless complaints: “like kids in a daycare”
• 39:32 — Religion in Egypt and the broader region before Akhenaten
• 42:32–46:09 — Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye: marriage and diplomacy
• 48:21–51:26 — Akhenaten’s radical art and religious transformations
• 52:09 — Egypt at its high point on the eve of Akhenaten’s reign

---

Tone and Style

The conversation is lively, teasing, and enthusiastic. Anand and Dalrymple mix scholarly reverence with playful banter (notably about Eric Cline’s beloved ties and the legends of antiquity). Cline’s explanations are clear yet rich with humor, especially in debunking myths and drawing striking parallels between ancient and modern geopolitics.

---

For Further Listening

Join Empire Club at empirepoduk.com for early access, ad-free episodes, and bonus material. Next episode: the transformation that shattered this golden age.

Transcript

[William Dalrymple]

If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening and a weekly newsletter. Sign up to empire [e-mail]. your summer starts now with Memorial Day deals at the Home Depot. It's time to fire up summer cookouts with the next grill 4 burner gas grill on special. Buy for only $100 and entertain all season with the Hampton bay West Grove seven piece outdoor dining set for only $499.

[Eric Klein]

This Memorial Day.

[William Dalrymple]

Get low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot while supplies Last pricing valid May 14 through May 27, US only exclusions apply. See homedepot.com pricematch for details.

[Anita Anand]

So good, so good, so good. Everything you want for summer is at Nordstrom Rack stores now and up to 60% off. Stock up and save on the brands you love like Vince, Sam, Edelman, Frame and free people. Join the Nordy Club, Unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first and more. Plus buy online and pick up at

[William Dalrymple]

your favorite rack store for free.

[Eric Klein]

Great brands, great prices.

[Anita Anand]

That's why you rack. Edwina Mountbatten died in the jungles of Borneo. The year was 1960 and she was all alone. Well, alone, I say. Except she was surrounded by letters. And they weren't letters, as you might think, from her husband, Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India. No, these were letters from the man that she truly loved, the scourge of the British Empire, the first Prime Minister of a free India. His name was Jawaharlal Nehru. Now this fascinating love triangle is so pertinent when it comes to pre partition India politics. And we're going to be delving right in in a miniseries, a four parter for you. And it's only available to members of our club. So if that isn't you, what you need to do is right away get to empirepoduk.com that's empirepoduk.com and for the price of a coffee, come join our club. And as if you needed any more incentive, let me tell you, our very special guest is the marvellous Alex von Tunzelman, who is the author of Indian Summer. So what are you waiting for? Come on.

[William Dalrymple]

3400 years ago, an Egyptian pharaoh detonated the most radical religious revolution in human history. His name was akhenaten.

[Anita Anand]

He abandoned 3,000 years of theology of temples. He moved the capital to a new city that he'd conjured from the Bear Desert. And then he declared that there was only one God worthy of worship. The sun disk.

[William Dalrymple]

The Aten, his queen is the most famous face in all of ancient Egypt. Her name was Nefertiti. And his son, a boy of eight or nine who inherited his father's kingdom was called Tutankhamun.

[Anita Anand]

So look, in this six part series we're going to be exploring these three famous ancient Egyptians and the extraordinary revolution that lay at the the center of their world. And Empire Club members, you can get the whole of this series early, you can get it ad free as well as exclusive extra episodes. So just join the link in the description because honestly, trust me, this is not one to miss.

[William Dalrymple]

And we begin today with the world that Akhenaten was about to shatter. Because one of the things that makes this revolution so extraordinary and so violent in its cultural implications is how magnificent and how stable the world before it seemed to be. Egypt's treasury overflowed with Nubian gold. Its armies were undefeated. Its pharaoh corresponded as a brother with the other mighty rulers of the age. And we know all of this in intimate, extraordinary detail because of one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the 19th century which we will be discussing today.

[Anita Anand]

So hello and welcome to Empire. I'm Anita Arnan.

[William Dalrymple]

And I'm William Dalrymple. And our guest today needs no introduction, although we will of course now introduce him because he is one of our very, very favorite historians and archaeologists whose previous appearance produced an audience that we've never had for an ancient series ever before. The great Eric Klein. Welcome back.

[Eric Klein]

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be back.

[William Dalrymple]

And we bringing him back to Empire now with his latest book which I have just finished today. Love War and Diplomacy. The discovery of the Amarna letters and the Bronze Age world they revealed. Welcome back, Eric.

[Eric Klein]

Thank you, thank you.

[Anita Anand]

Do you know what Eric, I mean when he says there was a huge response, literally tidal waves of adulation. And I was trying to think of what your groupies might be called and I was thinking the tiny clinies. I mean there's also a great deal of worship for your ties. And can you just tell us what you've come armed with today?

[William Dalrymple]

Eric's ties. Eric has a whole Instagram site dedicated to his ties, which you should now

[Eric Klein]

go and check out.

[Anita Anand]

So can I ask that scholarly question that you expect from me? Whatcha wearing? Can you just describe it? Whatcha wearing today?

[Eric Klein]

Well, especially for you guys, I put on my favorite Egyptian tie. It's generic but pretty much looks like Egypt. And I like this tie so much. This is actually the third iteration I wore out the first two. I'm not kidding. So this, I finally found another one somewhere on the Internet and this is now the third. So special for you.

[Anita Anand]

Well, listen, you know, we feel special, but we also, I feel the tiny Cline is out there know what to get you for Christmas. Now, you know all I would say is brace, Brace Klein, brace, because I think there's loads coming your way.

[Eric Klein]

Okay, great.

[Anita Anand]

Let's start with the Amarna letters and the date of the discovery of those letters. We're talking 1887?

[Eric Klein]

Yes, yes, we're talking 1887. But I must caution, the wonderful story you have just told is may not be true. Seriously, that is the story, that's what we're told. This woman searching for fertilizer ran across this trove of ancient clay tablets, but the woman could never be located afterward. And I think that she might have been a cover story concocted by.

[William Dalrymple]

For a bunch of tomb robbers.

[Eric Klein]

Well, one, I think one antiquities dealer who found them and then is the main guy distributing them. So I think that was a cover story that was made up.

[Anita Anand]

Hang on a minute, Klein, one second. Just before we burn the story, let me set it up for you. Because the story, I mean, it's the one that I knew, which I find utterly charming, that somewhere about halfway between Cairo and Luxor, there is this unnamed woman filling her basket with stuff hard baked. She's gonna take them home, she's gonna crush them up and use them as fertilizer. And then, I mean, this is after God knows how many she's pulverized. She realizes that actually this is one of the most important historical documents man will ever find. And I wrote this down. Cause I've story for such a long time, I wrote down, I wish I'd knew who said it. How many she had pulverized and grown into leeks and cucumbers and melons will never be known.

[William Dalrymple]

When did you write that down? I don't know, it's a long time

[Anita Anand]

ago because I was really into like every school child. Very much into Egyptology to a very shallow degree. But I just did think actually, you know, we live in a day where leeks destroy important documents. This is like the protein leak story.

[William Dalrymple]

We have to say actually that I think all three of us have been totally obsessed with this story since childhood. Eric, you, I know very much had this as a childhood thing. And you, Anita, obviously have your school notebooks too.

[Anita Anand]

I went through my little notebooks and my really terrible drawings of Nefertiti and Tutankhamun. Which will never be seen in public. But Eric. So look, I really loved that story. Tell me why you don't. Why you're doing. Why are you doing that face, Eric? Why are you making that face?

[Eric Klein]

Because I hate dashing people's dreams. But I'm also of one with you all because I too went to see the King Tut exhibit when I was back in high school. It would have been for me in Los Angeles. 76, 77. My parents actually allowed me to play hooky from high school for that day to go, as you say, queue up to see the death mask. But anyway, this poor lady, she could never be found later. And so I don't think she.

[William Dalrymple]

People did try and locate her, did they? They were.

[Eric Klein]

Well, I don't know how hard they tried but. Because by that were more interested in the tablets themselves. But I think the antiquities dealer who then was the main guy hawking these to all the museum people and antiquities dealers, I think he might have made her up. But that bit about pulverizing them for leaks and. And such is actually not too far from the truth. Because while they were transporting them down to Luxor and over to Cairo in bags on donkeys, we're told by a couple of the scholars buj and says that they, the tablets like slammed against each other and disintegrated. And we may have lost as much as a third of them.

[William Dalrymple]

God, oh God.

[Eric Klein]

We've still got 400 of which about 380 are tablets. But that would mean there should have been 600, 700 originally.

[William Dalrymple]

And quite a lot of the stories that you tell in this book sort of, you know, are missing their first page or don't have their conclusion. We have one tablet in a group and we don't get the end or the beginning of the story.

[Eric Klein]

Absolutely. Yes. Some of the letters go over two or three tablets and yes, we're missing the first one. So the story starts in the middle, as it were.

[Anita Anand]

So when you say you think it might be a made up story, are you without any kind of legal jeopardy attached to this statement suggesting that the person who put this story around is actually hiding the fact that these could have been nicked from somewhere that they shouldn't have been nicked from?

[Eric Klein]

Yeah, exactly. I, I think, I think it was a local antiquities. Egyptian antiquities dealer. And we actually have a statement from Sayce, the Oxford professor of assyriology who says he came down in his boat the year before and noticed them excavating at that area and just didn't realize at the time what they were going to find. So, yeah, so I do think these were probably illicit excavations, but can't be proven one way or the other. Now, the upshot is we know that we've got them, but if they had been, you know, done by archeologists, oh, that would have been good, because we're not actually sure where at the site they came from, you know, so we're missing the context, we're guessing as to the building that they came from. But there would be so much more, of course.

[William Dalrymple]

Eric, one of the great pleasures of this book, and one of the reasons that it's such a fascinating read, is that you've done that thing that often novelists do, where you've got sort of two time periods running and you're telling two stories which you go back and forward from. On one hand, you've got the main story, which is Akhenaten and his father and Nefertiti and Tutankham, but you've also got the story of the antiquities dealers, the different scholarly institutions in Berlin and London that are trying to make sense of all these things. We're gonna concentrate today on the first story, but can you just sketch for us for a minute the scholarly competition and all the backbiting and the fact, rather humiliatingly, that the Brits seem to have made quite a lot of it up and the Germans got it much, much more accurately, and their translations were much better.

[Eric Klein]

Yes, this is. This is true. So, yeah, the subtitle of the book tells it all. The discovery of the Amarna tablets and the world they revealed. So when I first wrote the book, it was in two halves. The first half was on the modern story of the race to translate. And the second half was, what did we find out? And what was the world like back then? And in reading it over, I realized that was actually fairly boring. And so I split it so that it changes. It changes about every three chapters.

[William Dalrymple]

And you've done it very well. It reads like one of my favorite novels, Possession, you know, the Antonian Pyatt. It's very much in that style with the researchers and then the Rabelais documents,

[Anita Anand]

and they're falling in love all over. The Rabelais documents. Yes, I see what you mean. Yes, exactly.

[William Dalrymple]

But tell us about the story. Who was Budge. Who were these Germans who were better translators than he was?

[Eric Klein]

Okay, so we have two Brits, We've got EA Wallace Budge, the Egypt of

[William Dalrymple]

the book, who I knew from reading stuff on. On Kublai Khan and sort of Nestorian monks of Central Asia he wrote about, didn't he?

[Eric Klein]

He did all sorts of things, but he was primarily an Egyptologist and was not particularly liked by his colleagues. Let's just leave it at that. So Budge was on the one hand. On the other, you have Sais, Archibald Henry Sayce, best known for his work on the Hittites and he is a professor of assyriology at Oxford. So they are the two British scholars that try their hand at deciphering all of these with mixed results, shall we say. Stace, in particular, Sayce was looking for.

[William Dalrymple]

You're quite merciless with poor SAIS in the book.

[Eric Klein]

Oh, I know, I was harsh on him. He kept looking for biblical figures. He thought he saw Solomon, he thought he saw David, he didn't see any of those, but he did see Jerusalem.

[Anita Anand]

I'm obsessed with Budge, if that's possible, to be obsessed with Budge, because his story is just so compelling. I mean, he came from such modest backgrounds, Cornish son of a single mother, self taught, self made, and then becomes Cambridge educated, rises up to be the keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities at the British Museum.

[William Dalrymple]

His mum was a waitress, wasn't she?

[Anita Anand]

Which was something very humble. Yeah. But when it comes to. Let's just leave it at that. He wasn't liked by us. Let's not leave it at that, let's talk about it. Because there are downright scurrilous things written about Budge, the way in which he got his hands on antiquities. I mean, there is one, you know, reportedly he dug a hole through a wall of a customs warehouse in Cairo to seize tomato bats. Is that true? I mean. I mean, that's one of the things that I'd heard in sort of like Indiana Jones with a sack full of swag, just sort of makes off to his academic career. I mean, is that the kind of thing that you didn't want to go near?

[Eric Klein]

Pretty much, yes. So he was known for acquiring objects any way he could and shipping back to the British Museum with the approval of the trustees. So give. Yes, the Amara letters are one good example.

[William Dalrymple]

Couldn't happen today, Eric. Couldn't happen today.

[Eric Klein]

No, not at all. Not at all. But he did say that if he hadn't done it, somebody else would have. So the Department of Antiquities was aware of the discovery and they were trying to get as many of the tablets as they could. So Budge hurried down to Luxor and met an antiquities dealer, actually two men that brought a total of about 81 tablets to him. And he describes later in his autobiography, reading them by candlelight. In a house so that the antiquities department wouldn't see him. And he says, I realize that I saw Amenhotep III and Akhenaten on these and that they were royal letters. Well, there's no way that happened. I mean, I'm sure he was reading the Micanalite in a darkened house. But. But his Akkadian, his cuneiform knowledge could not have been good enough that he could read them, sight read them on the spot. He must have done it when he got back to London. But doesn't matter. He realized they were important enough that he bought them on the spot, packed them up into a box and then smuggled them out of Egypt.

[Anita Anand]

We should say these little tablets that look like Ryvita biscuits. And if you don't have them in your country, they're sort of like square, brown, unremarkable looking. No, you're saying he couldn't have read them because they weren't written in cuneiform solely, were they? They were also written in a much older language. Just tell us what was written on them.

[Eric Klein]

Well, no, they're written using cuneiform, which is the wedge shaped writing system. And the language they're being written in is not Egyptian hieroglyphics that you might expect, but actually in Akkadian. Akkadian was used over in Mesopotamia, right. Assyria, Babylonia was the diplomatic lingua franca of the day, much like French was in Benjamin Franklin's day. So he was sitting there. Now he was undoubtedly trained to a certain extent in how to read cuneiform and Akkadian, but it had really only been deciphered 30 years earlier. There was a very famous contest where they gave the same newly discovered inscription to four scholars and had them independently translated. And it worked. So I mean, but you would have had to have books with you and all that.

[Anita Anand]

I just don't believe just a liar, pants on fire. I mean, I mean he did the work, he did the work, just not at candlelight and not immediately, you know, having a light. Barber said. Now we should say. I mean the reason these Amana tablets are so important is because they sort of turn upside down our understanding of the ancient world tell us why they were so important and what they changed about our view.

[Eric Klein]

So they were incredibly important. In fact, seis at one point said that they were the most important things that we knew about the ancient near east at that time, apart from the Bible. Right. So. And indeed they did shed light, but the light was really only shed when the German scholars came into play. There are five of them. They're all young, they all live in Berlin. So I called them the Young Berliners. Some of them might be known to some of your listeners. Hugo Winkler, for example, is the man who discovered the capital city of Hattusas and the archives there. But he doesn't do that until 1906. So a good 20 years earlier. He's one of these young Berliners who are working on these Amarna letters. They are the ones that said at Samanhota. Third, it's Akhenaten. It's the middle of the 14th century BC and these are letters to and from the other great kings as well as petty vassal kings.

[William Dalrymple]

And there's also a Norwegian that you highlight who produces this first major scholarly edition. Jorgen Alexander Knudsen. Is that the right pronunciation?

[Eric Klein]

That is correct. He comes into the picture a little bit later. Are two Brits and five Germans are the ones mainly responsible. And they have everything translated, published, open access. Within a decade. By 1896, they're out and available, including in English.

[William Dalrymple]

That's quick.

[Eric Klein]

Yes, but Knudsen is the man that pulls them all together because the main ones are in Cairo, London and Berlin. And Knutsen, 1907 and 1915, two volumes. He puts them all out. But you had to be able to read German in that case, because they all are in German.

[Anita Anand]

But the thing that is, I suppose, revolutionary about them is that the way we understood the ancient world is that there were separate civilizations, all doing their own thing or speeding at their own pace. But after these tablets were discovered, we see an interconnected world of communication, commerce, and quite sophisticated, where things aren't separate at all.

[Eric Klein]

That's right. What these tablets revealed was an interconnected, globalized Mediterranean, if you will, from basically Italy over to Iran in modern terms, and from Turkey down to Egypt. These particular tablets are only dealing with the Near East. It's Egypt's connections. But it did show that the late Bronze Age was interconnected. It was the high points before everything collapsed. So what Akhenaten is going to do is inherit an international world that his father and even predecessors had set up. I mean, we really, we have to go back to Hatshepsut and Thutmose iii in the 15th century to find out exactly what happened with Amenhotep III and akhenaten in the 14th century. So it's all an interconnected world. Egypt was one of the the major players because they had control of the gold.

[William Dalrymple]

And we should say that Amenhotep III is the person, when you go to the British Museum today, that enormous colossal head that you see as you walk into that gallery with the bulls to your left. That's him. That's our guy. And he is the most sculpted figure in ancient legend. He was very keen on having a sculpture or two.

[Eric Klein]

He did have a lot made. Yes. And he was very influential. I mean. I mean, he's one of what I call the G8 of the ancient world at that time. So you've got Egypt, you've got the Hittites up in Anatolia, modern day Turkey, you've got the Assyrians and the Babylonians in Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq. And then you've got the Cypriots as well, though they're a little bit more minor as all part of the G8. But then you've also got the vassal kings in Canaan, at Megiddo, Hazor, Jerusalem, Beirut, Byblos, Tyre, Sidon. And these are the ones that owe allegiance to Amenhotep III and Akhenaten.

[William Dalrymple]

And you divide your book into two with those divisions. There's the great kings who all describe them talk to each other as brother this, brother that. And they're busy swapping daughters, or rather the second division kings like the Hittites and the. And the Mitanni are busy giving their daughters to Egypt, who are definitely the kind of number one big dog in the scene.

[Eric Klein]

Yes.

[William Dalrymple]

And then the second half of the book is this fascinating world, which is oddly like today, whereby the whole of the Middle east is busy fighting with each other. Every single country is busy, every single city state seems to be invading each other. There's constant warfare, assassinations, assassination attempts, interventions by foreign powers. It all seems very, very familiar.

[Eric Klein]

Yes, absolutely. You know, things don't change. People have been fighting in that area of the world for thousands of years. But. But I was following what Winkler and then Knudsen had suggested. They were the first to separate these into the royal great letters. There's about 50 of those between the great kings and then the letters from the vassal kings. There are about 300 of those. So I was following the rather traditional layout that people have been doing for a hundred years.

[Anita Anand]

Well, look, we're going to take a break. Join us after the break when we talk about some of the authors of some of these letters and one particular favorite of mine, Rib Hadda of Byblos, who writes so much, he's told, please stop writing. Enough already. Join us after the break.

[Advertisement Voice]

Snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigued. Ask your doctor about Zepbound tirzepatide, the first and only FDA approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea in adults with obesity. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5 or 15mg injection. Zepbound contains Tirzepatide and should not be used with other Tirzepatide containing products or any GLP1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zetbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pins or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck, stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia anesthesia if you're nursing pregnant, plan to be or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbound.lilly.com

[Anita Anand]

ready to soundtrack your summer with Red Bull Summer All Day Play. You choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, a deep end dj, a road dog or a trail mixer? Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play Red Bull gives you wings. Visit red bull.com brightsummera ahead to learn more. See you this summer.

[William Dalrymple]

Welcome back. So we are going to follow this system now. We're going to go first to the great kings before we deal with these needy minor monarchs like Continent

[Anita Anand]

Scribes of Ancient yes, go on. So tell us what the world was like, Willi. I think maybe actually just reminding us of what we were looking at is good.

[William Dalrymple]

Let's go through the big boys and particularly there's a very needy King of Babylon who's grumbling the whole time and also understandably wants to know what's happened to his sister, who's disappeared into an Egyptian harem and hasn't been seen for 40 years or something. Tell us all the that.

[Eric Klein]

Yes. So what we have to realize is that the great kings are signing diplomatic treaties with each other, and they're interacting at a very high level. They're exchanging gifts. Trade was beneath them, but they gave each other gifts. And in particular, the other kings are always asking Egypt for gold. The tablets are full.

[William Dalrymple]

It comes up a lot.

[Eric Klein]

It does. Gold is like dust in your land. Gold is like dirt in your land. Just give me some. And one king in particular says, if you give me nuggets of gold, I will give you my daughter. And to his credit, Amenhotep III says, what kind of a man are you that would give away your daughter for some nuggets of gold?

[William Dalrymple]

Interesting that, because, I mean, that is the modern response. But it wasn't. You wouldn't necessarily assume that the pharaoh would respond that way.

[Eric Klein]

Yeah. And he then says, but okay, and they'll take her.

[Anita Anand]

You're a terrible father. But yet. Yes, immediately.

[Eric Klein]

So what we have in both Amenhotep III and then Akhenaten's harems, we have a lot of foreign princesses where their father has sent them or their father before them had sent their sisters. So we've got lots of wonderful names. There's Kadashman Enlil of Babylon, and then his successor, Berna Boreas ii. And they both sent send daughters over, but other people too. Matani sends daughters over the Artsawa on the western coast of Anatolia. There are negotiations there. So we wind up with quite a few royal princes or princesses over many generations. Yes.

[William Dalrymple]

And you get sort of whole families relocating so that, you know, the sisters, the aunties and the grandmothers are all there.

[Eric Klein]

Exactly. I think there's at least two generations, if not three in some cases. And yes, we have one example where one of the kings says, you're asking me for my daughter, but has anybody seen my sister? Is she still there? And the Egyptian pharaoh says, we'll send somebody over who can recognize her.

[William Dalrymple]

Because there's also a thing where there's a query, isn't there? Because a woman is presented and the ambassador says, that doesn't look like her.

[Eric Klein]

Exactly.

[William Dalrymple]

Oh, gosh.

[Anita Anand]

What? Fake Melania? Really? Is that what it is? Somebody just parading? Gosh.

[Eric Klein]

I suspect that there were so many women in the harem that Amenhotep III wouldn't have been able to pick her out of a lineup. So. Yeah. So these are diplomatic treaties, diplomatic marriages. And that's what a lot of these great letters are about. The 50 letters, they are arranging dowries, they're arranging bride price, they're arranging gifts. And some of the kings did not know how far apart they were. There's one king who says to the Egyptian pharaoh, I was sick, and you didn't even ask how I was doing. And then I asked your messenger, how far away is Egypt? And he said, it's quite far. So therefore, my brother, you are forgiven for not asking how I was doing.

[Anita Anand]

Okay, can we please, please, please, please, please talk about Ribhadar, who is not a great ruler. He's one of these sort of vassal rulers. But he is, boy, He's a sharer, isn't he? Ripadar? Between 60 to 70 letters in this collection are from Rib Hada himself. And he does write to the point where the pharaoh actually writes back at one point and says, why do you keep writing to me? Just why?

[William Dalrymple]

Why are you doing this terrible tablet to receive at the far end? You think you're doing so well with

[Anita Anand]

your mate, but, I mean, some of his stuff is beautiful. And, you know, he writes in beautiful metaphors. I mean, things like, you know, I am like a bird in a trap. My field is a wife without a husband. And that. That's. He's talking about hunger and famine and desperation. He writes in pictures. He writes beautifully.

[Eric Klein]

He does, but he writes too frequently.

[Anita Anand]

Yes, yes, yes, he does.

[Eric Klein]

Yes.

[William Dalrymple]

But he's got a reason for writing. I mean, he is being surrounded by enemies. They're coming for him. And this is important. You slightly defend him in your book, but it is clear that Akhenaten is not replying and not paying as much attention as you should to all these minor vassals.

[Anita Anand]

Well, I mean, but some of the things are awful. Saying in Byblos, he's telling the pharaoh that you've got to do something. People are selling their sons and daughters in Yarimuta for food. You know, they're just swapping their kin because everybody is starving and still nobody comes. It doesn't paint a very good picture of governance from the pharaohs.

[Eric Klein]

And for a very long time, scholars thought that Akhenaten was more concerned with his revolutions back in Egypt than he was with maintaining Egypt's empire, if you want to call it that. And so he ignored that. But you'll get into that in the. In future episodes. But Ribhada, the thing is, yes, he has a problematic life, especially since he gets exiled from his own city by his Brother.

[William Dalrymple]

Brother.

[Eric Klein]

Yes.

[Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[Eric Klein]

That's not good. That's not good.

[William Dalrymple]

So it's locked out of the city.

[Eric Klein]

Yes, yes. And his wife and kids are killed when they're sent to another city. So he does have a bad life. But, you know, we have 300 of these letters from the vassals, and as you said, said, fully 60 of them are from Ribhada. So that's. That's what, a fifth of the letters. I can imagine the pharaoh going again, more from him. Yeah, yeah.

[Anita Anand]

Why do you keep. I mean, why do you. Why do you. Why do you alone keep writing to me? He writes back. And those are the ones we. We have. I mean, let's not forget there may be some that were, you know, on the back of donkeys, reduced to dust.

[Eric Klein]

Exactly.

[Anita Anand]

Or, you know, sort of grew cucumbers or leeks in the end. I mean, those are just the ones we have our hands on. It wasn't. It wasn't just, you know, sort of the trials and tribulation that were facing him and the people around him that he wrote about William. And he was also bothered about gold, wasn't he?

[William Dalrymple]

Gold is very much a feature of these letters, and everyone's betting a. That the same thing seems to come out with each king writing to Egypt. You have got so much gold, you don't know what to do with it. Please send some.

[Eric Klein]

Now.

[William Dalrymple]

This is because the Egyptians controlled gold mines in Nubia. Is that the root of all this?

[Eric Klein]

Yeah, they're in control of the mines in Nubia and Sudan, but also there's gold in the eastern desert and they're in control of that, too. So this is in part why Egypt is a major player. In the late Bronze Age, Each of the countries had their own specialties. The copper came from Cyprus, for example. The tin from Central Asia, Afghanistan. Egypt provided the gold.

[William Dalrymple]

And lapis lazuli from Badakchan.

[Eric Klein]

Yes, exactly. But. So Egypt was a major player because of the gold. Yeah. But, you know, to be fair, if

[William Dalrymple]

they've had a choice between being rich in copper and rich in gold, I know which I would go for.

[Eric Klein]

I just. Either way, you're rich. Does it really matter? But poor Rad. But, you know, he's not the only one being attacked. We also know that the king of Jerusalem, Abdi Heba, he claims that he was like a ship in the midst of a sea, surrounded by enemies. Biridia at Megiddo says that he is surrounded by enemies. I mean, all of these vassal kings, they're. They're. I say at one Point. They're like kids in a schoolyard in a daycare. They're all fighting and they're running to Daddy. The pharaoh so and so hit me. So and so kicked me. I mean, they're squabbling and they're all

[William Dalrymple]

saying, don't believe so and so. I didn't kick him. Someone else kicked him.

[Anita Anand]

But can I just say, I mean, just again, let's just take one moment and pinch ourselves that we have got an insight into these squabbles and complaining and the, you know, the sibling rivalries from the 14th century BCE. I mean, it's just mind blowing from all of these places, you know, sort of ancient Jerusalem, as well as, you know, all these other places that you've talked about. Do you not find that sometimes, Eric, you know, have you held them, actually? Have you held them in your hand, these letters? Have you touched them?

[Eric Klein]

No, but I've seen them through the museum glass.

[William Dalrymple]

I have held them, actually. My friend Irving Fingers at the British Museum, who's this wonderful character who looks like he's straight out of a kind of Arthurian epic. He's like some Merlin emerged from some cave holding Excalibur, except that he holds these wonderful tablets. And they're in this incredibly fancy room at the back of the British Museum where these gorgeous Victorian sort of bookshelves, specially built for cuneiform tablets are, and they're all lined up there.

[Anita Anand]

But, yeah, 14th century BCE. I mean, when they put them in your hand, did you have to wear gloves and a suit of armor or something? And what did it. I mean, did you just. What did it feel like to touch them?

[Eric Klein]

They are pretty amazing. I mean, I've worked with other tablets when I was a graduate student, and, yeah, they're absolutely amazing. And you're quite right. I mean, on the one hand, it's kind of funny to make fun of them, that they're like kids squabbling. But you're right, it's 3400 years ago, but in a way that also brings out the human element. Nothing has changed. The same things that we argue about with families and everything today, they were arguing about back then. They were a dysfunctional family, if you want to put it that way.

[William Dalrymple]

Eric. These are actually the best evidence we have for what's going on in this troubled region, which the. The Egyptians call it Canaan. Is that the Egyptian word for the. For the region?

[Eric Klein]

Yeah, yeah, it's one of the names, yeah. Pakanaa. Yes, it's one of the names for it.

[William Dalrymple]

And you. You casually Dropped Jerusalem. Will you quickly tell us. Sorry I interrupted you, but would you to your answer, what's going on in Jerusalem and who's living there?

[Eric Klein]

Yes, so. Well, there are Canaanites that are living there. Everybody there is Canaanite at this time. It's several hundred years before the Israelites really get there. And Jerusalem is called Jerusalem in the tablets. It's got the same name. And our good friend says, who thought he had found David and Solomon, which he didn't. He also said he had found Jerusalem. He was correct. He had found it. But he had only found it because the Germans had found it before him. And they had published and said, there are five or even six tablets that mention Jerusalem and then say. Said. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, I said that last April. And. And you know, in fact, he had. But anyway, so, yes, there's a king named Abdi Heba, King of Jerusalem, who is having problems himself.

[William Dalrymple]

And tell us about the Canaanites just for a second. Who are these guys? These are the indigenous people who are a mixture of all sorts, call themselves Canaanites. They think of themselves as the citizens of individual cities, but they're caught between these great powers. You've got the Assyrians, you've got the Hittites to the north, and then you've got the Egyptians to the south. And this is a kind of no man's land of city states that are too weak to mount enormous invasions of anywhere, but can only squabble with each other.

[Eric Klein]

Exactly. Yes. These are the local indigenous people. They go back to at least 3000 B.C. if not, you know, before that. And yeah, they are, as you put it, they are caught between the two powers. In fact, what it looks like from these letters is that especially up in the north, in what is now northern Syria, the Canaanite vassals are fighting proxy wars on behalf of the Hittites and the Egyptians. It will. Will erupt into open warfare at the Battle of Kadesh in 1274. But at this point, yeah, the Canaanites are just caught between the major powers, Eric.

[Anita Anand]

I mean, we're talking about Jerusalem, we're talking about Canaanites. And your brain immediately goes to religion. Let's talk about religion, shall we? Because in ancient Egypt, it was a come one, come all. For many years, about 1500 named gods existed in ancient Egypt.

[Eric Klein]

Yeah, there were. There were a lot. And then you've got the gods that were over in Canaan as well. You've got a lot of gods and lettuces running around and they come back

[William Dalrymple]

and Forward, don't they? You've got some Canaanite gods who get taken on by the Egyptians.

[Eric Klein]

Yeah, exactly. And then you've got the Hittite gods. I mean, everybody's got the gods. In fact, that seems to be one of the continuities that we've got through the Bronze Age collapse is the religion keeps going, but every so often you get people coming in and upending things, like our friend Akhenaten.

[William Dalrymple]

And so give us the world the tm. How? It's completely open. You've got an almost infinite number of gods and two principal sets of gods. You've got the Egyptian set who are being worshipped in Egypt, and then you've got the Canaanite gods that are extended over quite a wide region all the way from Ugarit in modern Syria down to Jerusalem.

[Anita Anand]

Well, I mean. Or are they all accepted as Egyptian gods? You know, just. I suppose, as in sort of regional variations on. These are all Egyptian gods. Is that how it works? Works?

[Eric Klein]

No, I think everybody has their own gods. I wouldn't mix and match the Canaanite gods with the Egyptian gods. But for the Canaanites, for example, you've got BAAL and you've got El, you know, and these then later make their way into Israelite religion and Israel. Exactly.

[William Dalrymple]

El is in the word Israel.

[Eric Klein]

Right. So we've got, you know, the Canaanites are going to leave their legacy for sure, but the Egyptians, I would put them separate, but there are lots of gods and goddesses. And in fact, fact, I mean, you've got Aten as you're talking about, as the disc of the sun, but you've got Ra as the actual sun and so on. But it also looks like all of the changes begin in this period, that is, with Amenhotep iii, the father. There are some indications that the worship of Aten actually began with him and that Akhenaten may have just picked up on this, but you'll explore that. That in future episodes.

[William Dalrymple]

You definitely feel that there is the beginning of the setting of the stage, that you have a narrowing of the number of gods in Amenhotep III's reign.

[Eric Klein]

There may be some indications. Some scholars would argue that exactly. But I also. I would say that a lot of what we see in Akhenaten's reign was begun by his father. And I point to the Amarna archive as a perfect example. The letters begin begin in Amenhotep the Third's time. And Akhenaten simply inherits everything, including the relations with these other Great kings.

[Anita Anand]

Can you tell us a bit more about Amenhotep? Because I mean, I feel like, you know, we are going to talk about Akhenaten a lot. And if anyone has been obsessed with Egyptology, you'll know Akhenaten is, you know, this new era of sort of pot bellied, strange, elongated head pharaohs that sort of changes. So, you know, at least the aesthetic. Amenhotep, what was he like? How was he depicted? I mean, just give us a little bit more on his dad.

[Eric Klein]

So this is the guy that I've been fixated with for my whole career because I actually wrote my master's thesis on Amenhotep iii.

[William Dalrymple]

Yes, you started off as an Egyptologist.

[Eric Klein]

I did. Well, I was doing connections with Greece. And Amenhotep III has a statue base in his mortuary temple which is over near the Valley of the Kings. And on that statue base he has a list of Greek names that had never really been seen before, including Mycenae,

[William Dalrymple]

including Knossos, but no letters from Mycenae or Minos in your collection unless they were destroyed on the. On the donkey journey.

[Eric Klein]

And this is going to be my story and I'm sticking to it.

[Anita Anand]

Yes, you stick to it, but also stick to Amenhote for a minute. Stop derailing. I want to know about your obsession. I want to know about Akhenaten's daddy. So just tell us a little more, Come on.

[Eric Klein]

So Amenhotep III is this amazing figure. He's both warrior and diplomat. I mean, he really pulls together all the predecessors and he is in contact with all of these other G8s to begin with. He really is a consummate diplomat. And so I think a lot of what he's doing, including perhaps his connections with the Aegean, are to reign in the Hittites, who are growing power under the king who has the best name in the ancient world. Shupiluliuma. I was going to name one of my kids that, but my wife. My wife objected.

[Anita Anand]

I'm not sure your wife loved your children.

[Eric Klein]

Yes, exactly. I mean, Shupiluluma Klein. It would have had a ring to it, but. Yeah, but then everybody would have called him shupping and we don't want that. So anyway, I think a lot of what Amenhotep III was doing was trying to rein in the growing power of the Hittites. And as we see a couple hundred years later, he was correct in trying to corral them. But so a lot of the dynastic and diplomatic marriages with these other kings you can actually see that they're in a circle around the Hittites. But he was a traditional king. He kept the traditional gods and goddesses going. He's got the traditional sculpt, as you said. He'd like to have himself portrayed, but always as a youthful young man. Even when he's older, he still looks really good and really young. That's one thing that Akhenaten is going to change.

[William Dalrymple]

And he's often depicted with his wife.

[Eric Klein]

Is it Thayee Ti Ti? Yes. And that is wonderful. It's a love story. Queen Ti and Amenhotep iii. She is the daughter of two, maybe even commoners, and they seem to have married for love rather than anything else. He does, of course, take on other wives, including hundreds of them. Yes, yes. But she is always referred to as the chief wife, and she really seems to have had a say in things. In fact, one of the letters, I think it's from Tushrata of Mitani, which is today would have been Syria. He actually writes directly to Queen T, saying, your husband has died. Your son is now on the throne. And that would be Amenhotep iii. And Akhenaten, he says, you are the connecting thread. So I am writing to you as the important one. And Tushrada knew which way his bread was buttered because she was the correct one to write to.

[William Dalrymple]

And we know her face. It's quite distinctive, isn't it?

[Eric Klein]

Yes.

[William Dalrymple]

She looks quite Nubian, quite dark.

[Eric Klein]

Yeah, Very interesting. But to my mind, though, one of the more interesting questions is what you've already referred to in the Amarna archives. There are no letters from Mycenae, no letters from Knossos, nothing from the Aegean. And if I'm right about the connections between Greece and Egypt at the time, there should have been letters, but there aren't. So maybe they got slammed together on donkey back. But, you know, there is also a story of one of the antiquities dealers stepping either onto or off of a train, and a very large tablet that he had put into his pocket fell out and shattered on the platform. That's actually how the Department of Antiquities came to know about these tablets. And this was a tablet that was like a half a meter high. You can't hide it. So I actually think I know it's one of two that are that big. It has to be it. But I do wonder if one of the letters from, like, the king of my and I, you know, was ground to dust and, you know, we only have two from the king of Assyria. We should have had many more from Assyria. It's not that far away. So I think a lot of what we would have really been even more interested in has gone.

[Anita Anand]

I mean, you say that, you know, Akhenaten carries on the traditions of his father that, you know, actually what. What he does is he. It's like a relay race and he picks up a baton. Why does it feel like it's such a new era? I mean, quite apart from moving religions, which we'll get onto in a bit, why does he feel like sort of in art or portrayal aesthetic, he's always. And I should explain, because if you haven't seen this, you know, you've got this, you know, the elongated skull of Akhenaten, the drooping belly, the wide hips, you know, sort of spindly arms. He almost looks like our depictions of aliens in, you know, science fiction now. So unless the depictions of his father. Was that his idea, solely his idea, and just talk us through the thinking of why that relay race suddenly seems to break.

[Eric Klein]

It does seem to be his idea or somebody's idea in his reign. We've got realism, if you will. This is what he looked like or supposedly. The thing is, and you mentioned aliens. You're quite right. The whole family looks like aliens. Even Nefertiti, when you take off, like the blue crown of Egypt, her, she's got an elongated skull. All of their kids have elongated skulls. You know, when I show my students the pictures of the drawings that they've got of the inscriptions, they all kind of look. Oh, my word, those do look like aliens. So there's. There's no way they're not aliens, and aliens didn't build the pyramids and all

[Anita Anand]

that I have seen. Again, this is sort of in the depths of a younger obsession that there are medical conditions which would lead to that kind of bone structure. There are two sort of physical conditions that would lead to that kind kind of body. One's Marfan syndrome. Then there's Frolics syndrome, which would also give you these sort of elongated arms and that strangely shaped head. Do you think these are realistic and they are giving us a medical history by accident or. Or not?

[Eric Klein]

I think it's conceivable, yes. It. Marfan's especially has been suggested for Akhenaten, so that's a definite possibility.

[Anita Anand]

Wow.

[Eric Klein]

But, you know, it's also been suggested he may have been female and not male.

[Anita Anand]

Stop it.

[Eric Klein]

Seriously. It's been suggested.

[Anita Anand]

I read that only happened once. That's amazing. So you're saying it could have Happened twice.

[Eric Klein]

Well, I don't think it actually happened. Look how many kids he has. So it would be a little problematic. But people have tried to explain why he looks that way. I think it's just as interesting to try and explain why he agreed to be depicted that way. I mean every other Egyptian pharaoh before him, him was always depicted as a strapping 20 year old, you know, who could bench press 250 pounds.

[Anita Anand]

Right. Beautiful bodies.

[Eric Klein]

Exactly. And he's like now this is the way I look and this is the way everyone else in my family look now. Nefertiti, not a problem. She's absolutely gorgeous. You know, of course you depict her, but not, not him. So. But there's realism in everything. I mean even the paintings of ducks and marshes, those are also realistic at the same this time. So his revolution is not just in religion. It's all over the place. And I actually think I'm going to give him more credit than maybe some of your other people will. I think he was brilliant. I think it was all deliberate. I don't think it was a religious fanatic working here. I think he was a skillful diplomat because in changing the religion of Egypt to only have Aten and you couldn't worship Aten directly. It was through Akhenaten.

[Anita Anand]

Aten being this. We should clarify. It says disc of the sun is the Aten. It's just one. And sometimes you see it depicted as a gold disc alone or sometimes a gold disc with these fingers coming out which end in unks. But it is, you know, the sun is everything, one single figure and caressing the family.

[Eric Klein]

Yes, absolutely. But you know, he was already the head of the government, he was already the head of the military. Now in doing what he does, he's now the head of the religion. There is nothing he doesn't control. And including Sadhgly like Trump. Please don't go there. But yes, but also in closing, the temples, he took all of their treasuries. He, you know, became a multi billionaire overnight. Not that he wasn't already wealthy before.

[William Dalrymple]

We move on to it now for the next episode. Just paint us a picture. Picture of Egypt on the eve of Akhenaten's accession. This is a golden age, isn't it? I mean, this is one of the high points of Egyptian civilization.

[Eric Klein]

This is literally the golden age. Yes, this is the high point of Egypt. I would actually, I would say it was higher than King Tut. King Tut will inherit all of this because he's Akhenaten's son. But I would say Amenhotep III's reign is the culmination. It really started with Hatshepsut was an amazing diplomat. It then went to Thutmose iii, who was an amazing warrior. And now, a hundred years later, Amenhotep III is both diplomat and warrior. Egypt is at the pinnacle of its success. It controls all the gold. They are in control. And you can see this when the foreign rulers say, will you send me one of your daughters? And he says, absolutely not. Not. That's not how this works. You send me your daughters and I send you whatever I want. So Egypt is in charge.

[Anita Anand]

So with that, with Egypt in the preeminent place, why would you want to change everything? Well, join us to the next episode where it changes everything. Absolutely upends the whole caboosh. It's all going so terribly well. Let's rip it up and start again. But you'll have to wait for that next episode. You if. If you're one of those people who cannot wait for episodes, I don't blame you. Just join our club. EmpirePoduk.com is where we are. EmpirePoduk.com and you get these miniseries all in one great glut to listen to at your heart's content and without ads. But till the next time we meet, thank you again, Eric Klein. We love having you on. It's just brilliant. Till the next time we meet. There it's goodbye from me, Anita Anand.

[William Dalrymple]

And goodbye from me, William Durumle.