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- [00:01]
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 club@www.empirepoduk.com.
- [00:21]
Podcast Sponsor Voice
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- [01:25]
William Dalrymple
This episode is brought to you by Attio the aicrm. The larger an empire becomes, the harder it is to know what's happening across it. Modern organizations face the same sort of problem, and Attio helps solve it. Attio is an AICRM designed for how teams really operate. Sync your email and calendar and you're up and running in minutes. From there, Attio brings your conversations and contacts together in one place so your team can see what what is happening in real time. AskAttio goes a step further. Simply ask questions about your pipeline, which deals are moving fastest, where the momentum is building, or what needs attention next, and get a clear answer in moments. With Attio, you can focus on the real work of building your empire from day one onwards. Try Attio for free@attio.com Empire.
- [02:38]
Anita Anand
You've seen her face on tea towels. You've seen her face on posters, on Beyonce's Homecoming album cover. Nefertiti, one of the most recognized figures of ancient Egypt. But what is the real history of the woman herself?
- [02:52]
William Dalrymple
This is the story of Nefertiti, and
- [02:55]
Anita Anand
this is Empire with me, Anita Anand
- [02:58]
William Dalrymple
and me, William Dalrymple. Now we are now at episode four of our Amarna series We have met the world of Amarna with the wonderful Amarna letters that Eric Klein so wonderfully took us through. We have dived deep into Akhenaten and his revolution and its downfall. And now we come to Nefertiti, the wife who we now know was also a pharaoh of Egypt. And it's our great pleasure to have back to the show the wonderful Aidan Dodson.
- [03:34]
Aidan Dodson
Thank you for having me back.
- [03:36]
Anita Anand
It's very good to have you. Because honestly, I'm obsessed, like many women, particularly with the eye makeup that goes on in ancient Egypt. But this face, this inescapable face. Let's begin with what sounds like a stupid question, but, you know, what do we actually know about her? Because what surprises me is that, you know, we don't know very much, considering how much we recognize her face.
- [03:59]
William Dalrymple
And we should say that your wonderful new book adds clarity to the answer to this question that I have never come across in any other account.
- [04:08]
Anita Anand
So, Aidan, tell us what we do know for sure about her.
- [04:11]
Aidan Dodson
Right. We know for a fact that she was a woman married to Akhenaten and had six daughters. End that is all we know for absolutely certain. Everything else which we think we know about her has got to be inferred or implied from indirect sources. And part of that comes from who her parents were. There is no text which tells us who her parents were. We can be sure who her parents weren't. They weren't a king and queen, because nowhere does she ever hold the title of king's daughter or king's sister, which would have been the case had she been potentially a sibling spouse of Akhenaten. And then we do, because we get
- [04:55]
William Dalrymple
lists of her titles, don't they? And that would indicate that she was the daughter of a king.
- [04:59]
Aidan Dodson
Yeah. And she has probably the most extensive set of titles we've got of a queen of this kind of era. So if she were indeed a king's daughter or king's sister, one would find it somewhere. So that we can rule. Rule that out as a possibility.
- [05:16]
William Dalrymple
You have a very strong theory, Aidan.
- [05:19]
Aidan Dodson
Tell us about it. Yeah, the probably dominant theory has been that she is actually a maternal cousin of Akhenaten, because we have a man at court at this period called Ay who has the title of God's father. And we know that title can imply king's father in law, indeed Queen T, who is the mother of Akhenaten. Her father is called God's father as well. So that tends to suggest that Ay may well be that also There may be a closer link here as well. And it's possible that Ay is a brother of Queen T Akana's nephew, is that right?
- [06:07]
Podcast Sponsor Voice
Yeah, yeah.
- [06:08]
Aidan Dodson
Akhinar Neferti. Yeah. Defetiti are cousins, effectively.
- [06:11]
William Dalrymple
Yeah.
- [06:12]
Aidan Dodson
And we sort of. And. And that idea is put together for a couple of reasons. First, that Ay the name is quite an unusual one and is very similar to that of Queen T's father, Yuya. Also, they both have close relationships with the city of Ahme in southern Egypt, which is a fairly provincial kind of location, but Yuya certainly comes from there. That's Queen T's father. And when he becomes king later on, Ay build temples at Akhmim, all of which rather suggest that it may well be sort of part of his hometown in many ways. And if we putting those together, it would make sense that if the king is looking for a bride, a cousin from this military family in Akhmim would make a lot of sense. So, therefore, I think one of the leading theories, and this has been for about the last hundred years, is the idea that Nefertiti is a daughter of. Of AI and probably therefore a cousin of Akhenaten.
- [07:18]
Anita Anand
Do we know anything about when they got married, what that ceremony was like, how old they were, you know, that kind of stuff.
- [07:24]
Aidan Dodson
Right. Well, it looks as though they marry after Akhenaten becomes king because the very, very earliest.
- [07:31]
William Dalrymple
He's a bachelor.
- [07:32]
Aidan Dodson
Yeah, the very, very earliest records of
- [07:34]
William Dalrymple
him, it turns out, with his mum in inscriptions, doesn't he? Yeah.
- [07:37]
Aidan Dodson
But then we have. It looks as if they probably marry within the first year or so of the reign, and they have their first daughter by year two of the reign. So it looks as though fairly soon after its accession, that is when the two of them get married. There's a good question here about what that might have looked like, because we don't know anything about marriage in ancient Egypt per se. There's no. Seems to be where we have got records of marriage and it tends to be in the private sphere. There's no indication of any kind of religious or anything out of ceremonies. It all seems to have been a contractual link, because the word to marry, effectively, is to get to move in with. And then what you might, well then get is some kind of agreement over money, almost a prenup, almost is what we sort of find there in the royal sphere. We have absolutely nothing whatsoever. The only reason we know that the kings and various queens are marrying each other is because there they are in the text with the title of king's wife or king's great wife. So quite what that would all entail remains completely obscure.
- [08:49]
Anita Anand
Aidan. There's a lot of debate over whether she was foreign or not. You know, this idea that she was a princess from a far land who comes in and almost corrupts Akhenaten's mind and makes him break with all tradition and found his own religion. You know, this bloody Lady Macbeth type creature. What do we know about, you know, whether she was foreign, whether she was Egyptian, what do you know? Or what do you feel is fact here?
- [09:14]
Aidan Dodson
Okay. She was certainly not an Egyptian princess. She never has the title of king sister or king's daughter, which would be de rigueur in this kind of situation. And we have a long, long list of her titles, and those certainly aren't amongst them, and there's no way that they would have slipped off of the record.
- [09:34]
William Dalrymple
But we do have her sister who has an Egyptian name.
- [09:38]
Aidan Dodson
Absolutely. So her sister is a lady called Mutna, which is a very typical Egyptian name, as is Nefertiti, for that matter. People have made quite a lot of her name, meaning a beautiful woman has arrived or beautiful woman has come. But there are other Nefertitis around, or Enephotes, which are basically the same name, including a later tomb workman. So there's nothing you can read into the title about that. Another thing against her being a foreigner is that foreign. Although we have know about a lot of foreign diplomatic wives coming into Egypt, none of them at this period ever become anything major.
- [10:18]
William Dalrymple
We even have evidence, don't we, that one of the Babylonian princesses sort of disappears and her brother writes very worriedly that no ambassador, no one has actually seen her in public for 20 years. And he asks, is she still alive? What's happened to her?
- [10:35]
Aidan Dodson
Yeah, I suspect what happens is that the marriage is about the connection between the two countries, and once they've arrived, there's probably very little interest. It may also be a question about the personality of the individual. When the lady turns up, does the king actually want her hanging around at court, or would she rather go off and have some luxurious, pampered life in a backwater somewhere? Again, we have nothing to do. We have no information about these kind of dynamics. We've not got any sort of Pepys diaries or anything like that about what the gossip is going on at court. All we know is that some of these people turn up, and that's sort of about it.
- [11:15]
Anita Anand
But we know when she turns up, she turns up with a big bang. I mean, you know, she is the great royal wife almost immediately. And you can see that, Aidan, can't you? In sort of epic form. She's depicted in large scale. I mean, just talk about the way in which the Egyptian people would have first met their great queen.
- [11:34]
Aidan Dodson
Yeah. Nefertiti first appears on temple walls about a year or so after Akhenaten comes to the throne. And when she does appear on temple walls, she appears very, very large scale indeed. There is one section of one of the temples which is built very early in the reign where she is the sole officiant. There's no sign of her husband whatsoever. It's her and her elder daughter are the only ones who are on these particular bit of temple walls, which is really quite something.
- [12:01]
William Dalrymple
It reminds me very much of the situation in Mughal India when we get Noor Jahan. And Noor Jahan is unique among the wives of the Mughals in that she's on coins, you know, she's on inscriptions. She has a much bigger role than any other wife from the period. And you get this impression with Nefertiti. She's there from the beginning of Atna to the. And she stays with him for life. And she's more powerful than almost any other queen of her age.
- [12:31]
Aidan Dodson
Yeah. I think, though equally powerful and prominent is her mother in law, Queen T. And I think there's something that Ti in many ways provides the prototype for Nefertiti in the sense that the idea of the queen being shown the same size as the king and appearing with all things, that's something which T probably kicks off at this point. Although if we again go back in time, go back earlier in the 18th Dynasty, we've got Hatshepsut, who later becomes female pharaoh but is prominent as queen.
- [13:05]
Anita Anand
I mean, just to remind people, Hatshepsut, absolutely. Every girl who is into Egyptology's favorite because she was the woman who ruled with a fake beard. Look her up. She's extraordinary. But it's not just this sort of heroic figure that she cast. Because I remember, I'm pretty sure you can correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there. When I went to Cairo museum, there's a beautiful relief of her with her little daughter and the daughter is kind of playing with her earring. And it looks almost, you know, sort of, it looks really modern. It looks like, you know, the kind
- [13:37]
William Dalrymple
of on the COVID of Ladies.
- [13:38]
Anita Anand
There you go. So you. So I'm not wrong. Just didn't realize it was the COVID of the book. But I mean, so she's, she's complicated character. She's not just, you know, the military headdress and everything that's underneath it. And this huge figure all on her own without her husband. She's also a mummy. I mean, they depict that too.
- [13:56]
Aidan Dodson
Again, this kicks off quite late in Amenhotep III's reign as well. Is the centrality of the royal family to the link with the deity in the past, the king and queen. Well, king is the main thing. Some periods you get the queen as a big thing. But the idea of the whole family being a central to cult seems to be an innovation of the late latter part of the reign of Amnhotep iii, which Akhenaten carries on in spades. You know, every time you're seeing any kind of act of worship, it's the king, queen and at least one daughter. So that unit, the royal family becomes a really, really important thing in a way. It's not ever really been before that the royal family, the family has been sort of an adjunct to the king and queen. Now the whole family becomes a focal point to it.
- [14:51]
William Dalrymple
Do we have other pictures of royal babies dangling and fiddling with earrings, or is this a unique moment?
- [14:57]
Aidan Dodson
This is the one thing which is unique, is about the whole Amarna art style, which is fundamentally new, that almost everything about it subverts what previous Egyptian art had done. It's most noticeable in the strange bodily proportions, but also the things which they're seen doing, or at least what principal figures are seen doing. Scenes where you've got children playing and whatever are quite common earlier on, but as subsidiary things in private tomb chapels where they're just trying to. Where they're trying to magically recreate the world, including things like kids playing. But the idea of a king and queen interact in such an informal way with their daughters is completely unknown before and after this. So it's part of that whole revolution which Akhenaten imposes on Egypt. There's the religious side of things, of course, but also this artistic one is part of it. And I've often wondered whether the artistic change is part almost of shock value. Thinking almost a year zero saying that by depicting the king and queen is completely revolutionary. Probably for many Egyptians, outrageous kind of way is saying something about the world is starting again. This is something completely new.
- [16:19]
Anita Anand
Yeah, I mean, but again, it's one thing to say to Egypt, look, we have six daughters and we are proud of them and we love them, but there is a missing thing which all of Egypt would have felt, I guess, and which will be important at some point. And that's the missing son. What do we know about the daughters? Do we know anything much about who they were and what they did?
- [16:40]
Aidan Dodson
Unfortunately, once again, we know very, very little about the individual daughters.
- [16:45]
William Dalrymple
What we do, we have gorgeous pictures of them. We do wonderful busts.
- [16:49]
Podcast Sponsor Voice
Yeah.
- [16:49]
Aidan Dodson
Well, one of them goes on to marry Akhenaten's first co ruler and become therefore becomes a king's great wife in her own right. That's Merit Aton, the eldest. The second daughter, Meket Aten, dies somewhere around year 13 of the reign. And we've got scenes of her being mourned in the royal tomb. And also in the royal tomb there are scenes of two more princesses being mourned who seem to be the two youngest daughters, Neferneferu Re and Setepenre. Of the rest of them, Ankhesenpahaten goes on to become the queen of Tutankhamun. And then Nefernefruaten Tasheret. We don't know what happens to her. We've got no burial scene for her. We've got no later records of her. So she's somebody who remains a bit of a mystery amongst the six of them. Just to say one, you mentioned the question of the fact that there was no sun shown. It's worthwhile pointing out that it never been tradition for royal suns ever to be shown on monuments. And this goes right the way back to the days of the pyramids. When you look at earlier examples of the limited number of royal family scenes, it's always the daughters. When you've got in the jubilee reliefs of Amenhotep iii, for example, he's shown with Queen T and a load of his daughters. No sign of the two known sons of.
- [18:15]
Anita Anand
I had no idea about that. So why is that an evil eye thing that if you show the prince, he might have the evil eye on?
- [18:22]
Aidan Dodson
We have no idea why this is like with most of these things, we know the point with ancient Egypt, we know what we can see, but trying to get behind that into what it is. And most of the explanations you'll see in print about why the Egyptians did stuff is complete guesswork by an individual Egyptologist, because they don't tell us this. They knew what it was. But yet for some unknown reason, there seems to be a taboo against showing royal suns. And the only time you see a royal sun prior to the reign of Akhenaten anyway, because we do actually have one representation of a son, which I doubt this will be coming back to shortly is when they've got a day job. So, for example, the only reason why Akhenaten's elder brother, and who would have become pharaoh had he not died prematurely, Prince Jatmosa. The only reason why I have a depiction of him is because he was the high priest of Ptah. And there is one context where he is being shown with his day job as high priest of Ptah, otherwise he wouldn't be shown at all.
- [19:21]
William Dalrymple
But, Aidan, there is a rather extraordinary thing at this period with the images of the daughters. They are focused on in a way that I don't know any other royal siblings in any period of Egyptian art. There's one particular, utterly beautiful hard stone image of one of the girls, also in Berlin, just one room away from her mother. And she's got this amazing kind of smooth. And again, her mother's extraordinary cheekbones. And almost my favorite piece of Egyptian art.
- [19:55]
Aidan Dodson
Yeah, I think the reason why we've got this sort of overload of the royal daughters, it's going back a second. One of the oddest things about the whole Aten business is although the God is visible to everybody, it's the globe of the sun in the sky, the royal family have to act as the intermediaries between that God and people, and therefore the whole. That unit of the royal family. It's not just the king, not just the queen, but also the daughters are part of that almost point of nexus, if you like, between the divine and earth. And I think that's. For whatever reason, it's. The whole family is recognized as being that important point, not just simply the king and queen. That once Akhenaten has done this, it changes everything forever. Because once you get beyond the Amarna period into the time of Ramesses II and so on, suddenly the royal family en masse is a thing. You have Ramesses II with his hundred sons and daughters, all being shown with him on temple reliefs. So Akhenaten's promotion of the royal family through his particular. His particular reasons actually then changes Egyptian art and the protocol of who you show on temple walls forever.
- [21:20]
Anita Anand
I just. I can't get it out of my head that they didn't used to depict the sons. And can I make another plea for the evil eye theory of this? Because I know in India, my mother's told me these stories of her great grandmother who refused to name her sons. So whenever anybody asked her, how are your children? She would go into great detail about, you know, the daughters, naming them, where they're living, what they're wearing. What they're eating. And if there was a. Yeah, but what about your boys? She'd go. And then the third daughter, she's really into, and they'd ask about, you know, she said people would ask again and again about the boys, but it wasn't the done thing to talk about the boys, just in case the evil eye settled on them. And the evil eye is a big thing in Egypt, too. I wonder if there's some correlation there.
- [22:03]
Aidan Dodson
On the other hand, though, you do see them in private context. What we're talking about here is their absence from any kind of official or temple context. Yet in the tomb chapels of the Teutons who've been appointed to the royal sons, they're all over the place. So it's very specific about official contexts. The royal sun. But if you were the tutor of a royal son, you splashed it all over your tomb walls to show how connected you were with the royal family. So it's a very, very specifically public and sort of temple thing. Not that they're denying these royal sons exist, it's just where. Where they appear. And so on occasion, if they've got a day job, they will be able to be depicted carrying out that day job. It's just the very fact that if, just if you're simply a royal son, it doesn't count for temple walls until we move on into Akhenaten's time and then on into the following 19th dynasty, when you start seeing them in spades.
- [23:02]
William Dalrymple
Aidan, we're gonna have to take a break soon. But before we do, one last question. Now, we went through very thoroughly with both you and with Lloyd, the whole revolution in religion that takes place during Akhenaten's reign.
- [23:16]
Aidan Dodson
But he very much looked at it
- [23:17]
William Dalrymple
as something that he was in charge of and was driving. We were talking about him being in the driving seat. But your book makes a case for the fact that Nefertiti also played a major role, which you just hinted at, also with the role of the entire royal family and the daughters as mediators. Take us through Nefertiti's role in the Amarna revolution as you see it.
- [23:40]
Aidan Dodson
Okay, well, certainly she is a full partner with Akhenaten in everything. And indeed, in certain points, she is the more prominent. As I think I mentioned a bit earlier on, there is one of the Aten temples at Karnak where she is the sole officiant, which clearly marks her out as being his parallel. Also, there are a few quite remarkable depictions of her in smiting mode, where she is holding an enemy by the hair and about to smash his, in this case, her brains out. So she as queen is doing an awful lot of things which directly parallel what the king is doing you mentioned in the introduction. Very close to the end of his reign, she is promoted to female pharaoh and remains such after his death. But what's very interesting there is that once she becomes female pharaoh, she rapidly starts dismantle the whole Aten business. Within a short period of time, Amun is back again. And there is one text where it's possible that you may be able to restore a damaged bit of text as her calling herself beloved of Ammon. So I wonder how far she was fully bought into all this. She was doing what she felt was appropriate to support her husband and so on, but once he was dead, she perhaps possibly took the view the whole thing had actually been something of a mistake and possibly never actually believed it in herself because, say, once he's gone, she is the one who is leading the return back to orthodoxy.
- [25:24]
Anita Anand
We're going to take a break now. Join us after the break. I actually, Aidan, I want to talk to you a lot more about this bust of Nefertiti that I am completely obsessed with, because therein lies a mystery as well. Join us after the break.
- [25:42]
Michael from Rest Is Science
Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from the Rest Is Science.
- [25:45]
Hannah from Rest Is Science
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- [25:56]
Michael from Rest Is Science
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- [26:35]
Michael from Rest Is Science
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- [26:48]
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- [28:21]
Anita Anand
Welcome back. So Aidan, you were talking us through this importance of Nefertiti and her depictions, that most famous one that we were talking about right at the top of this podcast, the bust of Nefertiti that in Berlin, or has always been in Berlin. They won't give it back. Everyone wants it back. They won't give it back. There is. Well, first of all, we should describe it. Just give us an idea. Paint us a picture, Aidan, of what it is, because I have questions.
- [28:47]
Aidan Dodson
Okay, well, it is the bust of a woman quite very unusual in Egyptian art. It simply is a standalone bust and probably was intended to be a master piece for sculptors to copy from. There's also they also found in the same place, albeit totally shattered, a parallel bust of Akhenaten. So it looks as though these two were set up at the end of the sculptor's workshop. And this was. Okay, if you want to double check what he looks like or what she looks like, this is what you're using. It's made of limestone but covered with a layer of plaster which has allowed the features to be modeled in an exquisite kind of manner. She's wearing a tall blue flat topped crown which is unique to Nefertiti. No other queen ever uses this. It has inlaid eyes, but only one of those eyes is present. The other one seems never to have been fitted. They looked around on the floor for it hadn't fallen out. And the skin is painted a distinctive pinkish hue, which, although very unusual Egyptian art, is by no means unique.
- [30:02]
Anita Anand
There is though a whopping great controversy over this because wasn't there a CT scan done of the bust? Now, this is how I know the story. You tell me what you know to be true. A CT scan was done many years ago and it discovered that the actual core, the thing that was in the limestone, looked very different to the stucco outside. The stucco outside was that beautiful chiseled face that pop stars try to emulate and is on every tea towel that you buy, if you're into Egyptology. The one underneath though has a slightly sort of more sagging face, a bump on the nose. You know, it is the face of a woman, you know, normal woman, not a perfect woman. So to me this feels like a 3,000 year old Photoshop could have been done at that time. I mean, is that a reasonable thing to suggest?
- [30:48]
Aidan Dodson
Yeah, I think the problem is it's unclear quite whether what that lower level, lower level was ever intended to be a definitive outer level, if you know what I mean. And that is simply what was the initial carving, which then the plaster is then added on round it. The very fact that it's a very similar kind of setup with the parallel Akhenaten1 suggests that this was intended that way and that it was never intended to be a naked limestone sculpture. I'm not an artist, but I suspect that if you're going to do something like that, you need to at least have the basic bone structure, if you like, in stone underneath to then be able to veer and hall on the plaster on the outside.
- [31:30]
Anita Anand
I guarantee you we've got sculptors who listen to this, so do get in touch because, you know, the argument is that she was a normal woman in the sculpture and then this outward appearance of utter perfection is placed on top because, you know, faces don't look that pretty in real life. They just don't. And I know that there has been a. There's been a request since, I think it's as late as 2016, where there was a freedom of information request saying, can we do a CT scan? Could we please have it for studying And I think the museum said no because of merch. Because if you do put out this other image, all our merch is going to be compromised.
- [32:11]
Aidan Dodson
I've heard that story. How true it actually is. I'm not 100% sure. And also, the wildcat sort of scanning being done in the museum gallery, it's physically impossible. It can't. And it was admitted later on. It was. The whole thing was a scare. So there's a whole lot of stories around about the head which one can't necessarily verify.
- [32:31]
William Dalrymple
Aidan, I'm fascinated by this idea that Egyptians could do ultra realistic, could do what we recognize as sort of, you know, a photographic portrait of someone that actually looks completely like the person, but chose not to do it in the normal style of art, and particularly chose not to do it in what you call the revolutionary style of Akhenaten. But they could do it if they wanted it. Just to have a model for sort of almost like a Polaroid to have in the studio.
- [32:59]
Aidan Dodson
Yeah. And also actually, it's not actually unique. Amongst them, there is an amazing unfinished quartzite head of Nefertiti, which is in Cairo, which was found by a British expedition about 20 years after the Berlin bust, which for me, it's the same face and in some ways it's even more gorgeous because it was going to be one with inlaid eyes, but he never got around to doing that. So you've just simply got the quartzite carved face with almost black eyeliner, almost marking where they're going to be removing the stone from it. So I think that the Nefertiti one is particularly immediate because of its colouring, but there are also lots of other ones which have been produced which are perhaps less immediate because of the lack of colouring. What we think is a portrait look like portraits, but we can't be 100% sure they are. They may simply be what people really wanted to look like. So therefore, she may not have been quite as beautiful as that, but this has been sort of been tweaked a little bit, so it looks amazingly naturalistic compared with a lot of Egyptian art. But it may still be a question of this is how she wanted to. She wanted to look to the public rather than what she did.
- [34:19]
Anita Anand
Yes, wouldn't we all? Yeah, I mean, wouldn't. Seriously.
- [34:24]
Aidan Dodson
I would say that although everybody raves about the Berlin head, this Cairo one is my favorite, quite honestly.
- [34:31]
William Dalrymple
I've got it in front of me in your book. And again, that quartzite is this extraordinary. Extraordinary. The cheekbones are even sharper.
- [34:38]
Anita Anand
So why don't you show it to the camera for those who are watching on YouTube? Cause they'll appreciate it.
- [34:43]
William Dalrymple
I have it here. There we go. This is the one you're talking about.
- [34:47]
Aidan Dodson
That's her, yes.
- [34:48]
Anita Anand
It's very beautiful.
- [34:49]
Aidan Dodson
Every time I go to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, I must go and gaze into her, well, non eyes, because I think she is utterly gorgeous.
- [34:58]
Anita Anand
Into the slightly spooky spaces where eyes were.
- [35:00]
Aidan Dodson
But it does show what the sculpts of this period can do. And also we were talking about sort of distortion. What's interesting at the beginning of the reign, when they first introduced their evolutionary style, it's very much in your face and people are made to look ugly. Even Nefertiti is made to look ugly in those early ones. But then as we may move through the rain, they become more naturalistic. There's still the distortions of the body forms, but they're made more realistic. And I think I said earlier on that I thought there was a shock value. I tend to regard the early versions of Revolutionary Style almost as the punk rock era of the art. You know, if you think about punk and, well, those of us who were around at the time, how the whole idea was, it was in your face. It wasn't purely about the music. It was almost. Almost about saying, hey, we're starting from scratch here. But that moves on to new wave. So what I would see is that the early representations, some of these.
- [35:57]
William Dalrymple
I'm very press aided by your grasp of 1970s musical trends.
- [36:04]
Aidan Dodson
Yes. One of my great regrets was not going to see the Sex Pistols when they played Slough College. When I was at school, I saw
- [36:12]
William Dalrymple
the Clash in that track. Would you two concentrate? Hello.
- [36:16]
Anita Anand
Excuse me.
- [36:17]
Aidan Dodson
But anyway. But what I'm saying is that often with any kind of revolution, there is the in your face beginning of a revolution, but then that fairly rapidly becomes more softens to some degree. And I think that's what happens with the art of this period. The first stuff is really you're in your face. But by the time you move a sort of decade on, which is probably when the Nefertiti heads are being carved and the quartzite one is unfinished. So it's probably right at the end, towards the end of the reign, is that they've reconciled beauty with revolution. And I think that's what we should see with those Nefertiti heads.
- [36:54]
Anita Anand
I'm with you, I'm telling you. You know, it's for a mass audience, if you like. It's a bit niche. And now it's got public appeal.
- [37:01]
Aidan Dodson
That's about it.
- [37:01]
Anita Anand
Yes, but what I don't. Yeah, but what I don't get, and this is like the central mystery of your book, in fact, is you have this. This face that is everywhere, this face that is reproduced and reproduced and reproduced. And suddenly Nefertiti disappears. The lady vanishes for around 12 years of Akhenaten's reign. She vanishes from the record as queen. Now what's occurring here?
- [37:26]
Aidan Dodson
Well, basically, for a long time it was thought that she disappeared after about year 12, then we found only a few years ago. And it's one of these things about Egyptianism. It's a graffiti, a graffito. Yeah. Which actually mentions her in year 16, because previously the sighting, if you like, had been sometime after year 12. We've got a year 12 representation of her and then we've also got a representation at the funeral of her daughter Mecatarton, which must, as Mecatarton's also In this year 12 representation must be slightly after that. So we had that and there was all kinds of ideas what might have
- [38:00]
William Dalrymple
happened to her in your earlier books. You give her a different fate. Now we've got a whole different story because of this one bit of graffiti.
- [38:09]
Aidan Dodson
Yeah. And so we know that she's still around as Queen in year 16 as a result of this graffito. And that's important thing to recognise about Egyptian history, that one discovery can literally change history, that we have a version, but then suddenly you have to revise it. For example, this discovery in 2012 meant that the book I wrote in 2009, when it was re added a new edition a couple of years later, I had to change 75% of the pages. There was a ripple effect of one discovery, which is a really quite. That's an important thing to recognize that Egyptian history can change overnight because so much of it is reconstructing from a tiny amount of evidence and sometimes that new bit of evidence comes in and suddenly changes. It literally changes history overnight. So anyway, so we knew she's around at that point. But the most important recognition, which is still not accepted by 100% of Egyptologists, where an argumentative bunch and we never agree on anything. But the vast majority are now agreed that the hit point was that Nefertiti didn't disappear whatever date that last attestation as a queen is, but she then transmogrifies into a female pharaoh. And part of this was also a recognition that this female pharaoh really was female, not a male, which was one of the other, which was another issue around all of this. So over a period of about 20 odd years, this recognition that Nefertiti did actually continue on and continued on as a fully fledged pharaoh is something which has sort of changed history in the last 20 odd years. Quite why she is then promoted to female pharaoh is another matter for debate. It looks like it happens.
- [39:58]
William Dalrymple
Does this happen before her husband dies
- [40:01]
Aidan Dodson
or after a few months before. So one wonders whether it is that he is ill, expecting to be assassinated, or has some other premonition of death that he decides he wants to make sure that there is an adult to carry on the revolution. Because at this point he's got his heir. The future Tutankhamun is only a child. And I think that Nakhenaten's concern was that as death was staring him in the face, say whether due to disease or whatever, his concern was that if he died and he had just a young son, that whoever was the regent might well then start to dismantle everything. So he thinks, aha, if I make my wife my co ruler, who can then carry on as pharaoh after my death and probably acting then as co ruler with my son, hey, it'll all be fine. That therefore there's an adult continuing revolution. Unfortunately for Akhenaten, we know that within three years Nefertiti, now known as Neferneferuaten, which is always part of a long name but is now shortened as king, is dismantling his revolution. Ammon is back and we're moving on now.
- [41:20]
William Dalrymple
Aidan, one of the other big developments in recent times has obviously been DNA and people are testing mummies and finding relationships and so on. And you suggest that we might actually have Nefertiti's mummy. The mummy previously known, rather like Prince as the artist previously known. This is the mummy previously known as the younger lady.
- [41:43]
Anita Anand
KV85. It's catchy.
- [41:46]
Aidan Dodson
Yeah. Okay. What it is here is that a number of anonymous mummies were found in the tomb of Amenhotep ii, which seems to have been used as a store place for displaced mummies. In 2010, the results of a whole series of DNA tests on mummies belonging to the Amarna period or suspected to belong, were published and the younger woman was proclaimed to be the mother of Tutankhamun. Also it was proclaimed in the publication of this that Tutankhamun was the offspring of a brother sister marriage and that the DNA of the father was that represented by a mummy which some have been argued have argued is Akhenaten, some Smenkhare there's probably a whole podcast purely
- [42:37]
Anita Anand
on the wrangling around this episode of Dynasty.
- [42:41]
Aidan Dodson
Yeah, yeah.
- [42:43]
Anita Anand
Well, goodness me, what was going on here?
- [42:45]
Aidan Dodson
To keep it very simple, the issue is that it was proclaimed that it was a brother sister marriage, and it was argued that Akhenaten and a sister were married and produced Tutankhamun. There's a problem with that in that we have no sister of Akhenaten, who is a potential candidate. And the amount of material we've got from Amarna, you'd expect her to be there.
- [43:09]
William Dalrymple
But if you're right, she was a cousin, would that be good enough?
- [43:11]
Aidan Dodson
Now, that's the thing, is that the publication 2010 only gave preferred interpretations of the DNA, not the full range of them. And it was only subsequently that a French colleague got a tame DNA specialist to look at the results again. And the same signature, genetic signature, is produced by three generations of first cousin marriages, as would be produced by a brother sister marriage.
- [43:39]
William Dalrymple
So for clarity's sake, it's now possible to believe that the younger lady, KV35, is Nefertiti, that she's the cousin of Atenaten. She's nothing, she's not a sister marriage at all, exactly.
- [43:52]
Aidan Dodson
But that also would tie in with her father being a brother of Queen T, et cetera. So it works relatively well. It all ties up very nicely, potentially, anyway. But again, this is all work. I have to emphasize, with everything I talk about ancient Egypt, this is a working hypothesis. I'm not saying this is the fact, but for me, the data suggests that this is probably the best working hypothesis we've got at the moment.
- [44:14]
Anita Anand
Now, I want to bring us to the fact that she sits now in Berlin in a Berlin museum. And this connection with Germany is completely fascinating as well. I think Ludwig Brockhardt, the archaeologists, diplomat, nationalist, whatever you want to call him, who sort of first got his hands on the bust, he kind of walked into a workshop that seemed as if, you know, the sculptor had just ran off into the night and left everything,
- [44:44]
William Dalrymple
including his name, whatever the equivalent of,
- [44:46]
Anita Anand
you know, ancient, you know, sketchbooks are, but a lot of material in a workshop that was just left like that.
- [44:53]
Aidan Dodson
But the thing is, the reason why it was all left was that after Akhenaten's death, Amarna is abandoned fairly rapidly. Probably about three years after that, the royal family give up living there and return to their old palaces. And at that point everything just shut up and left. Because of course, by this time Akhenaten's dead, Nefertiti might be dead. As well. So there's no actual point in taking this stuff with you. So they effectively just sort of lock the door and just leave it, and it all then just decays over the next next few decades. Apparently it was reckoned that the bust had been on a wooden shelf, which had then finally decayed a decade or so later on and it fallen to the floor. Luckily, by that time, sand had blown into the workshop to break the fall, whereas the corresponding Akhenaten one clearly didn't fall on a pile of sand and ended up shattering. You can actually still see it in Berlin. It looks very horrible because they've just sort of had to try and stick it back together again with a few of the bits sort of completely pulverised. There was no need for it anymore. It's just been the master model for sculptors. Nobody was producing sculpts of Nefertiti anymore. So just leave it behind.
- [46:12]
Anita Anand
Interesting. And tell us about the German man who discovers it. Because there's a little bit of sleight of handery that goes on here with labeling it so that it. It does end up in a German collection rather than in Egypt.
- [46:24]
Aidan Dodson
At that period. The basic rules were that the excavator got half their fines, the Egyptian government got the other half of the fines, except for exceptional pieces whereby Egypt had the first claim on those. And what would happen at the end of the season is that one of the Egyptian Antiquities Service inspectors would come and look at what was must have been found and would sign off, yes or no, whether various things should stay or go. The story is that on the actual list that was given to the inspector, the Nefertiti bust was listed as being made of plaster rather than being a sculpture, because there was a whole load of other plaster pieces. The other thing is that it's been suggested that he wasn't given a very good look at the stuff. You know, things were already in their packing cases, so he was having sort of to peer into these things.
- [47:18]
William Dalrymple
He pulled a fast one.
- [47:20]
Anita Anand
Totally pulled a fast one. Come off, Aidan, come on.
- [47:25]
Aidan Dodson
Yes, I think he did pull a fast.
- [47:26]
William Dalrymple
But I didn't fall out with the German museum, Aiden, but say it straight.
- [47:30]
Aidan Dodson
No, no, but I think what Borchardt was doing was he was making sure that it was as difficult as possible for Lefebvre, who was the inspector, to look at the stuff, and also was hoping that that Lefebvre wouldn't ask for stuff to be taken out of the crates. I think that was the point.
- [47:46]
William Dalrymple
It wasn't a completely Maybe it's a French German thing.
- [47:48]
Anita Anand
Well, it's a German German thing because it ends up the French don't get anywhere close to it, but it becomes this major thing for Germany.
- [47:56]
Aidan Dodson
But I think what it was done was that it was made as difficult as possible for Lefebvre to inspect these things in detail. And he was keeping his fingers crossed that at no point would Lefebbe say, no, can I get it out, please? I want to have a closer look at it. Presumably, it was late in the day, Lefebvre wanted to go home and therefore he signed it up, have a nice
- [48:16]
William Dalrymple
pastis in the evening, put his legs up.
- [48:19]
Aidan Dodson
There is also a wonder whether or not actually there was a nice dinner waiting once he'd done that. So let's just get this. Let's get the paperwork done and we can go and sit down and have a.
- [48:27]
Anita Anand
You want to give him the benefit of that? That's fine. That's fine. If you want to. I think it was skullduggery. But as a result of this, let's just. We haven't got much time left. So I just definitely, definitely wanted to crowbar this story in because I find it so delicious. The bust arrives in Berlin in 1913. It doesn't get publicly exhibited for a decade, but the crowds go wild when they, you know, the German press go nuts. They say, the most beautiful woman in the world has arrived in Berlin and her face is everywhere. You know, like I'm saying, it's sort of, you know, on cigarette packets, on posters, on playing cards, everywhere. Do you know? Well, of course, you know, Aidan, but I'm telling Willi, do you know, Hitler comes into this story?
- [49:03]
William Dalrymple
Hitler, I don't know. Hitler's very.
- [49:05]
Anita Anand
Can I tell you this Hitler story? Because I like it very, very much so. By 1929, when Germany was looking for friends and they were talking to the Egyptians, the Egyptians desperately wanted to get the bust back because they knew it was skulduggery what took it away from them. And so they've negotiated this. It's a successful negotiation. And right at the last minute, Hitler personally becomes involved because he sees the bust and there is a quote attributed to him. He sends a message to Cairo saying, I am one of the big fans of Queen Nefertiti. She brings joy to my heart. He then said he intended to build a new Egyptian museum in Berlin in which his phrase, this wonder Nefertiti, will be enthroned. The most beautiful face of the ancient world, claimed personally by Hitler. Now, there we are. So this, you know, this relationship was important to Germany and there have been so many attempts by the Egyptians to get her back, which have all been rebuffed. I mean, she's not going anywhere, is she? I mean, they're not going to let go.
- [50:11]
Aidan Dodson
The issue is that whether or not there was skullduggery involved, the relevant form was signed off by an appropriate official. So they can take a very, very legalistic view of it. And the thing was interesting.
- [50:24]
William Dalrymple
The Germans would never do that. Never.
- [50:26]
Aidan Dodson
But actually when it was. Because when the plan was to get was to. Had been to return, it was actually negotiated by Hermann Gorey. He was the one who said, send it back.
- [50:34]
Anita Anand
Goering was furious because he had to go back on his word. And Hitler just sort of trampled all over this delicate diplomacy that he'd just done with Egypt.
- [50:41]
Aidan Dodson
Yeah, the delicacy of it was it was being given to the Egyptian king for his birthday or for his anniversary of accession. So it wasn't. They weren't admitting that it shouldn't have removed gone. They were taking view it had been illegally exported to Germany, but now Germany was giving it to the King of Egypt as a present. So there was some important sort of subtleties involved in how the diplomat diplomacy was being done.
- [51:08]
Anita Anand
Well, look, it's been a real ride talking about this aid and we're so grateful to you. So the next time on Empire, we are going to be talking about the boy king, Tutankhamun. Who was he really? How did he rule? How did he die? And we're gonna have a bonus on the discovery of the tomb because all of that is very Raiders of the Lost Ark kind of stuff. It's very, very interesting, full of mystery, full of drama, just like this one was. We look forward to seeing you then. Till we meet again. It's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan and
- [51:38]
William Dalrymple
goodbye from me, William Durrymple.
- [51:40]
Aidan Dodson
Goodbye from me,