134: The Death of Akhenaten

The History of Egypt Podcast

Dominic Perry

History, Society & Culture

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 7 October 2020

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A controversy comes to its end. King Akhenaten died in his 17th year on the throne. Surprisingly, we know a lot about his passing and his burial. From the date of his death, to his sarcophagus, shabti figurines and his innovative tomb, we can get a sense of how this controversial ruler finally met his end... Date c.1346 BC. Website: www.egyptianhistorypodcast.com. Support the show via Patreon www.patreon.com/egyptpodcast. Make a one-time donation via PayPal payments. Music by Keith Zizza www.keithzizza.com. Music by Ancient Lyric www.bettinajoydeguzman.com Select Bibliography: Aldred, Cyril. Akhenaten: King of Egypt. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1988. Allen, James P. ‘The Religion of Amarna’. In The Royal Women of Amarna: Images of Beauty from Ancient Egypt, edited by Dorothea Arnold, 3–6. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996. Arnold, Dorothea. The Royal Women of Amarna: Images of Beauty from Ancient Egypt. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996. Dodson, Aidan. Amarna Sunrise: Egypt From Golden Age to Age of Heresy. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2014. Dodson, Aidan. Amarna Sunset: Nefertiti, Tutankhamun, Ay, Horemheb, and the Egyptian Counter-Reformation. 2nd Edition. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2017. Dodson, Aidan, and Dyan Hilton. The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. London: Thames & Hudson, 2004. Eaton-Krauss, Marianne. ‘Reprise: Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Amarna’. Chronique d’Egypte 88, no. 175 (1 January 2013): 64–80. Fairman, H. W. ‘Once Again the So-Called Coffin of Akhenaten’. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 47 (1961): 25–40. Gabolde, Marc. D’Akhenaton à Toutânkhamon. Paris: Institut d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’antiquité, 1998. Gabolde, Marc. ‘L’ADN de La Famille Royale Amarnienne et Les Sources Égyptiennes’. Égypte Nilotique et Méditerranéenne 6 (2013): 177–203. Gabolde, Marc. ‘Under a Deep Blue Starry Sky’. In Causing His Name to Live: Studies in Egyptian Epigraphy and History in Memory of William J. Murnane, edited by Peter J. Brand and Louise Cooper. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Hawass, Zahi, Yehia Z. Gad, Somaia Ismail, Rabab Khairat, Dina Fathalla, Naglaa Hasan, Amal Ahmed, et al. ‘Ancestry and Pathology in King Tutankhamun’s Family’. JAMA 303, no. 7 (17 February 2010): 638–47. Hornung, Erik. Akhenaten and the Religion of Light. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999. Kemp, Barry J. Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization. 3rd Revised Edition. London: Routledge, 2018. Kemp, Barry J. ‘The Amarna Royal Tombs at Amarna’, 2016. https://amarnaproject.com/documents/pdf/Amarna-Royal-Tombs.pdf. ———. The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Amarna and Its People. First paperback edition. London: Thames & Hudson, 2014. Martin, Geoffrey Thorndike. The Royal Tomb at El-ʻAmarna. 2 vols. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1974. Murnane, William J. Texts from the Amarna Period in Egypt. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995. Murnane, William J. ‘The End of the Amarna Period Once Again’. Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 96 (2001): 9–22. Peet, T. E., and C. Leonard Woolley. The City of Akhenaten, Volume I. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1923. Pendlebury, J.D.S. The City of Akhenaten, Volume III. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1951. Redford, Donald. ‘Akhenaten: New Theories and Old Facts’. Bulletin of the American School of Oriental Research 369 (2013): 9. Redford, Donald B. Akhenaten: The Heretic King. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Reeves, Nicholas. Akhenaten: Egypt’s False Prophet. London: Thames & Hudson, 2001. UCL Web Archive. ‘Stela UC 410’, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/ave/detail/details/index_no_login.php?objectid=UC__410__&accesscheck=%2Fmuseums-static%2Fave%2Fdetail%2Fdetails%2Findex.php. Strouhal, Eugen. ‘Biological Age of Skeletonized Mummy from Tomb KV 55 at Thebes’. Anthropologie 48, no. 2 (2010): 97–112. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest
0:05.0	civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered. Follow the story of
0:10.3	Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over 10 generations or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era,
0:19.2	then check out the Ancient World Podcast.
0:22.4	Available on all podcasting platforms or go to ancient world podcast.com.
0:28.0	That's the Ancient World Podcast. One day, around 3,400 years ago, a worker made their way through the streets of Aquette Aten,
0:48.9	Tharrow's Royal City where he lived and ruled and worshipped the sun.
0:53.7	Ackett A'Tin, the horizon of Aitin, now known as Amana.
0:58.8	The city bustled with life and
1:03.7	officials performed their crafts and officials performed their duties.
1:06.5	Goods, tools and provisions flowed into Arquette Arten from other parts of Egypt, and many items travelled from building to building
1:16.2	in their long complicated lives.
1:19.4	Today, this particular worker carried a jar of honey. Honey was valuable, used in food, temple rituals and even medicine.
1:29.2	This golden viscous liquid, commonly known as the Tears of Ra, offered sweet safe delicacy, and the production of honey was an ancient craft indeed.
1:41.0	So, as you can imagine, Honey was popular at Aquette Aten and this little
1:47.0	jar was going to play a surprisingly big role in history. The worker carried their jar of honey to some storage location and
1:56.9	deposited it. The jar itself was simple earthenware, but it bore a label, a text of black ink on the surface.
2:06.4	This label marked the name of the product, Honey, and the date that it was stored.
2:12.1	In this case, the date on the jar was Hat Sep 17, aka Regnell Year 17,
2:20.3	the 17th year in the reign of Arcanaten, King of Upper and Lower Egypt.
2:26.0	The label did not name the exact date. It did not have the month or the day,
2:32.0	but it had the year and that was good enough.
	...

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