It's the ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Schuss your host and in today's podcast

we are going back to ancient Egypt. We're going back to the second millennium BC to talk

about one of the most famous queens from ancient Egyptian history. You've probably heard

the name Nefertiti and in today's podcast for such a big topic we are joined by a big

name and this is the University of Manchester's Professor Joyce Tiltley. Joyce has written

a number of books about prominent women from ancient Egyptian history such as Cleopatra

and also Nefertiti. She is an absolute joy to talk to. So without further ado, here's

Joyce. Joyce, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today.

Oh, it's a pleasure. I love talking about Nefertiti. Well, yes, this is a huge topic and

Nefertiti in ancient Egyptian history. She seems to be one of the most powerful women in the

ancient world for well over a decade in her time. Well, it's difficult isn't it? Certainly

that's how we see her. The difficulty is trying to disentangle from what we can see from the

archaeological evidence and what actually happened. And this has led to all sorts of different

interpretations of Nefertiti. So you'll get some people who think that she was relatively

insignificant, just led by a husband and some people who think that she ruled Egypt and

everything in between. It's a fantastic subject. Absolutely, yes. And we will go to those sources

and the piecemeal sources that we have very soon, but just quickly so we can set the background

when we're talking about Nefertiti in ancient Egyptian history because there's thousands of

years of this history. When about an ancient Egyptian history, are we talking? Well, she's the wife

of a king called Akinaten and we know that he roughly came to the throne in about 1352 BCE.

So that's when obviously she was married to him before he came to the throne and he ruled for

about 17 years. We don't really see her after that 17 years. So that's roughly it. It's quite a

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