Akhenaten: The Heretic Pharaoh

just before we get started some of you might know that i have another channel called megaprojects which is all about megaprojects i've mentioned it here before if you don't subscribe to that channel well please do but by popular demand i wanted to cover things that weren't quite mega enough for that channel so i started a new channel it's called side project you can see what we did there it covers secret soviet space weapons world war ii's greatest airplane some of history's lost treasures and the movement of london bridge from london to a random town in america stuff like that new videos three times a week on that channel so if you're thinking oh simon doesn't make enough videos for me well don't worry head on over to side projects and subscribe there is a link below and let's get started who was arkanartan for 3 300 years this question would have yielded only puzzled expressions as his deeds were considered so vile and outrageous that the man who was once pharaoh of egypt was condemned to damnatio memories a process where others try to eliminate all mentions of him from history and make it look like he never existed for thousands of years this was the case it wasn't until the late 19th and early 20th centuries when modern archaeologists excavated the lost city of amana and we were able to rediscover the reign of akhenaten so what did he do that was so heinous well he was arguably ancient egypt's greatest heretic akhenaten abandoned the traditional gods who had been worshipped for thousands of years and instead instituted a new religion called artemism which was centered around the worship of arton the sundisk he also moved the capital of egypt from thebes to a new city that he built called ammana also called arkhanaten during his reign for this reason the time span that covers his reign as well as those that immediately followed is also referred to as the amana period the extent to which arcanatan suppressed the old forms of religious expression is still a matter of debate among scholars but the people of ancient egypt were definitely not happy with him almost immediately after he died they got to work restoring the old ways and the pharaohs who followed distanced themselves from his beliefs nowadays we're much more familiar with his son tutankhamen who realistically didn't actually do anything of note in his lifetime but today we seek to rectify this a bit by taking a look at arkhanat and the heretical pharaoh who launched a religious revolution akhenaten was born sometime in the first half of the 14th century bc most likely during the 1370s he was part of egypt's 18th dynasty the first one of the new kingdom which arguably saw the egyptian empire reach the peak of its power most of the pharaohs we've covered so far like tutankhamen hat sheppswood and mosey iii have all been part of the same dynasty so it's pretty fair to say that this was a crucial part in the history of egypt akhenaten's father was pharaoh amenhotep iii also known as ammon hotep the magnificent he is generally considered one of ancient egypt's greatest rulers presiding over a lengthy reign of almost 40 years marked by prosperity peace and stability akhenaten's mother was ty the pharaoh's great royal wife he was actually the second son that the two had together and was not originally planned to take over the throne however his older brother crown prince that moses died of an unknown cause sometime during the second half of their father's reign and therefore akhenaten became the next in line he was not called akanatan at the time of course this name was roughly translated to one who is serviceable to arton and he only adopted it as pharaoh once he instituted his new religious policies up until that point he was arman hoteb iv but will stick to akhenaten to avoid a lot of confusion with his father we cannot tell you almost anything about his early life some egyptologists speculate that he may have served as a high priest before taking the throne because his brother had done the same while he was still the successor and maybe this is where he first developed his strong devotion to the arten also spelled aten this deity actually predated akhenaten by a long way its first mentions date back to the old kingdom although back then it seemed to be simply a word used to refer to the sun disk itself and it wasn't an actual deity but rather an element of the sun god by the middle kingdom though there were already references to arton as a creator so at some point centuries before akhenaten came along arten had already morphed into a sort of solar deity another hotly debated aspect to backnatan's life is when exactly he took over the throne there are some scholars who assert that amenhotep iii made his son co-regent while he was still pharaoh many others argue strongly against this view and even the length of the co-regency is heavily disputed for our purposes we're going to assume that akhenaten became the new pharaoh of egypt after the death of his father this happened around 1353 bc pharaoh almanhotep iii died in his late 40s or early 50s in his 38th or 39th regular year and he was buried in the valley of the kings his son followed him to the throne still under the name amenhotep iv it was around this time that he married his great royal wife nefertiti the first years of akhenaten's reign were traditional for lack of a better word where he followed the regular customs of the time and mainly continued policies and practices that had been set out by his father he expressed his worship of the art and but not in an other way this wasn't considered unusual because armanhotep iii also emphasized the worship of the arten as a call back to their ancestors between the middle kingdom and new kingdom there was a span of time dubbed the second intermediate period it was considered a dark time for egypt as parts of the land were not ruled by native egyptians but rather by hicksos a group of people from the levant who arrived in the area and took over in the 17th century bc eventually the xos were defeated and driven away permanently by omose the first who founded the 18th dynasty the one that we're in right now the point is that after the xos were gone the pharaohs who followed were eager to get back to their roots they wanted to do away with the traditions and culture of the hicks arse and bring back many customs and religious practices from their forefathers from the middle kingdom and beyond and well that is how the arton entered the egyptian public consciousness once more armenhotep iii might have worshipped arten but he never neglected ammun who by that point had become one of the most important gods in the egyptian pantheon and the patron deity of thebes in fact ahman's significance during the 18th dynasty grew so much that he began being identified alongside ra the sun god as a single entity named ahman rah the first indication that akhenaten had plans of his own came a few years into his reign when he scheduled a said festival for himself this was one of egypt's oldest traditions it was a sort of jubilee with a grand feast meant to celebrate the original unification between upper and lower egypt traditionally a pharaoh organized his first set festival once he reigned for 30 years and in three year increments from then on akhenaten did it after only two or three years the reason for this has been widely speculated some scholars think he was mentally preparing himself for the more drastic steps he was about to take others believe akhenaten wanted to symbolically link his reign to that of his father so he organized a said festival just three years after the previous one of ahman hotep iii and some concluded that the pharaoh simply saw it as a convenient excuse for him to build loads of new monuments and temples dedicated to the art and without anyone raising an eyebrow indeed the greatest one of all was a temple complex constructed right outside karnak named gempatan or arton is found which went against egyptian building conventions by having no roof so that the sunlight could freely enter the complex by the fifth year of his reign the pharaoh decided it was time for a true revolution he changed his role territory officially adopting the name akhenaten and instituting the worship of the arton throughout his kingdom he expressed his devotion to the sun disc in several hymns and poems the most famous of which is the great hymn to the arten a composition of thirteen stanzas which was found inscribed on several rock tombs unsurprisingly many egyptians were outraged by akhenaten particularly the priests who were about to lose the majority of their power influence and wealth however the pharaoh was not an idiot and he knew that he would not be able to pull off his religious reform without support from anyone and he got that support from the army the kingdom was coming off from a period of prosperity so the soldiers were already pretty content but akhenaten still made sure to praise and celebrate them whenever the opportunity arose as well as maintain good relations with his military leaders clearly this worked as there were no major uprisings during his reign and the disavowal of the cult of arten only took place after his death because of his actions akhenaten has been heralded by some modern scholars the first monotheist in history meaning the first person to express belief in a single god others reject this label and qualify his reign more as a henotheistic period of egypt meaning that while worship was focused on a single deity he didn't necessarily reject the possible existence of others either way akhenaten wanted nothing to do with the old gods of egypt anymore and he felt that his worship of the arton needed to be concentrated in a virgin site one that was free from the touch and influence of the former pantheon as shocking as akhenaten's abandonment of the old gods was so was his decision to leave sebes the city that had functioned as egypt's capital for the greater part of its history up until then but the pharaoh wanted to found a new capital in pristine land he chose an uninhabited site on the eastern bank of the nile and took around twenty thousand people with him to his new settlement he called it acantharton or horizon of the atom but it is better known by its later name amana obviously building a new city from scratch in a short period of time was a huge undertaking and there is grim evidence to suggest that the people in omana were worked to the bone once the largest cemetery in amana was excavated modern archaeologists found the remains of 432 people of the ones whose age was established 70 died before the age of 35 while only 9 people lived past 50. not only that but the children had their growth stunted due to malnutrition while many adults had spinal damage from being overworked an even darker picture is painted by another cemetery this time located near the royal limestone quarry a whopping 92 percent of the individuals buried there were under 25 years old while half of them were under 15. amana might have been the ideal city in the mind of arkhanaten but all indications seem to suggest that he only cared about himself and his god while the people of omana lived in miserable conditions and were being worked to death in order to cope with the construction demands of the pharaoh builders created a new type of stone block called toilet hats made out of limestone they were much smaller than the blocks used in egyptian construction but they were also cut to a standard size which was not typically done before theoretically this made them more efficient but they still did not catch on and the usage of talent had ended shortly after the amana period it probably would not surprise you to learn that the main structures in amana were the royal palaces for akhenaten and temples for the artem the main place of worship was the great temple of the arton in the center of the city while a secondary small art and temple was located near to the royal palaces like all other art and temples they had two features that distinguished them from traditional egyptian places of worship they were open air with no roof and they also did not feature any cult images of the arten which was in fact a recurring theme in artemisiam while the other gods were commonly depicted as having human bodies in human or animal heads zachenarton insisted that the arten was everywhere in every one and thus transcended the need for any kind of physical form therefore the artem was always depicted as only a disk emitting solar rays something else that came out of ammana was a new art style dubbed simply the amana art style again it did not last longer than akhenaten's reign but some works have survived and they create a pretty stark contrast to the traditional ancient egyptian art the most striking differences concern the ways humans were depicted in the amana style they were taller and more slender the facial features were elongated in the chest hands and legs with sin while the stomach and thighs were often bloated the same skin color was used for men and women and achenaten himself was depicted with feminine features some egyptologists believed that this was actually a more realistic view of what the pharaoh really looked like because he might have suffered from one or more genetic disorders like marfan syndrome which caused elongated extremities or kleinfelder syndrome which led to male breast enlargement it is speculated that other pharaohs from the 18th dynasty also suffered from these ailments but this is yet to be proven conclusively akhenaten ruled egypt for approximately 17 years and his reign was clearly dominated by his devotion to the arten which became increasingly fanatical as the years went by not satisfied with simply building a new capital dedicated to his god he later had older temples dismantled and their priests killed as he ordered the names of the old gods be chiseled out of all cravings from giant stellai to small tablets we don't actually have a lot of detailed information about what happened in egypt during the reign of akhenaten because of the whole damnatio memorizing and having all mentions of him destroyed but we do know a lot more about his international relations thanks to a treasure trove of information that somehow survived known as the amana letters this consists of over 380 tablets written in the acadian language using cuneiform that mostly represent diplomatic correspondence from neighboring city administrators and kings to the pharaoh the tone used in the tablets changes depending on who the sender was some of them came from vassals of egypt so naturally the tone was very deferential addressing akhenaten as the son my lord while referring to themselves as his servants others while still cordial came from rulers of similar rank like the kings of mattani or babylon and the tone reflected their equal status regardless of the way they were written many letters had similar content they expressed displeasure disappointment concern and uneasiness at akhenaten for neglecting some of his international duties some of these were specific for example the king of metani tushrata complains in one tablet that akhenaten seemingly reneged on a deal made by his father to give the king solid gold statues as dowry for a princess bride from matani it would seem that akhenaten sent to shirata gold-plated statues instead many letters concerned the most pressing issue in the region at that time the rise of a dangerous foe the hittites and they showed how little akhenaten cared about matters that had nothing to do with the arten it was in fact during akhenaten's reign that the hittites reached the peak of their power and by the time tutankhamun came to the throne the hittite empire was just as strong as egypt first the mittani asked akhenaten for assistance in their war with the hittites but there was no help forthcoming in fact egypt hoped to curry favor with the new regional power and withdrew all support to matani allowing the king there to assassinate tasharata and sack his capital of washikani of course this only served to show the rest of the world that egypt was weak and vulnerable so the hittites pressed the attack and went into syria where there were city-states and kingdoms that were vassals of egypt and theoretically under its protection the city-states that weren't conquered were angered by egypt's inaction and they rebelled prompting akhenaten to lose the territory he used trap dominion over in syria as far as we can tell he never attempted to get it back [Music] the last years of akhenaten's reign are one big question mark the most confusing and controversial aspect was his succession and the couple of years in between the reigns of akhenaten and his son tutankhamen the problem is that we know there were two other pharaohs with very short reigns between father and son smekinare and neferno ferreten however that is pretty much all we know who they were how they were connected to akhenaten why they became pharaohs are all still mysteries that spur debates among egyptologists we're not sure if smenkocarre was male or female but some evidence may suggest that he served as co-region during the last years of akhenaten's life some believe that the same can be said for neferna ferreten who was a woman and may have been one of the pharaoh's daughters or more likely the new name of nefertiti once she became pharaoh in her own right akhenaten died circa 1336 bc of unknown causes afterwards menkhikare and neferneferatan either ruled together as co-regents or one the other or both of them had individual reigns as pharaoh we simply cannot say with any certainty and it wasn't until toontankman took the throne circus 1334 bc that the historical record became clearer this is because king tut was still a young boy when he became pharaoh and his advisors made most of the decisions for him they realized that the cult of the art and had no chance of surviving without akhenaten so they steadily made changes to revert back to the old ways and the old gods and shun everything done by the former pharaoh this included a mana itself as the city was abandoned when the capital was reverted back to thebes it was still standing though it wasn't actually destroyed until later when a pharaoh called haramheb came to power he was more thorough when it came to wiping out the ammanna period from history so he had the temples and monuments built by akhenaten dismantled and then recycled for new structures that's why there were talent hats from amana that were used as filler material for the pillars of luxor as far as akhenaten was concerned his wish you won't be surprised to find out was to be buried in a mana he had a royal tomb built for himself in the local necropolis called the royal wadi and extra chambers for nefertiti and one of his daughters who died young maybe even during childbirth he said let a tomb be made for me in the eastern mountain of akhenaten and let my burial be made in it in the millions of jubilees which the arton my father decreed for me led the burial of the king's chief wife nefertiti be made in the millions of years which my father decreed for her let also the burial of the king's daughter be made in it he probably won't be surprised to learn that his wish was ignored akhenaten was buried in his tomb initially but was later moved to the valley of the kings and his royal tomb was desecrated where exactly he ended up is again a matter of some dispute most suggest his final resting place was kv-55 a small undecorated single chamber tomb which only contained a single adult mummy placed in a sarcophagus whose facial features had been destroyed as were all names and personal identifiers the identity of the mummy is a controversial topic made even more confusing by the fact that it was originally discerned to be a woman the body was in fact male although the coffin itself was designed for a woman many believe this is akhenaten although others have posited that the mummy may belong to the obscure smenkukari modern dna tests indicated that the mummy was related to tutankhamen but other scholars criticized them saying that the dna was too degraded and the mummies handled by so many people over time that the results would be inaccurate this is another contentious point for the time being but is somehow fitting given all the other aspects of akhenaten's reign as he is seemingly destined to go down in history as arguably the most controversial pharaoh in the history of egypt so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe also please do check out that other channel i mentioned called side projects which is linked to below and thank you for [Music] watching

Channel: Biographics

Views: 230,022

Keywords: biographics, biography, biographies, people, famous people, simon whistler

Id: qnIK5RryfZ4

Length: 20min 18sec (1218 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 04 2020