Nefertiti and the Heretic Pharaoh

Today historians know very little about Nefertiti, but during her time as Egypt's queen she was revered as a goddess. In this episode, Sarah and Katie explore the reign of Nefertiti, and why her controversial husband Akhenaton was considered a heretic.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Downy, and our subject
for today was called a historical hottie by People magazine,

(00:22):
which of course is the most reliable of all celebrity magazines,
so it must be true. But her name Nefertiti means
the beautiful one has come or a beautiful woman has come.
And she was also honored with a variety of very
lovely titles Suite of Love, Lady of Grace, and some
people have also called her the most powerful woman in

(00:43):
the world. So not just a pretty face. And I've
long loved Nefertiti. I actually was her for Halloween. I
think I've mentioned it before. It was probably my best
Halloween costume when I was about nine years old. And
she's also a magnet, at least according to Molly from
Steff Mom never told you on Molly's Fringe. So a

(01:05):
good way to get Egyptologists into a fight, which you
know who wouldn't want to do that is to debate
Nefertiti because despite that famous bust of her that we've
all seen that's in the Berlin Museum inspires all sorts
of tales. We don't know much about her at all,
so let's start with the basics. The things we do know.
Nefer Titi was married to the Heretic pharaoh a Connaughton,

(01:28):
who ruled in the eighteenth dynasty from thirteen fifty three
to thirteen thirty six specs. So not all that long actually,
and he's a bit of an enigma to us too.
One thing we do know. Anton's father was Almand Hotep
the Third, whose reign was known for being very peaceful
and prosperous and for producing tons of buildings and statues.

(01:50):
Thinks that you'd go to Egyptian and see and a
NAT's name was actually Almond Hotep the fourth until he
came into power and he didn't key to that name
for too long. He changed it to akat in, which
means one who is effective for Aughten, in honor of
the new religion that he was about to bring the people.
But before we talk too much about that, we want

(02:11):
to talk about our girl, never Td. So because of
that name we mentioned earlier, the beautiful one has come.
There's a lot of speculation that never Td was actually foreign.
Maybe from what is today Syria, and others think that no,
she wasn't foreign, she was born Egyptian royalty. Maybe she
was even related to Anton's mother, Queen Tie, or perhaps

(02:33):
she was the daughter of I, who was an influential
courtier and may have been involved in King Tut's death.
He definitely succeeded him, but he must have been really
old too. We're talking about fatherly age. Yes, well, all
this really goes to show how much of an enigma
she was. I mean, we're talking about her parentage and
you know where she's from. Pretty basic facts that are

(02:55):
really fuzzy, but it's just part of all the fascination around.
It's kind of like the Mona Lisa. You know, there's
a great work of art. We're all really interested in
it and the woman, you know, who it's based on,
but we don't know much. We were always looking for her.
So what we do know about never TDI comes from
tomb scenes, inscriptions, temple scenes at Karnak, excavations at Amarna.

(03:19):
And we do know again that she had six daughters
with her husband in the first ten years of their marriage,
one of whom married King Tat. And we also know
she wasn't antons only wife. Notably, there was another woman
named Kia who was described as being Ants greatly beloved,
and she may have been King Tut's mom, although again

(03:41):
other people say never TD was his mom, So more confusion,
confusion about the parents and the kids and where she's from,
but never TD had an important role in Acton's new religion,
which we're going to talk about now. And when I
think religion in ancient Egypt, I think of Bastet and
Isis and Horace. But there were many gods, including solar

(04:03):
ones like Almond and Raw, who were later to become
simply Almond Raw together. But there's an important shift when
Aknaton's dad declares that he was Almond's son and that
he himself was actually Raw. Aknaton goes even further when
he declares that there's only one god, Auton, who is
the sun disc. And I'm sure you've seen pictures of

(04:26):
this god. It's usually pictured just as a circle with rays,
kind of like you draw a son when you were
a kid, except that the razor hands shooting out, and
lots of art shows Aknaton and Nefer TD worshiping it
are just being engaged in daily family activity, hanging out
with their son gods under their benevolent son God. This

(04:46):
was a huge change though. You have to picture the
dominant religion of the time, and you know, all of
its gods worshiped in these dark temples. But now everything's
in open air. The better to see the sun. With
a sun god, you got to go outside. So Aknaton
needed to build a bunch of new temples, and he
wanted to do it quickly. So this meant a whole

(05:07):
new way of constructing buildings. Instead of those giant blocks
you think of when you think of say the Egyptian Pyramids,
they had little blocks that could be carried like little bricks. Um.
And it's oversimplifying things though to just say that we're
going from a polytheistic religion to a monotheistic religion, because
Anton and Nefertd are still depicted as god like themselves.

(05:31):
It's been like a triad. Yeah with Auton, Uh, they're
not going to give up their own divinity because they've
you know, proclaimed that the sun God and the other
religious cults never really went away, even though Aknaton tried
to erase them and even moved the capital from Thebes
to build a new one, to get away from all

(05:52):
of the old ways, and so it's not surprising to
your moving capitals injuring religion, the changing religions that suggest
that this is not received universally. The reforms aren't really popular,
and he and Nefertiti are definitely enemies of the priests,
and the people probably want to keep their own religion, especially,

(06:13):
I mean, it's something so radically different from what they're
used to, as we will see later. But going to
Nefertidis power, she may have been a sort of living
fertility goddess. According to Britannica based on depictions of her
from the time, she's always dressed really gorgeously in fine
linens and fancy head dresses because she's supposed to be

(06:36):
this alluring figure and she has her little egg shaped
babies to eggheads, and that the temple in Thebes art
suggests that she may have acted as a priest of
bten and in Blocks from Karnak she's shown actually smiting enemies,
and that fabulous blue head dress we all know her for,
which was unheard of for anyone but a king and us,

(07:00):
really suggest the influence that she had in Egypt at
the tun precedented. Yeah, she was considered divine, as we mentioned,
but on her husband's sarcophagus, she's actually pictured on each
of the four corners, and that's a big deal. It's
her pictured instead of uh, you know, the sun god
or if it had been an older time, different gods.

(07:21):
When you'll see her twice as often an art as
you'll see Anton, and some people think she may even
have acted as co ruler with him. But at the
very least she's credited with making this new religion seem
a little more warm fuzzy to the people, and that
would be part of the reason why she's pictured with
her daughters as this model of fertility and in lots

(07:43):
of happy family portraits, which is always a good ploy
for public sympathy. Just ask Marie Antoinette. Well, so what
happens to Nefertiti, that's our question. We have these murky beginnings,
but where does she have the middle two with all
of her influence and her power. But a certain point
she kind of disappears. So Acknton dies after seventeen years

(08:04):
of rule, and none of the religious stuff really lasts
very long after him. He has a co region named
she Menkari, who keeps the throne until tut But from
there things are a little strange. In ackns twelfth year
of rule, one princess dies and three just disappear from
the records. It's possible that they died of plague, and

(08:27):
Kia disappears as well. Some people think Nefertiti might have
gotten jealous and killed her. Kia is one of Anton's
other wives. But then Nefertidi disappears from the records as well.
So did she die, was she killed, was she buried
in the royal tomb at Amarna? Or It's possible that

(08:48):
she was Menkar this ruler and she's even more powerful
than ever now. So we've mentioned that there was this
co region after Acknton died, and this ruler had a
throne name which was different from the birth name, which
I can't pronounce. I'm not even going to try. And
some say that there were two rulers under that name

(09:10):
and that never Tdi was one of them. Although to
go even further, some say that she became a female king,
the new pharaoh, and some pictures do show a very
feminine looking pharaoh. So well, we may never know, you
know what exactly. Never Tdi's role was if she if
she was a female king, or if she was a

(09:31):
co regent, or maybe just uh the wife of the
pharaoh still or maybe even dead earlier than we thought
by not too long after the time she she does die,
her pictures are being defaced because she is so unpopular
with the priests. When Aknaton's buildings were largely destroyed, his
name is completely erased from the king's list, so we

(09:55):
didn't know anything about him until we found him. And
it's not until nineteen twelve when she services again. That's
when the bust of her was found at Amarna and
dated tot BC, and of course it's beautiful, it's very beautiful.
And ever since then we've been looking for her and
one egyptologist, Joanne Fletcher, says that she's sure that never

(10:19):
TD is the younger woman mummy from kV thirty five
in the Valley of the Kings. And this mummy was unwrapped,
so you can't tell the identity of an unwrapped mummy,
but she has a shaved head, and someone tore her
arm off too, as well as ripped her mouth and
bashed her chest, so really defaced the body. There were

(10:41):
two other mummies buried in this kV thirty five. One
is known as the elder woman and one is known
as the boy. And the elder woman has red hair
and manicured hands, and the boy has a sidelock. And
it's thought that the woman might be Queen Ty, who
is never Ted's mother in law, in the boy might
be Prince Tutmoses. But here's another important thing about these mummies.

(11:05):
All of them have really messed up feet, which you know,
in their belief system in the afterlife, that would mean
they couldn't walk and never t D with this bashed
in chest, if it is never t D wouldn't even
be able to have the breath of life well. And
according to Fletcher, since they are damaged in this way,
it wouldn't have been grave robbers who did this. It

(11:28):
must have been intentional, you know, a calculated action by
people who wanted to make sure they didn't have an
afterlife destroy their afterlife. But Fletcher is very controversial and
some say it was grave robbers looking for amulets on
the mummies. And a lot of people say that the
mummy is too young to be never t D. Perhaps
she's the elder woman in the tomb and the younger

(11:50):
one is one of her daughters, but unless one of
them sits up and tells us, we probably won't know.
We did get to play into that exhimation theme though,
as we always do, and we have an art note
to end that bust of Never TV shows an epicanthic fold,
which we associate with an East Asian I, but it

(12:12):
can also be associated with several medical conditions, and her
daughter had it as well, so as always, people like
playing posthumous medical detective and trying to figure out what
genetically it could have been. So the epicanthic fold is
based on the bus. But it's also important to note
that the art change pretty dramatically during the Amarna period.

(12:33):
They're really exaggerated figures with these long skulls for the royals.
You know, I mentioned that the egg Fait baby earlier.
I remember looking at this when I was a kid
and just thinking what happened to their heads um. They're
also often depicted with big stomachs and hips and skinny
little torsos, and this may have been symbolic or it
was maybe just about changing everything. So you change your religion,

(12:56):
drastically change your capital. Maybe you change your art styles
as well and just forge a new way. But it's
also possible the art was more accurately reflecting how people
look right, and perhaps Anton did have a skinny little
torso and a big stomach and kind of womanly hips.
And in one statue that may or may not be

(13:17):
nef for TV, she's wrinkly and saggy. And again we
should note that she looks very different in a lot
of portraits, and she may not have looked like that
bust at all. And speaking of that bust being different
from real life, a CT scan recently showed a difference
between what we see at the bust and the interfacial cast.

(13:39):
It's not as symmetrical or as unwrinkled, So perhaps was
made prettier by the sculptor, which is lucky for Nefertiti
that she has to have a nice bust if she's
going to be making people's historical hotties list. We should
mention that the Egyptians want their bust back from the
Germans byelve, although there's a bit of a debate about that.

(14:02):
But we'd like to wrap up with a quote that's
from him to Auton, but made us think of never
t D. He has a million forms according to the
time of day and from where he is seen, yet
he is always the same. And that brings us to
our listener mail from today, which is about our Charlie
Chaplin podcast. So this message is from Suzanne, and she wrote,

(14:27):
I just wanted to say I loved your Charlie Chaplin podcast.
I wanted to recommend you take a look at his
old film studio. I've been to the Chaplin studio a
few times, although it is now the Jim Henson Studio.
It's a lovely Tutor style building almost at the corner
of Sunset and Libreya in Los Angeles, and she gave
us some details about inside of the studio. I think

(14:47):
our favorite point though, was when she mentioned that it
looks like an old English style village. In the main
reception area, there's a large black and white photograph of
Charlie Chaplin at the groundbreaking of the studio. It's really
cool to see what l A looked like back then,
nothing around for miles. They also have one of his
tramp suit with shoes underglass hanging on the wall. So

(15:07):
I'd really like to see one of Charlie Chaplin's tramp suits,
as would I, So please feel free to send us
mail at History podcast at how stuff works dot com.
If you're not much of an emailer, you can follow
us on Twitter Missed in History or join our Facebook
fan page or will keep you updated on what we're
working on. And you should really read a very cool

(15:29):
article called was There Really a Curse on King Tut's Tomb?
Written by our own Lady of Grace, Sarah Dowdy, And
you can search for that on our homepage at www
dot how stuff works dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
dot com and be sure to check out the stuff
you missed in History. Glass blogged on the how stuff

(15:50):
works dot com home page