Gods of Egypt: The Curse of Amarna | Pharaoh Akhenaten and Nefertiti | Episode 2

A new chapter of Egyptian history began with the rule of the pharaoh Akhenaten. His visions would plunge the realm into an unpredictable crisis. The young king forced a revolutionary new faith on the people. They had to believe that only a single god could bring salvation, Atun, the burning sun. The ruler was Atun's only mouthpiece on earth. It was the law. By Akhenaten's side ruled Queen Nefertiti. Had the pharaoh succumbed to her magical beauty? Even 3,000 years later, the final verdict has not been passed. Did the king lead his realm to disaster fully conscious, or was he only a puppet in the hands of a ruthless woman? Mentally disturbed and bodily disfigured is how his opponents characterize him even today. Was it a love-crazed dreamer or a despot obsessed with power who ascended the throne of the pharaohs around 1360 BC? Akhenaten took possession of the palace of his parents. The magnificent building provided the right surroundings for the young ruler's high-minded plans. His father, Amenhotep III, had ruled the realm for almost four decades, but in the end Akhenaten's mother, Tia, had exercised the power. With an ingenious maneuver, he made her his ally. The proof is a small bust in the Egyptian museum in Berlin. Investigating this with the aid of computer tomography has enabled us to find out the extent of the change that a great historical personality like Tia suffered in the instant of her husband's death. Our computer tomography proves that Akhenaten literally idolized his mother. Under the queen's heavy wig, the headdress of a goddess appears. The son elevated his mother into the divine pantheon during her lifetime and thus ensured her loyalty forever. In spite of this, Tia was no longer the most important woman at the royal court. This position by Akhenaten's side was to be taken by a complete unknown, the mysterious Nefertiti. When her name is a riddle, it means the beautiful one has arrived. A hint as to her origins? Was she born as a princess in a faraway kingdom? Or was she from the Egyptian royal family, even a close relative of Akhenaten's? Had she even lived in the harem of Amenhotep III and was only married to Akhenaten after Amenhotep's death? The rumors about the stunning beauty on the pharaonic throne never seem to cease. The official reports from the Amarna period present the royal couple as an ideal match. Vast reliefs show the two in tender embraces. What was it that linked them so inseparably? A perfect relationship without any dark sides? Together, they had their new capital built in the middle of the desert, a huge endeavor. Tens of thousands moved to Akhet Atun. The walls were erected quickly. For the foundations, millions of building stones had to be procured from all over the country. In the quarries, workers are forced to labor under the most harsh conditions. Akhenaten and Nefertiti governed the fates of people in the City of the Sun in a high-handed manner. They had realized their dreams and believed that they were looking into a glorious future. Aided by the records kept of excavations, British archaeologists have reconstructed Akhet Atun with precision. A generously planned garden city can be recognized in the computer animation. He wanted to stay in this place until the river would flow upstream, the pharaoh announced. The throne room in the royal palace could hardly have been excelled in splendor. From here, Akhenaten and Nefertiti wanted to carry their faith in the one God all over the world. Does this look like the center of power of a madman? In my view, Akhenaten was not mad. He was far ahead of his time. He thought differently. He may well have seemed dismissive of his contemporaries, of course, but Akhenaten was certainly not mad. Just as the sun god in the Egyptians' imagination traversed the sky every day, thus Akhenaten hurried restlessly throughout his realm in his golden chariot. Depictions in the tombs of the highest officials of Akhet Atun demonstrate how closely equal the king felt to Atun. His portrayals in divine poses adorn the walls everywhere. His subjects were meant to no longer be able to distinguish between god and king. Akhenaten wanted to be the only visible god who performed signs and miracles and interfered in the fate of the individual, one who held life and death in his hands. The royal family's excursions became processions of divinities. There is not a single scene on the walls of the tombs in which the royal couple is not the center of attention. As if seized by the ecstasy of speed, the king and queen's drive accelerated to a headlong movement. No one seemed to be able to slow it down anymore. Akhenaten and Nefertiti even banished the gods of the underworld. A life beyond the grave. In Amarna, it no longer existed. The only thing that counted here was the veneration of the rulers and the worship of the omnipresent sun god. On the other hand, the royal couple proved generous towards the living. Those who served it faithfully were richly rewarded. Golden rewards for merit were bestowed by full hands. Was the people's loyalty merely bought or did the people serve the new god in deep faith? The royal court rejoiced in its newly won wealth. Life was a generous present from Atun and had to be enjoyed. Music and dance were the order of every day. However, it was a class of upstarts who determined the atmosphere at court. Pedigree was no longer a decisive factor. Only obedience towards the royal couple counted. The prospect of rapid social progress lured more and more people into the city of the sun. If we believe the way Akhenaten's reign is represented on the temple walls, his subjects did not lack anything. But do the drawings represent the facts truly? Egyptologists view them as pure propaganda. The pictures of a friendly nature in the descriptions of sacrifices must not obscure the political reality for us. The king was really only interested in enforcing his personal power and even religion was subordinated to this goal. The king declared himself the son of the sun god. The sun god conferred power to the king and the people had to obey. How stable was Akhenaten's realm? How long can an empire last if the state is built on oppression? Akhenaten had bestowed universal power on himself. The people abased themselves in proskenesis, which means making obeisance in the dust. But did the people really always obey blindly? Why did the bas-reliefs and painting in Amarna show so many soldiers and law enforcement officials? Did the king have to fear envy and betrayal from all sides, as befits a despot? Historians think that Akhenaten's reign was a period of intolerance and consider his regime to have been a police and surveillance state. Mahou, the chief of security, was an important personality in the capital. Intimidation and strict control of the population certainly had some tradition in ancient Egypt. Or was this totalitarianism imported from abroad? Was Akhenaten merely a tool and helpless against the whisperings of his spouse? The ancient Orient was ruled by brutal men of power. Murder and manslaughter were the order of the day, even in the royal houses. Had Nefertiti imported these cruel customs from her homeland? Today we know that many princesses from the Near East lived in the harems of the pharaohs. Political marriages were arranged to keep the warlike peoples in the north peaceful. In those days, between the Babylonians and the Hittites, there lay the realm of the Mitanni. Was this where Nefertiti was born? Mitanni was forgotten. However, all of a sudden, the accidental discovery made by a farmer's wife in 1887 was to change this. In the ruins of Amarna, she found clay tablets with strange characters on them. Had this unsuspecting woman hit upon a treasure, or was it merely worthless rubbish? Her neighbor saw a good deal and bought the tablets off her for a handful of coins. However, neither art dealers nor scholars were interested in the find. Cuneiform writing in Egypt, it had to be a clumsy fake. No one understood the value of the clay tablets. It was almost the complete correspondence of the pharaoh with the mighty of the world. Would hints finally be found here as to the pharaoh's true character? If we believe the reports by foreign ambassadors, we see again a picture of a crazed visionary. In one letter from Babylon, the complaint was made that the pharaoh kept emissaries waiting for so long in the blazing sun that they dropped down dead from exhaustion. This is also a reason for suspecting Akhenaten of neglecting foreign policy completely. However, there is not a single indication of a possible foreign origin of Nefertiti. The rulers seemed flawless and faultless to those surrounding them. Or was there a tragic secret hidden behind the facade? Most pictures represent the royal couple as plump and shapeless. One statue shows Akhenaten as heavy as a pregnant woman. Neither holy man nor holy woman. If you look at his face and even Semerkara and King Tut, all these people, you can see the whole family. There is something was not really correct in the deformities, the deformities in the belly and the shoulders and the face. And this is why I believe that maybe this was the order of justice to be shown in art. Because if they wanted a very realistic, beautiful face in the afterlife, they should be shown different. Colossal statues show Akhenaten naked, but without even the slightest hint of sexual organs. Or was this supposed to look like a woman? Perhaps Nefertiti? Traces of red paint, the ancient Egyptian symbol of masculinity, prove that this is the king. But why then this ambiguous representation? Did Akhenaten suffer from a disease that disfigured him? It is conspicuous that his daughter's heads have unusual shapes too. Aided by modern technology, we explore this phenomenon in depth. Neuroradiology department of the Charité Hospital Berlin. A team of doctors carries out a revealing investigation. X-rays probe a skull that displays the same abnormal shape as in the Amarna clan. The doctor's diagnosis is that it is a so-called boat skull, a genetically caused deformity. The three-dimensional view permits a journey into the inside of the disfigured skull. The seams in the skull have not expanded since the person was a baby. The growth of the brain increased the pressure on the skull from inside. Did this affliction drive Akhenaten mad? His daughters were victims of the same defect. An indication of inbreeding within the royal house perhaps? This suspicion takes us to the laboratory for nuclear medicine in the high security wing. Aided by radioactive substances, geneticists here do research into changes in the human genome. Their particular interest is in the genes of siblings. Could their investigations also reveal something about Akhenaten's affliction? The results of the test are astonishing. Each red mark indicates a dangerous correspondence in the genes. It is most likely that Akhenaten's daughters too could hardly have avoided an hereditary defect. The royal family now appears in a new light. Was Nefertiti more than just Akhenaten's wife? Was she even closely related by blood? Analysis of the family tree of the Amarna dynasty can perhaps give us important hints. Frequent intermarriage between siblings alarm a geneticist. An unusually high number of stillbirths and deformities of descendants is typical for such relationships. This effect is increased if, over several generations, very close relatives in a family conceive children together over and over again. It seems probable that these two stillbirths are connected with the relation of their parents by blood on the one hand, and on the other hand of the maternal grandparents as well. These are portraits on a sarcophagus of Akhenaten's grandparents, Chuyu and Juya. Egyptologists, however, have found evidence that they may have been Nefertiti's ancestors as well. In this case, her mother-in-law, Tiyya, would at the same time have been her aunt, and Akhenaten would have been her cousin. There were potentially dangerous genetic similarities everywhere. The inbreeding endemic in the ruling family was justified by the way their claim to power was established. Only the pharaoh's children were considered to be heirs to divine legitimacy. This privilege had to be confirmed over and over again by marriage between the physical heirs, between prince and princess. The gilded throne of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. This son of Akhenaten died at the age of just 20, a mysterious death. He was obviously too young to call such splendid treasures his own. So how did they come into his possession, at this throne being crafted for a far more powerful ruler? At any rate, it hardly afforded Tut much protection. Even though the child who was pharaoh and his sister-spouse left Akhenaten's son's city and returned to worship of the old gods, they are depicted under the protective rays of Atun. However, no celestial being blessed them with healthy children. In the famous tomb, archaeologists found only two fetuses that were incapable of survival, an indication of a marriage between siblings. Tutankhamun was the only pharaoh whose rich treasures remained almost undamaged for millennia. His name was forgotten and the shaft leading to his tomb was obstructed by later buildings, a lucky coincidence for archaeologists. Also, the legendary mask of Tutankhamun's mummy hides a secret even today. The latest investigations confirm a long-held suspicion. A new mask with Tut's features was soldered onto an existing masterpiece made of pure gold. The only probable explanation is that this was originally Akhenaten's death mask. In the western valley of Thebes lies the tomb of Pharaoh Ai. He had married Tutankhamun's widow and ascended the throne himself. In his tomb, not a single trace is left of the heretic belief in the sun. The old gods had again assumed their habitual place in the rites of death. The Amarna period seems to have vanished like an apparition. Thebes had been reinstated into its traditional rites as the burial palace of the pharaohs and by order of Ai, the priesthood of Karnak was celebrating again the traditional rites. Nonetheless, the iconoclasts went to work in his tomb. Large gaps are seen in the decorations on the walls. Why was this pharaoh hated so much too? Was it because Ai was Queen Tia's brother and Nefertiti's father, as some researchers believe? The northern palace in Amarna. Is it possible that the Queen spent the last years of her life here, separated from Akhenaten, had he cast her out? This seems unthinkable, for Nefertiti was irreplaceable in his conception of faith. She embodied fertility as the realm's supreme mother. One thing is certain, in the 13th year of Akhenaten's rule, the Queen disappeared from public life. From this time onwards, her name was never used officially again. Did she fall into disgrace? Was she murdered? Or did she die peacefully? This wooden portrait head of young Tutankhamun has put scientists on the trail of a family drama. The shape of his face is exactly identical to that of this mysterious woman. Tia was Akhenaten's favourite wife and is now considered to be Tutankhamun's mother. It is still disputed whether Tia shared the Pharaoh's bed during Nefertiti's lifetime. However, the Queen is under suspicion of having enforced her claim to power with murder, for the concubine Tia disappeared from the annals of the court just as suddenly as she had once appeared, and without a trace. Akhenaten's rule is really very strange because when he died, there was a kind of help that has been done for Simenkhkara, his son, to be the king. And therefore, I believe that Nefertiti had a role in this. She killed Simenkhkara and appointed Tutankhamun to be the king. And therefore, here we come. The rule and the influence of Khurram Heb as the overseer of the army, and I, to make a conspiracy, in my opinion, and they killed King Tut. Was Tutankhamun really murdered as suggested by a large hole in his skull? The Amarna period was characterised by an astonishingly high mortality rate. This would be explicable by an epidemic, as evidenced by cuneiform texts. There are more and more indications that Nefertiti survived her husband. On clay tablets, the mysterious Dakamuntsu letter has been preserved. In it, the widowed spouse of a king without an heir of her own asks the king of the Hittites to send his son to her for the purpose of marriage. The riddle of the sender's identity now seems to have been solved. For more than 80 years, it has been disputed who the mysterious letter writer was, whether it was Akhenaten's widow, Nefertiti, or Tutankhamun's widow and Kizanamun. For me, this is as clear today as 25 years ago. For the king of Hittites writes approximately the following. The Egyptians and Hittites have been friends of old. And now this is happening too, namely the planned wedding. However, he writes, you should not have attacked Al-Wassal several weeks ago when your king died. Thereupon I grew furious and sent my troops and they attacked your province of Amkar. From other sources, the so-called Amarna letters, we know that precisely this attack on the province of Amkar took place in the year Akhenaten died. And before that, there had been no military conflict between the Egyptians and the Hittites. The conclusion from this is that the writer of the letter can only be Akhenaten's widow, Nefertiti. The wedding did not take place, for the Hittite prince was murdered on the way. Had Nefertiti finally lost the struggle for power? Akhenaten and his queen are now counted among the great personalities from the land of the pyramids. Scientists search tirelessly for hints as to the possible hiding place of the royal mummies. Fortune hunters hope for a miraculous coincidence and the discovery of rich treasures in the tomb. For it will only be when the vanished mummies are found, that the last riddle surrounding Akhenaten and Nefertiti can be solved.