Empire: World History - 362. Ancient Egypt: Great Kings of The Bronze Age (Ep 1)

Episode Date: May 24, 2026

**Unlock the entire Ancient Egypt series early and ad-free by joining the Empire Club at empirepoduk.com** You’ve heard of Tutankhamun, but what do you know about the world he grew up in? In this series, we explore the Amarna Revolution, when Tutankhamun’s father instigated the biggest religious revolution the world had ever seen. Who were the individuals at the centre of the movement: Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and Tutankhamun? What are the Amarna Letters and how do they reveal the intricate lives of the kings of the Late Bronze Age? Who was Pharaoh Amenhotep III? What was the status of Ancient Egypt on the eve of the revolution? Anita and William are joined by the brilliant Eric Cline, author of Love, War, and Diplomacy: The Discovery of The Amarna Letters and The Bronze Age World They Revealed, to discuss the revelations of these insightful clay tablets. Join the Empire Club: Unlock the full Empire experience – with bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to miniseries and live show tickets, exclusive book discounts, a members-only newsletter, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at empirepoduk.com. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com. Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Imogen Marriott Editor: Lorcan Moullier Social Producer: Charlie Johnson Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Now, this fascinating love triangle is so pertinent when it comes to pre-partition India politics. And we're going to be delving right in in a mini-series, a four-parter for you. And it's only available to members of our club. So if that isn't you, what you need to do is right away. Get to Empirepoduk.com. That's Empirepoduk.com. And for the price of a coffee, come join our club. And as if you needed any more incentive, let me tell you, our very special guest is the

marvelous Alex von Tunselman, who is the author of Indian Summer. So what are you waiting for? Come on. 3,400 years ago, an Egyptian pharaoh detonated the most radical religious revolution in human history. His name was Akanaten. He abandoned 3,000 years of theology, of temples. He moved the capital to a new city that he'd conjured from the bare desert. And then he declared that there was only one god worthy of worship, the sun disk, the artin.

His queen is the most famous face in all of ancient Egypt. Her name was Nefertiti. And his son, a boy of eight or nine who inherited his father's kingdom, was called Tudan Karmin. So look, in this six-part series, we're going to be exploring these three famous ancient Egyptians and the extraordinary revolution that lay at the center of their world. And Empire Club members, you can get the whole of this series early, you can get it out of free, as well as exclusive extra episodes. So just join the link in the description because honestly, trust me, this is not one to miss. And we begin today with the world that Atnartan

was about to shatter. Because one of the things that makes this revolution so extraordinary and so violent in its cultural implications is how magnificent and how stable the world before it seemed to be. Egypt's treasury overflowed with Nubian gold. Its armies were undefeated. Its pharaoh corresponded as a brother with the other mighty rulers of the age. And we know all of this in intimate, extraordinary detail because of one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the 19th century, which we will be discussing today.

So hello and welcome to Empire. I'm Anita Arnan. And I'm William Derrimple. And our guest today needs no introduction, although we will, of course, now introduce him, because he is one of our very, very favourite historians and archaeologists whose previous appearance produced an audience that we've never had for an ancient series ever before.

The great Eric Klein, welcome back. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be back. And we're bringing him back to Empire now. with his latest book, which I have just finished today, love, war, and diplomacy, the discovery of the Amarna letters and the Bronze Age world they revealed. Welcome back, Eric.

Thank you. Thank you. Do you know what, Eric, I mean, when he says there was a huge response, literally tidal waves of adulation, and I was trying to think of what your groupies might be called, and I was thinking, the tiny clinies. I mean, there's also a great deal of worship for your time. And can you just tell us what you've come armed with today? Eric's ties.

Eric has a whole Instagram site dedicated to its ties, which you should now go and check out. So can I ask that scholarly question that you expect from me? What you're wearing? Can you just describe it? What you're wearing today? Well, especially for you guys, I put on my favorite Egyptian tie. It's generic, but pretty much looks like Egypt. And I like this tie so much.

This is actually the third iteration. I wore out the first two. I'm not kidding. So this, I finally found another one somewhere on the internet, and this is now the third. So special for you. Well, listen, you know, we feel special, but we also, I feel the tiny Kleinies out there know what to get you for Christmas now. All I would say is brace, brace, Klein, brace, because I think there's loads coming your way. Okay, great.

Let's start with the Amana letters and the date of the discovery of those letters. We're talking 1887, yes? Yes, we're talking 1887, but I must caution the wonderful story you have just told. May not be true. It may not be true. Seriously, that is the story. That's what we're told. This woman searching for fertilizer ran across this trove of ancient clay tablet.

but the woman could never be located afterward. And I think that she might have been a cover story concocted by... For a bunch of tomb robbers. Oh. Well, one. I think one antiquities dealer who found them and then is the main guy distributing them. So I think that was a cover story that was made up. Hang on a minute, Klein.

One second. Just before we burn the story down, let me set it up for you. Because the story, I mean, it's the one that I knew, which I find utterly charming, that somewhere about halfway between Cairo and Luxor, there is this unnamed woman filling her basket with stuff, hard-baked, she's going to take them home, she's going to crush them up and use them as fertilizer. And then, I mean, this is after, God knows how many she's pulverized, she realizes that actually this is one of the most important historical documents man will ever find.

And I wrote this down, because I've never. this story for such a long time. I wrote it down. I wish I knew who said it. How many she had pulverized and grown into leeks and cucumbers and melons will never be known. When did you write that down? I don't know. It's a long time ago, because I was really into like every school child, very much into Egyptology, to a very shallow degree. But I just did think, actually, you know, we live in a day where leaks destroy important documents. This is like the Pratian leak story. We have to say, actually, that I think all three of this have been totally obsessed with this story. So, Eric, you, I know, have very much had this as a childhood thing.

And you, Anita, obviously, have your school notebooks, too. I went through my little notebooks and my really terrible drawings of Nefertiti and Toot and Carmen, which will never be seen in public. But, Eric, so look, I really loved that story. Tell me why you're doing, why you're doing that face, Eric? Why are you making that face? I hate dashing people's dreams. But I'm also of one with you all because I too went to see the King Tut exhibit when I was back in high school.

It would have been for me in Los Angeles, 76, 77. My parents actually allowed me to play hooky from high school for that day to go, as you say, cue up to see the death mask. But anyway, this poor lady, she could never be found later. And so I don't think she... And people did try. I'm located, did they? There were... Well, I don't know how hard they tried,

but because by that point, they were more interested in the tablets themselves. But I think the antiquities dealer, who then was the main guy hawking these to all the museum people and antiquities dealers, I think he might have made her up.

But that bit about pulverizing them for leaks and such is actually not too far from the truth, because while they were transporting them, down to Luxor and over to Cairo in bags on donkeys. We're told by a couple of the scholars, Budge and says that they, the tablets like slammed against each other and disintegrated. And we may have lost as much as a third of them. God!

Oh, God. We've still got 400 of which about 380 or tablets, but that would mean there should have been 600. 700 originally. And quite a lot of the stories that you tell in this book are missing their first page or don't have their conclusion. We have one tablet in a group and we don't get the end or the beginning of the story. Absolutely, yes.

Some of the letters go over two or three tablets and yes, we're missing the first one. So the story starts in the middle, as it were. So when you say you think it might be a made-up story, are you and without any kind of legal jeopardy attached to this statement suggesting that the person who put this story, around is actually hiding the fact that these could have been nicked from somewhere that they shouldn't have been nicked from? Yeah, exactly. I think it was a local antiquities, Egyptian antiquities dealer.

And we actually have a statement from Sase, the Oxford professor of a seriology, who says he came down in his boat the year before and noticed them excavating at that area, didn't realize at the time what they were going to find. So, yeah, so I do think these were probably illicit excavations, but can't be proven one way or the other now. The upshot is we know that we've got them. But if they had been, you know, done by archaeologists, oh, that would have been good because we're not actually sure where at the site they came from. You know, so we're missing the context. We're guessing as to the building that they came from.

But there would be so much more, of course. Eric, one of the great pleasures of this book, and one of the reasons it's such a fascinating read, is that you've done that thing that often novelists do, where you've got sort of two time periods running, and you're telling two stories which you go back and forwards from. On one hand, you've got the main story, which is Ack Martin and his father and Nefertiti and Duden Kama. But you've also got the story of the antiquities dealers, the different scholarly institutions in Berlin and London that are trying to make sense of all these things. We're going to concentrate today on the first story,

but can you just sketch for us for a minute the scholarly competition and all the backbiting and the fact rather humiliatingly the Brits seem to have made quite a lot of it up and the Germans got it much more accurately and their translations were much better? Yes, this is true. So, yeah, the subtitle of the book tells it all, the discovery of the Amarna tablets on the world they reveal,

So when I first wrote the book, it was in two halves. The first half was on the modern story of the race to translate. And the second half was, what did we find out and what was the world like back then? And in reading it over, I realized that was actually fairly boring. And so I split it so that it changes about every three chapters. And you've done it very well. It reads like one of my favorite novels, Possession, the Antonia Byatt. It's very much in that style with the researchers.

The Rabaulet documents and then falling in love all over the Rabalai documents. Yes, I see what you mean. Yes, very good. Exactly. But tell us about the story. Who was Budge? Who were these Germans who were better translators than he was? Okay.

So we have two Brits. We've got E.A. Wallace Budge, the Egyptologist. Who I knew from reading stuff on Kubla Khan and sort of Nestorian monks, of Central Asia he wrote about, didn't he? He did all sorts of things, but he was primarily an Egyptologist and was not particularly liked by his colleagues. Let's just leave it at that. So Budge was on the one hand. On the other, you have Sace, Archibald Henry Sace, best known for his work on the Hittites. And he is a professor of a seriology at Oxford. So they are the two British scholars that try their hand at deciphering all of these, with.

mixed results, shall we say. Seis in particular, Seis was looking for... You're quite merciless with poor Seis in the book. Oh, I know. I was harsh on him. He kept looking for biblical figures. He thought he saw Solomon. He thought he saw David.

He didn't see any of those. But he did see Jerusalem. I'm obsessed with Budge, if that's possible to be obsessed with Budge, because his story is just so compelling. I mean, he came from such modest backgrounds, Cornish son of a single mother, self-taught, self-made,

and then becomes Cambridge educated, rises up to be the keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities at the British Museum. His mum was a waitress, wasn't she? She was something very humble, yeah. But when it comes to, let's just leave it at that, he wasn't like it. Let's not leave it at that.

Let's talk about it. Because there are some downright scurrilous things written about, budge, the way in which he got his hands on antiquities. I mean, there is one, you know, reportedly dug a hole through a wall of a custom, warehouse and Cairo to seize tomatoes. Is that true?

I mean, there's one of the things that I'd heard in sort of like Indiana Jones with a sack full of swag just sort of makes off to his academic career. I mean, is that the kind of thing that you didn't want to go near? Pretty much, yes. So he was known for acquiring objects any way he could and shipping them back to the British Museum with the approval of the trustees.

So, yes, so the Amarer letters are one good example. example. Couldn't happen today, Eric. Couldn't happen today. No, not at all, not at all. But he did say that if he hadn't done it, somebody else would have. So the Department of Antiquities was aware of the discovery, and they were trying to get as many of the tablets as they could. So Budge hurried down to Luxor and met an antiquities dealer, actually two men that brought a total of about 81 tablets to him. And he describes later in his autobiography, reading them by candlelight in a house so that the antiquities department wouldn't see him. And he says, I realized that I saw Amunhotep III and Akhenaten on these, and that they were royal letters. Well, there's no way that happened. I mean, I'm sure he was

reading them by candlelight in a darkened house. But his Acadian, his kuneiform knowledge could not have been good enough that he could read them, sight read them on the spot. He must have done it when he got back to London. But doesn't matter, he realized they were important enough that he bought them on the spot, packed them up into a box, and then smuggled them out of Egypt. We should say these little tablets that look like Riva biscuits. And if you don't have them in your country, they're sort of like square brown, unremarkable looking. No, you're saying he couldn't have read them because they weren't written in cuneiform solely, were they? They were also written in a much older language. Just tell us what was written on them. Well, no, they're written using cuneiform, which is the

wedge-shaped writing system, and the language they're being written in is not Egyptian hieroglyphics that you might expect, but actually in Acadian. Acadian was used over in Mesopotamia, right? Assyria, Babylonia, but it was the diplomatic lingra franca of the day, much like French was in Benjamin Franklin's Day. So he was sitting there. Now, he was undoubtedly trained to a certain extent in how to read Cuneoform and Acadian, but it had really only been deciphered 30 years earlier. There was a very famous contest where they gave the same newly discovered inscription to four scholars and had them independently translated. And it worked. So, I mean, but you would have had to have books with you and all that. I just don't believe.

He's just a liar, pants on fire. I mean, he did the work. He did the work just not at candlelight and not immediately, you know, having a light barb over and said. Now, we should say, I mean, the reason these Amarna tablets are so important is because they sort of turn upside down our understanding of the ancient world. Tell us why they were so important and what they changed about our view. So they were incredibly important. In fact, Seis at one point said that they were the most important things that we knew about the ancient Near East at that time, apart from the Bible. And indeed, they did shed light. But the light was really only shed when the German scholars

came into play. There are five of them. They're all young. They all live in Berlin. So I called them the young Berliners. Some of them might be known to some of your listeners. Hugo Winkler, for example, is the man who discovered the capital city of Hattu Soss. and the archives there. But he doesn't do that until 1906. So a good 20 years earlier, he's one of these young blinners who are working on these Amarna letters.

They are the ones that said, it's Amunhotep III, it's Akhenan. It's the middle of the 14th century BC, and these are letters to and from the other great kings, as well as petty vassal kings. And there's also a Norwegian that you highlight, who produces this first major scholarly edition.

Jorgon Alexander Knudsen, is that the right? That is correct. He comes into the picture a little bit later. Our two Brits and five Germans are the ones mainly responsible, and they have everything translated, published, open access within a decade. By 1896, they're out and available, including in English. That's quick. Yes.

but Knudsen is the man that pulls them all together because the main ones are in Cairo, London and Berlin, and Knutzen 1907 and 1915, two volumes. He puts them all out, but you had to be able to read German in that case because they all are in German. But the thing that is, I suppose, revolutionary about them is that the way we understood the ancient world

is that there were separate civilizations or doing their own thing or speeding at their own pace. But after these tablets were discovered, we see an interconnected world of communication, commerce, and, you know, quite sophisticated, where things aren't separate at all.

That's right. What these tablets revealed was an interconnected, globalized Mediterranean, if you will, across from, basically, you know, Italy over to Iran, in modern terms, and from Turkey down to Egypt. But these particular tablets are only dealing with the Near East.

It's Egypt's connections. But it did show that the late Bronze Age was interconnected. It was the high points before everything collapsed. So what Akhenaten is going to do is inherit an international world that his father and even predecessors have set up. I mean, we really, we have to go back to Hatshepsut. and Tumosis III in the 15th century to find out exactly what happened with Amunhotep III and Akhenaten in the 14th century. So it's all an interconnected world. Egypt was one of the major players because they had control of the gold.

And we should say that Amunhotep III is the person, when you go to the Rich Museum today, that enormous colossal head that you see as you walk into that gallery with the bulls to your land. left. That's him. That's our guy. And he is the most sculpted figure in ancient Egypt. He was very keen on having a sculpture to him. He did have a lot made, yes. And he was very influential. I mean, he's one of what I call the G8 of the ancient world at that time. So you've got Egypt, you've got the Hittites up in Anatolia, modern day Turkey. You've got the Assyrians and the Babylonians in Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq. And then you've got the Cypriots as well, though they're a little bit more minor, as all part of the G8.

But then you've also got the Vassal Kings in Canaan at Magito, Hotsor, Jerusalem, Beirut, Biblos, Tire, Cydon, and these are the ones that owe allegiance to Amunhotep III and Akhenaten. And you divide your book into two with those divisions as the Great Kings, who will describe and talk to each other as, brother this, brother that, and they're busy swapping daughters, or rather the second division kings, like the Hittites and the, and the Mitani are busy giving their daughters to Egypt, who are definitely the kind of number one big dog in the sea.

Yes. And then the second half of the book is this fascinating world, which is oddly like today, whereby the whole of the Middle East is busy fighting with each other, and every single country is busy, every single city-state that seems to be evading each other, there's constant warfare, assassinations, assassination attempts, interventions by foreign powers. It all seems very, very familiar. Yes, absolutely.

You know, things don't change. People have been fighting in that area of the world for thousands of years. But I was following what Winkler and then Knudson has suggested. They were the first to separate these into the royal great letters. There's about 50 of those between the great. kings. And then the letters from the vassal kings, there are about 300 of those. So I was following the rather traditional layout that people have been doing for 100 years. Well, look, we're going to take a break. Join us after the break when we talk about some of the authors of some of these letters.

And one particular favorite of mine, Ribhada of Biblos, who writes so much, he's told, please stop writing. Enough already. Join us after the break. This episode is brought to you by The National Archives. It's Tom Holland here from Goldhangers, The Rest is History. Now, American Independence is often painted as a quest for freedom, a triumph of democratic ideals. But it was also a period of immense risk and violence, which turned the colonial world upside down.

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Welcome back. So we are going to follow this system now. We're going to go first to the Great Kings before we deal with these needy minor monarchs like... Emotionally, incontinent. Scribes of ancient. Yes, go on. So tell us, what the world was like, Willie. I think maybe actually just reminding us of what we were looking at is good. Let's go through the big boys, and particularly there's a very needy king of Babylon, who's grumbling the whole time, and also understandably wants to know what's happened to his sister who's disappeared into an Egyptian harem and hasn't been seen for 40 years or something. Tell us all that. Yes, so what we have to realize is that the great kings are signing diplomatic treaties with each other,

and they're interacting at a very high level. They're exchanging gifts. Trade was beneath them, but they gave each other gifts. And in particular, the other kings are always asking Egypt for gold. The tablets are full of... That comes up a lot. It does. Gold is like dust in your land.

Gold is like dirt in your land. Just give me some. And one king in particular says, if you give me nuggets of gold, I will give you my daughter. And to his credit, Amunhotep III says, what kind of a man are you that would give away your daughter for some nuggets of gold? Interesting that, because that is the modern response, but he wouldn't necessarily assume that the Pharaoh would respond that way.

Yeah, and he then says, but okay. And they... Yeah. I'll take her. You're a terrible father, but yes, post her immediately. So what we have in both... both Amunhotep III and then Akhenaten's harems. We have a lot of foreign princesses where their father has sent them,

or their father before them had sent their sisters. So we've got lots of wonderful names. There's Kadashman Enlil of Babylon, and then his successor, Bernaboriyos II, and they both send daughters over. But other people, too, Matani sends daughters over. the Arzawa on the western coast of Anatolia, there are negotiations there. So we wind up with quite a few royal princes or princesses. Over many generations. Yes. And you get sort of whole

families relocating. So the sisters, the aunties, and the grandmothers are all there. Exactly. I think there's at least two generations, if not three, in some cases. And yes, we have one example where one of the king says, you're asking me for my daughter, but has anybody seen my sister? Is she still there? And the Egyptian pharaoh says, we'll send somebody over who can recognize her. Because there's also a thing where there's a query, isn't there? Because a woman is presented and the ambassador says, that doesn't look like her? Exactly. Right. Gosh, what, fake Melania? Really? Is that what it is? Somebody just paraded. Gosh. I suspect that there were so many women. in the harem that Amanhotep III wouldn't have been able to pick her out of a lineup.

So, yeah. So these are diplomatic treaties, diplomatic marriages, and that's what a lot of these great letters are about, the 50 letters. They are arranging dowries, they're arranging bride price, they're arranging gifts. And some of the kings did not know how far apart they were. There's one king who says to the Egyptian pharaoh, I was. sick and you didn't even ask how I was doing. And then I asked your messenger, how far away is Egypt? And he said, it's quite far. So therefore, my brother, you are forgiven for not asking how I was doing. Okay. Can we please, please, please, please, please talk about Ribhadar, who is not a great ruler. He's one of these sort of vassal rulers. But he is, boy, he's a sharer, isn't he, Riphader?

between 60 to 70 letters in this collection are from Rib Hadar himself. And he does write to the point where the pharaoh actually writes back. At one point, says, why do you keep writing to? Just why? Why are you doing this? Terrible tablet to receive at the far end. You think you're doing so well with your weight. But I mean, some of this stuff is beautiful.

And, you know, he writes in beautiful metaphors. I mean, things like, you know, I'm like a bird in a trap. My field is a wife without a husband. And that's, he's talking about hunger and famine and desperation. He writes in pictures. He writes beautifully. He does, but he writes too frequently. Yes. Yes. Yes. But he's got a reason for writing. I mean, he is being surrounded by enemies. They're coming for him. And this is important. You slightly defend him in your book, but it is clear that Akanatenaten is not replying and not playing. paying as much attention as you should to all these minor vassals.

Well, I mean, but some of the things are awful. He's saying in Biblos, he's telling the pharaoh, that you've got to do something. People are selling their sons and daughters in Yeramuta for food. You know, they're just swapping their kin because everybody is starving and still nobody comes. It doesn't paint a very good picture of governance from the pharaohs. And for a very long time, scholars thought that Akhenaten was more concerned

with his revolutions back in Egypt, then he was with maintaining Egypt's empire, if you want to call it that. And so he ignored that, but you'll get into that in future episodes. But Ribhada, the thing is, yes, he has a problematic life, especially since he gets exiled from his own city

by his brother. His brother. Yes. That's not good. That's not good. It's locked out of the city. Yes, yes. Yes, yes. And his wife and kids are killed when they're sent to another city. So he does have a bad life. But, you know, we have 300 of these letters from the vassals. And as you said, fully 60 of them are from Ribada. So that's what, a fifth of the letters. I can imagine the pharaoh going again more from him. Yeah. Yeah. Why do you keep, I mean, why do you, why do you, why do you alone keep writing to me, he writes back?

And those are the ones we have. I mean, let's not forget, there may be some that were, you know, on the back of donkeys reduced to dust or, you know, sort of grew cucumbers or leaks in the end. I mean, those are just the ones we have our hands on. It wasn't just, you know, sort of the trials and tribulations that were facing him and the people around him that he wrote about William. I mean, he was also bothered about gold, wasn't he? Gold is very much a feature of these letters.

And everyone's, I, that the same thing seems to come out with each king writing to Egypt. You have got so much gold. know what to do with it, please send some. Now, this is because the Egyptians controlled gold mines in Nubia, is it? Is that the root of all this? Yeah, they're in control of the mines in Nubia and Sudan, but also there's gold in the eastern desert, and they're in control of that too. So this is in part why Egypt is a major player in the late Bronze Age. Each of the countries had their own specialties. The copper came from Cyprus, for example, the tin from Central Asia, Afghanistan. Egypt provided the gold.

And lapis lazuli from Badakshan. Yes, exactly. But so Egypt was a major player because of the gold. Yeah. But, you know, to be fair... Actually, I've had a choice between being rich in copper and rich in gold, I know, which I would go for. I just... Either way, you're rich.

Does it really matter? But poor Ribada, but, you know, he's not the only one being attacked. We also know that the king of Jerusalem, Abdi Heba, he claims that he was like a ship in the midst of a sea surrounded by enemies. Biridia at Magito says that he is surrounded by enemies. I mean, all of these vassal kings, they're, I say at one point, they're like kids in a schoolyard, in a daycare. They're all fighting and they're running to daddy, the pharaoh.

So-and-so hit me, so-and-so kicked me. I mean, they're squabbling. And they're all saying, don't believe so-and-so. I didn't kick him. Someone else kicked him. Can I just say, I mean, just again, let's just take one moment and pinch ourselves that we have got an insight into these squabbles and complaining and the, you know, the sibling rivalries from the 14th century BCE. I mean, it's just mind blowing from all of these places, you know, ancient Jerusalem as well as, you know, all these other places that you've talked about. Do you not find that sometimes, Eric, you know, have you held them? Actually, have you held them in your hand, these letters? Have you touched them? No, but I've seen them through the museum glass. I have held them, actually.

My friend Irving Finkel at the British Museum, who's this wonderful character who looks like, he's straight out of a kind of Arthurian epic. He's like some Merlin emerge from some cave with holding excalibur, except that he holds these wonderful tablets. And they're in an incredibly fancy room with the back of the British Museum where these gorgeous Victorian sort of bookshelves specially built for Kinaephone tablets are.

And they're all nice. up there. But yeah, by 14th century BCE. I mean, when you, when they put them in your hand, did you have to wear gloves and a suit of ulmer or something? And what did it, I mean, just, what did it feel like to touch them? They are pretty amazing. I mean, I've worked with other tablets when I was a graduate student. And yeah, they're absolutely amazing. And you're quite right. I mean, on the one hand, it's kind of funny to make fun of them that they're like kids squabbling. But you're right. It's 3,400 years ago. But in a way, that also brings out the human element. Nothing has changed.

The same things that we argue about with families and everything today, they were arguing about back then. They were a dysfunctional family, if you want to put it that way. Eric, these are actually the best evidence we have for what's going on in this troubled region, which the Egyptians call it Canaan? Is that the Egyptian word for the region? Yeah, it's one of the names. Yeah, Pākanaa, yes, it's one of the names for it. And you casually dropped Jerusalem. Will you quickly tell us, sorry, I interrupt you,

but would you, to your answer, add what's going on in Jerusalem and who's living there? Yes. So, well, there are Canaanites that are living there. Everybody there is Canaanite at this time. It's several hundred years before the Israelites really get there. And Jerusalem is called Yerushalim in the tablets. It's got the same name. And our good friend Seis, who thought he had found David,

and Solomon, which he didn't, he also said he had found Jerusalem. He was correct. He had found it, but he had only found it because the Germans had found it before him. And they had published and said there were five or even six tablets that mentioned Jerusalem. And then Se said, oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. I said that last April. And, you know, in fact, he had. But anyway, so yes, there's a king named Abdi Heba, king of Jerusalem, who is having problems himself? And tell us about the Canaanites just for a second. Who are these guys? These are the indigenous people who are a mixture of all sorts.

They don't call themselves Canaanites. They think of themselves as the citizens of individual cities. But they're caught between these great powers. You've got the Assyrians, you've got the Hittites to the north, and then you've got the Egyptians to the south. And this is a kind of no-man's land of city-states that are too weak to mount in enormous invasions of anywhere, but can only squabble with each other. Exactly. Yes, these are the local indigenous people. They go back to at least 3,000 BC,

if not before that. And yeah, they are, as you put it, they are caught between the two powers. In fact, what it looks like from these letters is that, especially up in the north, in what is now northern Syria, the Canaanite vassals are fighting proxy wars. on behalf of the Hittites and the Egyptians, it will erupt into open warfare at the Battle of Kadesh in 1274. But at this point, yeah, the Canaanites are just caught between the major powers. Eric, I mean, we're talking about Jerusalem, we're talking about Canaanites,

and your brain immediately goes to religion. Let's talk about religion, shall we? Because in ancient Egypt, it was a come one, come all for many years. About 1,500 named gods existed in ancient Egypt. Yeah, there were. a lot, and then you've got the gods that were over in Canaan as well. You've got a lot of gods and goddesses running around. And they come back and forward, don't they? You've got some Canaanite gods who get taken on by the Egyptians. Yeah, exactly. And then you've got

the Hittite gods. I mean, everybody's got the gods. In fact, that seems to be one of the continuities that we've got through the Bronze Age collapse is the religion keeps going. But every so often you get people coming in and upending things like our friend Akhenaten. And so, So give us the world the tea upends, how it's completely open. You've got a kind of almost infinite number of gods and two principal sets of gods. You've got the Egyptian set who are being worshipped in Egypt. And then you've got the Canaanite gods that are extended over quite a wide region, all the way from Gareth and modern Syria, down to Jerusalem.

Well, I mean, or are they all accepted as Egyptian gods? You know, just I suppose as a sort of regional variations on these are all Egyptian gods. Is that how it works? No, I think everybody has their own gods. I wouldn't mix and match the Canaanite gods with the Egyptian gods. But for the Canaanites, for example, you've got Bal and you've got El, you know, and these then later make their way into Israelite religion. And Israel.

Exactly. El is in the word Israel. Right. So we've got, you know, the Canaanites are going to leave their legacy for sure. But the Egyptians, I would put them separate, but there are lots of gods and goddesses. And in fact, I mean, you've got Atten as you're talking about as the disc of the sun, but you've got Ra as the actual son and so on. But it also looks like all of the changes begin in this period,

that is with Amunhotep III, the father, there are some indications that the worship of Atten actually began with him and that Akhenaten may have just picked up on this, but you'll explore that in future episodes. You definitely feel that there is the beginning of the setting of the stage, that you have a narrowing of the number of gods in Amnhotep, the third's reign. There may be some indications. Some scholars would argue that exactly. But I also, I would, I would say that a lot of what we see in Akhenaten's reign was begun by his father. And I point to the Amarna Archive as a perfect example. The letters begin in Amunhotep the third's time. And Akhenaten simply inherits everything, including the relations with these other great kings. Can you tell us a bit more about Amunhotep? Because I feel like, you know, we are going to talk about Akanaten a lot.

And if anyone has been obsessed with Egyptology, you all know, Akanaten is, you know, this new era of sort of pop-bellied, strange, elongated head pharaohs that sort of changes. So, you know, at least the aesthetic. Amon Hotep, what was he like? How was he depicted? I mean, just give us a little bit more on his dad. So this is the guy that I've been fixated with for my whole career because I actually wrote my master's thesis on Amonhotep III. Yes. You started off as an Egyptologist.

I did. Well, I was doing connections with Greece. And Amunhotep III has a statue base in his mortuary temple, which is over near the Valley of the Kings. And on that statue base, he has a list of Greek names that had never really been seen before, including Mycenae, including Knossos. But no letters from Mycini or Minos in your collection, unless they were destroyed on the donkey journey. And this is going to be my story and I'm sticking to it. You stick to it. But also stick to Ammanhotep for a minute. Stop derailing.

I want to know about your obsession. I want to know about Akanatans' daddy. So just tell us a little more. Come on. So Ammanhotep III is this amazing figure. He's both warrior and diplomat. I mean, he really pulls together all. the predecessors. And he is in contact with all of these other G8s to begin with. He really is a

consummate diplomat. And so I think a lot of what he's doing, including perhaps his connections with the Aegean, are trying to rein in the Hittites, who are growing power under the king, who has the best name in the ancient world. Shupiluliuma. I was going to name one of my kids that, but my wife, my wife objected. I'm not sure why. Your wife loved your children. Yes, exactly. I mean, Shupi Lulahe-McKline, it would have had a ring with it.

But then everybody would have called them Shupi, and we don't want that. So anyway, I think a lot of what Almanhotepa Third was doing was trying to rein in the growing power of the Hittites. And as we see a couple hundred years later, he was correct in trying to corral them. But so a lot of the dynastic and diplomatic marriages with these other kings, you can actually see that they're in a circle around the Hittites. But he was a traditional king. He kept the traditional gods and goddesses going. He's got the traditional sculpture. As you said, he'd like to have himself portrayed. But always as a youthful young man, even when he's older, he still looks really good and really young. that's one thing that Akhenatma is going to change. And he's often depicted with his wife.

Is it Tai? Tea, T, yes. And that is wonderful. It's a love story. Queen Tee and Amanhotepa Third. She is the daughter of two maybe even commoners, and they seem to have married for love rather than anything else. He does, of course, take on other wives, including...

Hundreds of them. Yes, yes. But she is always referred to. to as the chief wife. And she really seems to have had a say in things. In fact, one of the letters, I think it's from Tushrata of Matani, which is today would have been Syria, he actually writes directly to Queen T, saying, your husband has died, your son is now on the throne. And that would be Amantotepa Thir and Akhenan. He says, you are the connecting thread. So I am writing to you as the important one. And Tushrada knew which way his bread was buttered because she was the correct one

to write to. And we know her face. It's quite distinctive, isn't it? She looks quite nubian. She's quite dark. Yeah. Very interesting. But to my mind, though, one of the more interesting questions is what you've already referred to in the Amarna archives. There are no letters from Mycenae, no letters from Canosos, nothing from the Aegean. And if I'm right about the connections between Greece and Egypt, the time. There should have been letters, but there aren't. So maybe they got slammed together on donkey back. But, you know, there is also a story of one of the antiquities dealers stepping either onto or off of a train and a very large tablet that he had put into his pocket fell out and shattered on the platform. That's actually how the Department of Antiquities came to know about these

tablets. And this was a tablet that was like a half a meter high. You can't hide it. So I actually think I know it's one of two that are that big. It has to be it. But I do wonder if one of the letters from like the King of Mycenae was ground to dust. And, you know, we only have two from the King of Assyria. We should have had many more from Assyria. It's not that far away. So I think a lot of what we would have really been even more interested in has gone. I mean, you say that, you know, Akan Aten Carries on the traditions of his father, but, you know, actually what he does is he, it's like a relay race and he picks up a baton. Why does it feel like it's such a new era? I mean, quite apart from moving religions, which we'll get onto in a bit, why does he feel like sort of

an art or portrayal, aesthetic? He's always, and I should explain, because if you haven't seen this, You know, you've got this, you know, the elongated skull of Akanat and the drooping belly, the wide hips, you know, sort of spindly arms. He almost looks like our depictions of aliens in, you know, science fiction now. So unlike the depictions of his father. Was that his idea solely his idea? And just talk us through the thinking of why that relay race suddenly seems to break. It does seem to be his idea or somebody's idea in his reign. We've got realism, if you will.

This is what he looked like, or supposedly. The thing is, like, and you mentioned aliens, you're quite right. The whole family looks like aliens. Even Nefertiti, when you take off the blue crown of Egypt, she's got an e-longed skull. All of their kids have e-longed skulls. You know, when I show my students the pictures of the drawings that they've got of the inscriptions, they all kind of look, oh, my word, those do look like aliens. aliens. So there's no way. They're not aliens and aliens didn't build the pyramids and all that.

I have seen, again, this is sort of in the depths of a younger obsession, that there are medical conditions which would lead to that kind of bone structure. There are two sort of physical conditions that would lead to that kind of body. One's Marfan syndrome. Then there's Frolic's syndrome, which would also give you these sort of elongated arms and that strangely shaped head. Do you think these are realistic and they are giving us a medical history by accident or not? I think, it's conceivable. Yes. Marfons especially has been suggested for Akhenaten. So that's a definite possibility. But, you know, it's also been suggested he may have been female and not male. Stop it. Seriously, it's been suggested. I thought that only happened once. That's amazing. So you're saying

it could have happened twice? Well, I don't think it actually happened. Look how many kids he has. So it would be a little problematic, but people have tried to explain why he looks that way. I think it's just as interesting to try and explain why he agreed to be depicted that way. I mean, every other Egyptian pharaoh before him was always depicted as a strapping 20-year-old, you know, who could bench press 250 pounds. That beautiful, bodies. Exactly. And he's like, now this is the way I look and this is the way everyone else in my family look.

Now, Nefertiti, not a problem. She's absolutely gorgeous. Of course, you depict her, but not him. But there's realism and everything. I mean, even the paintings of ducks and marshes, those are also realistic at this time. So his revolution is not just in religion. It's all over the place. And I actually think I'm going to give him more credit than maybe some of your other people will.

I think he was brilliant. I think it was all deliberate. I don't think it was a religious fanatic working here. I think he was a skillful diplomat because in changing the religion of Egypt to only have Otten. And you couldn't worship Otten directly. It was through Akhenaten. So Arton being this, we should clarify, as this disk of the sun is the Arton. It's just one.

And sometimes you see it depicted as a gold disc alone or sometimes a gold disc with these fingers coming out which end in unks. But it is, you know, the sun is everything, one single figure, yes. And caressing the family, yes, absolutely. But, you know, he was already the head of the government. He was already the head of the military. Now, in doing what he does, he's now the head of the religion. There is nothing he doesn't control and including... This means sound horribly like Trump.

Oh, please, don't go there. But, yes. But also in closing the temples, he took all of their treasuries. He became a multi-billionaire overnight, not that he wasn't already wealthy. Before we move on to Antana for the next episode, just paint us a picture of Egypt on the eve of Acknarton's accession. This is a golden age, isn't it? I mean, this is one of the high points of Egyptian civilization. This is literally the golden age.

Yes. This is the high point of Egypt. I would actually, I would say it was higher than King Tut. King Tut will inherit all of this because he's Akhenaten's son. But I would say Amunhotep III's reign is the culmination. It really started with Hatshepsut, who was an amazing diplomat. It then went to Tupmosis III, who was an amazing warrior. And now, a hundred years later, Amunhotep III is both diplomat and warrior. Egypt is at the pinnacle of its success. It controls all the gold. They are in control. And you can see this when the foreign rulers say, will you send me one of your daughters? And he says, absolutely not. That's not how this works.

You send me your daughters and I send you whatever I want. So Egypt is in charge. So with that, with Egypt in the preeminent place, why would you want to change everything? Well, join us to the next episode where he changes everything. Absolutely. Upends that whole kibush. It's all going so terribly. Well, let's rip it up and start again.

But you'll have to wait for that next episode. If you're one of those people who cannot wait for episodes, I don't blame you. Just join our club. EmpapoddUK.com is where we are. Empirepoduk.com. And you get these mini-series all in one great glut to listen to at your heart's content and without ads. But till the next time we meet. Thank you again, Eric Klein.

We love having you on. It's just brilliant. Until the next time we meet, though, it's goodbye from me. Anita Arndt. And goodbye from me, William Durember. Spotify, it's Jay Shetty. Are you one of those media strategy people? Scrolling through spreadsheets,

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