Empire: World History - 365. Ancient Egypt: Who Was Nefertiti? (Ep 4)

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

**Unlock the entire Ancient Egypt series early and ad-free by joining the Empire Club at empirepoduk.com** Her image has been reproduced by countless artists in recent years, but who was the real Nefertiti? How did she become a pharaoh in her own right? And why is there still controversy over her statue? Anita and William are joined once again by Aidan Dodson, author of Nefertiti, Queen and Pharaoh of Egypt: Her Life and Afterlife, to discuss the iconic queen. Try Attio for free at attio.com/empire 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 Editors: Oli Oakley and Sam Benson 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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which deals are moving fastest, where the momentum, is building or what needs attention next and get a clear answer in moments. With Atio, you can focus on the real work of building your empire from day one onwards. Try Atio for free at ATTIO.com slash empire. You've seen her face on T-Tiles, you've seen her face on posters, on Beyonce's homecoming album cover, Nefertiti. one of the most recognized figures of ancient Egypt. But what is the real history of the woman herself? This is the story of Nefertiti.

And this is Empire with me, Anita Arlen. And me, William Durimple. Now, we are now at episode four of our Amarna series. We have met the world of Amarna with the wonderful Amarna letters that Eric Klein so wonderfully took us through. we have dived deep into Aknartan and his revolution and its downfall. And now we come to Nefertiti, the wife who we now know was also a pharaoh of Egypt.

And it's our great pleasure to have back to the show the wonderful Aidan Dodson. Thank you for having me back. It's very good to have you because honestly I'm obsessed like many women, particularly with the eye makeup that goes on in ancient Egypt. but this face, this inescapable face. Let's begin with what sounds like a stupid question. But, you know, what do we actually know about her? Because what surprises me is that, you know, we don't know very much considering how much we recognize her face. And we should say that your wonderful new book adds clarity to the answer to this question

that I have never come across in any other account. So, Aidan, tell us what we do know for sure about her. Right, we know for a fact that she was a woman, married to Akanaten and had six daughters. And that is all we know for absolutely certain. Everything else which we think we know about her is got to be inferred or implied from others, from indirect sources. And part of that comes from who her parents were. There is no text which tells us who her parents were. We can be sure who her parents weren't.

They weren't a king and queen, because nowhere does she ever hold a title of King's daughter or King's sister, which would have been the case had she been potentially a sibling spouse of Akanath. Because we get lists of her titles, don't they? That would indicate that she was the daughter of a king. Yeah. And she has probably the most extensive set of titles we've got of Queen of this kind of era. So if she were indeed a king's daughter or king's sister, one would find it somewhere. So we can rule that out as a possibility.

But you have a very strong theory, Aidan. Tell us about it. Yeah. The probably dominant theory has been that she is actually a maternal cousin of Akanatin. Because we have a man at court at this period called I, who has the title of God's first. father. And we know that that title can imply King's father-in-law. Indeed, Queen T, who is the mother of Akanaten, her father is called God's father as well. So that tends to suggest that I may well be that. Also, there may be a closer link here as well, and it's possible that I is a brother of Queen T. A nephew, is that right? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, Akan Neferti, yeah, Defatee are cousins effectively. Yeah. And we sort of, and that, and the, that idea is, is put together for a couple of reasons. First, the I, the name is, quite an unusual one and is very similar

to that of Queen T's father, Yuya. Also, they both have close relationships with the city of Ahmim in southern Egypt, which is a fairly provincial kind of location. but Yuya certainly comes from there, that's Queen T's father, and when he becomes king later on, I builds temples at Ahmed,

all of which Rala suggests that it may well be part of his hometown in many ways. And if we, they're putting those together, it would make sense that if the king is looking for a bride, a cousin from this military family in Ahmed, would make a lot of sense. So therefore I think while the leading theories, and this has been for about the last 100 years, is the idea that Nefertiti is a daughter of I and probably therefore a cousin of Akanaten. Do we know anything about when they got married, what that ceremony was like, how old they were, you know, that kind of stuff? Right. Well, it looks as though they marry after Achenatenaten becomes king, because the very, very earliest...

He's a bachelor. Yeah, the very, very earliest records of him. He turns out with his mum in inscriptions, yeah. But then we have, it looks as they probably marry within the first year or so of the rain. And they have their first daughter by year two of the reign.

So it looks as though fairly soon after its accession, that is when the two of them get married. There's a good question here about what that might have looked like because we don't know anything about marriage in ancient Egypt per se. There seems to be where we have got records of marriage, and it tends to be in the private sphere, there's no indication of any kind of religious or anything out of ceremonies. It all seems to have been a contractual link, because the word to marry, effect, is to get to move in with. And then what you might well then get is some kind of agreement over money,

money, almost a pre-nup almost, is what we sort of find there. In the royal sphere, we have absolutely nothing whatsoever. The only reason we know that the king, kings of various queens are marrying each other is because there they are in the text with the title of King's wife or king's great wife. So quite what that would all entail remains completely obscure. Aidan, there's a lot of debate over whether she was foreign or not. You know, this idea that she was a princess from a far land who comes in and almost corrupt Sackanatan's mind and makes him break with all tradition and found his own religion, you know, this bloody Lady Macbeth type creature. What do we know about, you know, whether she was foreign, whether she was Egyptian, what do you know

or what do you feel is fact here? Okay, she was certainly not an Egyptian princess. She never has the title of King's sister or King's daughter, which would be de rigour in this kind of situation, and we have a long, long list of her titles, and those certainly aren't amongst them, and there's no way that they should have slipped off of the record. But we do have her sister who has an Egyptian name. Absolutely. So her sister is a lady called Mnizmete, and which is a very typical Egyptian name, as is Nefertiti, for that matter. People have made quite a lot of her name, meaning a beautiful

woman has arrived or beautiful woman has come, but there are other Nefertiti. Titi's around or ineffaties, which are basically the same name, including a later tomb workman. So there's nothing where you can read into the title about that. Another thing against her being a foreigner is that foreign, although we haven't know about a lot of foreign diplomatic wives coming into Egypt, none of them at this period ever become anything major. We even have evidence, don't we, that one of the Babylonian princesses sort of disappears. and her brother writes very worriedly

that no ambassador, no one has actually seen her in public for 20 years and he asked, is she still alive? What's happened to her? Yeah, I suspect what happens is that the whole, the marriage is about the connection between the two countries and once they've arrived, there's probably very little interest. It may also be a question about the personality of the individual. When the lady turns up, does the king actually want her hanging around at court?

Or would she rather go off and have some luxurious, pampered life in a backwater somewhere. Again, we have nothing to do. We have no information about these kind of dynamics. We've not got any sort of peep's diaries or anything like that about what the gossip is going on at court. All we know is that some of these people turn up and that's sort of about it. But we know when she turns up, she turns up with a big bang. I mean, you know, she is the great royal wife almost immediately. And you can see that, Aidan, can't you, in sort of epic form. She's depicted in large scale. I mean, just talk about the way in which the Egyptian people would have first met their great queen. Nefertiti first appears on temple walls about a year or so

after Akkadaten comes to the throat. And when she does appear on temple walls, she appears a very, very large scale. Indeed, there is one section of one of the temples, which is built very early in the reign, where she is the sole efficient. There's no sign of her husband whatsoever. her and her elder daughter are the only ones who are on these particular bit of the temple walls, which is really quite something. It reminds me very much of the situation in Mughal India when we get Nur Jahan. And Nur Jahan is unique among the wives of the moguls in that she has a, has, she's on coins, she's on, you know, she's on inscriptions.

She has a much bigger role than any other wife from the period. And you get this impression with Nevititi. She's there from the beginning of Atnorton, and she stays with him for life, and she's more powerful than almost any other queen of her age. I think, though, equally powerful and prominent, is her mother-in-law, Queen T. And I think there's something that T, in many ways, provides the prototype for Nefertiti,

in the sense that the idea of the queen being shown the same size as the king and appearing with it all things, that's something which T probably kicks off at this point. Although if we can go back in time, go back earlier in the 18th dynasty, we've got Hatshepsut, who later becomes a female pharaoh, but is prominent as queen.

I mean, just to remind people, Hatshepsut, absolutely every girl who is into Egyptodry's favourite, because she was the woman who ruled with a fake beard. Look her up, she's extraordinary. But it's not just this sort of heroic figure that she cast, because I remember, I'm pretty sure, And you can correct me if I'm wrong.

But isn't there, when I went to Cairo Museum, there's a beautiful relief of her with her little daughter. And the daughter is kind of playing with her earring. And it looks almost, you know, sort of, it looks really modern. It looks like, you know, the kind of... On the cover of Aidan's book. So I'm not wrong. I just didn't realize it was the cover of the book.

But, I mean, so she's complicated character. She's not just, you know, the military headdress and everything that's underneath it and this huge figure all on her own. without her husband. She's also a mummy. I mean, they depict that too. Again, this kicks off quite late in Amunhotep the Third reign as well. It's the centrality of the royal family to the link with the deity. In the past, the king and queen, well, king is the main thing. Some periods you get the queen as a big thing. But the idea of the whole family being a central to cult seems to be an innovation of

the latter part of the reign of Amunhotep III, which Akinartan carries on in spades. You know, every time you're seeing any kind of act of worship, it's the king, queen and at least one daughter. So that unit, the royal family, becomes a really, really important thing. In a way, it's not ever really been before that. The family, the family has been sort of an adjunct to the king and queen. Now the whole family becomes a focal point to it. Do we have other pictures of royal babies dangling and fiddling with earrings, or is this a unique moment? The one thing which is unique is about the whole Amarna art style, which is fundamentally new,

that almost everything about it subverts what previous Egyptian art had done. It's most noticeable in the strange bodily proportions, but also the things which they're seen doing, or at least what principal figures are seen doing. Scenes where you've got children playing and whatever are quite common earlier on, but as subsidiary things in private tomb chapels, where they're just trying to magically recreate the world, including things like kids playing.

But the idea of a king and queen interacting in such an informal way with their daughters is completely unknown before and after this. So it's part of that whole revolution which Akanaten imposes on Egypt. There's the religious side of things, of course, but also this artistic one is part of it. And I've often wondered whether the artistic change is part of almost of the artistic change is part of almost of shock value, thinking almost a year zero saying that by depicting the king and queen is completely revolutionary, you probably for many Egyptians, outrageous kind of way, is saying something about this, the world is starting again. This is something completely new.

Yeah, I mean, but again, it's one thing to say to Egypt, look, we have six daughters and we are proud of them and we love them. But there is a missing thing, which all of Egypt would have felt, I guess, and which will be important at some point, and that's the missing son. What do we know about the daughters? Do we know anything much about who they were and what they did? Unfortunately, once again, we know very, very little about the individual daughters. They have gorgeous pictures of them. We do. We do.

Wonderful busts. One of them goes on to marry Akanatenaten's first co-ruler and therefore becomes a king's great wife in her own right. That's Merit Arton, the eldest. The second daughter, Mechit Arton, dies somewhere around year 13 of the rain. and we've got scenes of her being mourned in the royal tomb and also in the royal tomb there are scenes of two more princesses being mourned who seems to be the two youngest daughters, Nefanefru, Ray and Setepin Ray. Of the rest of them, Anchesin-pa-Arten goes on to become the queen of Tutankhamun,

and then Nefanefru-Arten-Tashirit, we don't know what happens to her. We've got no burial scene for her, we've got no later records of her. So she is somebody we, who remains a bit of a bit of a mystery amongst the six of them. Just to say, one, you mentioned the question of the fact that there was no suns shown. It's worthwhile pointing out that it had never been tradition for royal sons ever to be shown on monuments. And this goes right the way back to the days of the pyramids. When you look at earlier examples of the limited number of royal family scenes, it's always the daughters. when you've got in the Jubilee reliefs of Amunhotep III, for example,

he's shown with Queen Tea and a load of his daughters. No sign of the two known sons of... I had no idea about that. Is that an evil eye thing, that if you show the prince, he might have the evil eye on? We have no idea why this is, like most of these things. The point is with the ancient Egypt, we know what we can see, but trying to get behind that into what it is. and most of the explanations you'll see in print about why the Egyptians did stuff

is complete guesswork by an individual Egyptologist, because they don't tell us this, they knew what it was. But yeah, for some unknown reason, there seems to be a taboo against showing royal sons. And the only time you see a royal son prior to the reign of Achanan, anyway, because we do actually have one representation of a son, which I doubt this we'll be coming back to shortly, is when they've got a day job. So, for example, the only reason why Akanartan's elder brother, and who would have become Pharaoh had he not died prematurely, Prince Jack Moser, the only reason why I have a depiction of him is because he was the high priest of Patar. And there is one context where he is being shown with his day job as high priest of Patar. Otherwise, he wouldn't be shown at all.

But, Aidan, there is a rather extraordinary thing at this period with the images of the daughters. They are focused on. in a way that I don't know any other royal siblings or in any period of Egyptian art. There's one particular utterly beautiful, hard stone image of one of the girls also in Berlin, just one room away from her mother. And she's got this amazing kind of smooth head. Again, her mother's extraordinary cheekbones

and almost my favourite piece of Egyptian art. I think the reason why we've got this sort of overload of the royal daughters. It's going back a second. One of the oddest things about the whole atom business is although the god is visible to everybody, it's the glow of the sun in the

sky, the royal family have to act as the intermediaries between that god and people. And therefore the whole that unit of the royal family, it's not just the king, that's the queen, but also the daughters are part of that almost point of nexus

if you like between the divine and earth. And I think that's, for whatever reason, it's the whole family is recognised as being that important point, not just simply the king and queen. But once Akanaten has done this, it changes everything forever, because once you get beyond the Amarna period into the time of Ramesses II and so on, tell you the royal family en masse is a thing. You have Ramesses II with his hundred sons and daughters, all being shown with him on temple reliefs. So Akanaten's promotion of the royal family through his particular reasons actually then changes Egyptian art and the protocol of who you show on temple walls forever.

I just, I can't get it out of my head that they didn't use to depict the sons. And can I make another plea for the evil eye theory of this? Because I know in India, my mother's told me these stories of her great-grandmother who refused to name her sons. So whenever anybody asked her, how are your children? She would go into great detail about, you know, the daughters naming them where they're living, what they're wearing, what they're eating? And if there was a, well, what about your boys? And then the third daughter, she's really, and they'd ask about, you know, she said people would ask again and again about the boys. but it wasn't the done thing to talk about the boys

just in case the evil eye settled on them. And the evil eye is a big thing in Egypt too. I wonder if there's some correlation there. On the other hand, though, you do see them in private context. What we're talking about here is their absence from any kind of official or temple context. Yet in the tomb chapels of the tutors who've been appointed to the royal sons,

they're all over the place. So it's very specific about official contexts. the royal son, but if you were the tutor of a royal son, you splashed it all over your tomb walls to show how connected you were with the royal family. So it's a very, very specifically public and sort of temple thing, not that they're denying these royal sons exist. It's just where they appear. And so on occasion if they've got a day job, they will have, be able to be depicted carrying out that day job. It's just the very fact that if you're simply a royal son, it doesn't count for temple walls until we move on into Akinarton's time and then on into the

following 19th dynasty when you start seeing them in spades. Aidan, we're going to have to take a break soon, but before we do one last question. Now, we went through very thoroughly with both you and with Lloyd, the whole revolution in religion that takes place during Atnarton's reign, but we very much looked at it as something that he was in charge of and was driving. We were talking about him being in the driving seat. But your book makes a case for the fact that Nefertiti also played a major role, which you just hinted at also with the role of the entire role, family and the daughters as mediators.

Take us through Nefertiti's role in the Amarna Revolution, as you see it. Okay. Well, certainly she is a full partner with Akanaten in everything. And indeed, in certain points, she is the more prime. As I think I mentioned a bit earlier on, there is one of the Atten temples at Karnak, where she is the sole officiant, which clearly marks her out as being his parallel. Also, there are a few quite remarkable depictions of her in smiting mode, where she is holding an enemy by the hair and about to smash his brain, or in this case, her brains out. So she, as Queen, is doing an awful lot of things which directly parallel what the king is doing. You mentioned in the introduction of very close to the end of his reign, she is promoted to female Pharaoh and remains such after his death.

But what's very interesting there is that once she becomes female Pharaoh, she rapidly starts dismantle the whole Atten business. within a short period of time, Ammon is back again, and there is one text where it's possible that you may be able to restore a damaged bit of text as calling her calling herself, Beloved of Amon. So I wonder how far she was fully brought into all this. She was doing what she felt was appropriate to support her husband and so on.

But once he was dead, she perhaps possibly took the view of the whole thing had actually been something of a mistake and possibly never actually believed it in herself because once he's gone she is the one who is leading the return back to orthodoxy we're going to take a break now join us after the break

I actually Aiden I want to talk to you a lot more about this bust of Nefertiti that I am completely obsessed with because therein lies a mystery as well join us after the break Hey this is Michael and Hannah from Gollhangers the rest is science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. In the UK, nearly one in two people will face cancer in their lifetime.

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Welcome back. So, Aidan, you were talking us through this importance of Nefertiti and her depictions. That most famous one that we were talking about right at the top of this podcast, the bust of Nefertiti that is now in Berlin, or has always been in Berlin. They won't give it back. Everyone wants it back. They won't give it back. There is, well, first of all, we should describe it. Just give us an idea. Paint us a picture. Aidan of what it is, because I have questions. Okay, well, it is the bust of a woman. Quite unusual in Egyptian art. It simply is a standalone bust,

and probably was intended to be a masterpiece for sculptors to copy from. There's also, they also found in the same place, albeit totally shattered, a parallel bust of Akanaten. So it looks as though these two were set up at the end of the sculptor's workshop, and this was, okay,

If you want to double-check what he looks like or what she looks like, this is what you're using. It's made of limestone, but covered with a layer of plaster, which has allowed the features to be modelled in an exquisite kind of manner. She's wearing a tall blue flat-topped crown, which is unique to Nefertiti. No other queen ever uses this. It has inlaid eyes, but only one of those eyes is present. The other one seems never to have been fitted. They certainly, they looked around on the floor for it, hadn't fallen out.

And the skin is painted a distinctive pinkish hue, which, although very unusual Egyptian art, is by no means unique. There is, though, a whopping great controversy over this, because wasn't there a CT scan done of the bust? Now, this is how I know the story. You tell me what you know to be true. A CT scan was done many years ago, and it discovered that the actual core, the thing that was in the limestone, looked very different to the stucco outside. The stucco outside was that beautiful chiseled face that pop stars try to emulate and is on every teetail that you buy if you're into Egyptology. The one underneath, though, has a slightly sort of more sagging face, a bump on the nose. You know, it is the face of a woman, you know, normal woman, not a perfect woman. So to me, this feels like a 3,000-year-old Photoshop could have been done at that time. I mean, is that a reasonable thing to suggest? Yeah, I think the problem is it's

unclear quite whether what that lower level, lower level was ever intended to be a definitive outer level, if you know what I mean, and that is simply what was the initial carving, which then the plaster is then added on round it. The very fact that it's a very similar kind of set up with the Parallacanartan one suggests that this was intended that way and that it was never intended to be a naked limestone sculpture. I'm not an artist, but I suspect that if you're going to do something like that, you need to at least have the basic bone structure, if you like, in stone underneath to then be able to veer and haul on the plaster on the outside. I guarantee you, we've got sculptors who listen to this, so do get in touch.

Because, you know, the argument is that she was a normal woman in the sculpture, and then this outward appearance of utter perfection is placed on top because, you know, faces don't look that pretty in real life. They just don't. And I know that there has been a, there's been a request since. I think it's the latest 2016 where there was a Freedom of Information request saying, can we do a CT scan? Could we please have it? And, you know, for studying. And I think the museum said, no, because of merch. Because if you do put out this other image, all our merch is going to be. compromised. I've heard that story. How true it actually is, I'm not 100% sure. And also the wildcats of scanning being done in the museum gallery is physically impossible. It can't,

and it was admitted later on it, the whole thing was a scam. So there's a whole lot of this stories around about the head, which one can't necessarily verify. Aidan, I'm fascinated by this idea that Egyptians could do ultra-realistic, could do what we recognize as sort of, you know, a photographic portrait of someone that actually looks completely like the person, but chose not to do it in the normal style of art, and particularly chose not to do it in what you call the revolutionary style of Acknarton, but they could do it if they wanted it just to have a model for sort of almost like a polaroid to have in the studio.

And also actually it's not actually unique amongst them. There is an amazing, unfinished quartzite head of Nefertiti, which is in Cairo, which was found by a British expedition about 20 years after the Berlin bust, which for me, it's the same face, and in some ways it's even more gorgeous, because it was going to be one within laid eyes, but they never got round to doing that, so you've just simply got the quartzite carved face with the, with almost black eyeline or almost marking where they're going to be removing the stone from it. So I think that the Nefertiti one is particularly immediate,

of its colouring, but there are also lots of other ones which have been produced, which are perhaps less immediate because of the lack of colouring. What we think is a portrait, things they look like portraits, but we can't be 100% sure they are. They may simply be what people really wanted to look like. So therefore, she may not have been quite as beautiful as that, but this has been sort of been tweaked a little bit. So it looks amazingly naturalistic, compared with a lot of Egyptian art, but it may still be a question of this is how she wanted to, no, she wanted to look to the public. I bet she did. Yes.

Wouldn't we all? I mean, wouldn't, seriously. I would say that although everybody raves about the Berlin head, this Cairo one is my favourite, quite honestly. I've got it in front of me in your book, and again, that quote site is this extraordinary, extraordinary, in the cheekbones. Even sharper. Why don't you show it to the camera for those who are watching on YouTube? Because they'll appreciate it. I have it here.

Here we go. This is the one you're talking about? That's her, yes. Yeah, it's very beautiful. Every time I go to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, I must sort of go and sort of gaze into her, well, non-eyes, because I think she is utterly gorgeous. Into the slightly spooky spaces where eyes were.

But it does show what the sculptors of this period can do. And also, we were talking about sort of distortion. What's interesting at the beginning of, of the rain when they first introduced the revolutionary style, it's very much in your face, and people are made to look ugly, even Nefertiti is made to look ugly in those early ones. But then as we may move through the rain, they become more naturalistic. There's still the distortions of the body forms, but they're made more realistic. And I think I said earlier on that I thought there was a shock value.

I tend to regard the early versions of the revolutionary style, or which is the part. punk rock era of the art. If you think about punk and, well, those us who were around at the time, how the whole idea was it was in your face. It wasn't purely about the music. It was almost about saying, hey, we're starting from scratch here. Then that moves on to New Wave. So what I would see is that the early representations,

some of these... I'm not unprecedented by a grasp of 1970s musical trends. Yes. One of my great regrets was not going to see the sex pistol. when they played Slale College when I was at school. I saw the clash. Would you have to concentrate? Hello. Excuse me.

But what I'm saying is that often with any kind of revolution, there is the in your face beginning of a revolution, but then that fairly rapidly becomes more softens to some degree. And I think that's what happens with the art of this period. The first stuff is really you're in your face, but by the time you move a sort of decade on, which is probably when the Nefertiti heads are being carved. And the Quartzite 1 is unfinished,

so it's probably right at the end, towards the end of the rain, is that they've reconciled beauty with revolution. And I think that's what we should see with those nefertiti heads. I'm with you. I'm totally, you know, it's for a mass audience, if you like. It's a bit niche, and now it's got public appeal. That's about it, yes.

But what I don't get, and this is like the central, mystery of your book, in fact, is you have this face that is everywhere, this face that is reproduced and reproduced and reproduced, and suddenly Nefertiti disappears. The lady vanishes. For around 12 years of Achnarton's reign, she vanishes from the record as queen. Now, what's occurring here? Well, basically, for a long time, it was thought that she disappeared after about year 12. Then we found a, only a few years ago. And it's one of these things about it, A piece of graffiti.

A graffito, yeah, which actually mentions her in year 16, because previously the last citing, if you like, had been sometime after year 12. We got a year 12 representation of her, and then we've also got a representation at the funeral of her daughter, Mecittarton, which must be, as Mecharton's also in this year 12 representation, must be slightly after that. So we had that, and there was all kinds of ideas what might have happened to her. In your earlier books, you give her a different fate. Now we've got a whole different story because of this one bit of graffiti.

Yeah. And so we know that she's still around as queen in year 16 as a result of this graffiti. And that's important thing to recognise about Egyptian history, that one discovery can literally change history. That we have a version, then suddenly you have to revise it. For example, this discovery in 2012 meant that the book I wrote in 2009, when it was re, I did a new edition a couple of years later, I had to change 75% of the pages. There was a ripple effect of one discovery, which is a really quite...

That's an important thing to recognise that Egyptian history can change overnight because so much of it is reconstructing from a tiny amount of evidence. And sometimes that new bit of evidence comes in and suddenly changes history overnight. So anyway, so he knew she's around at that point. But the most important recognition,

which is still not accepted by 100% of Egyptologists. We're an argumentative bunch and we never agree on anything. But the vast majority are now agreed that the pick point was that Nevitis didn't disappear, whatever date that last attestation as a queen is, but she then transmogrifies into a female pharaoh. And part of this was also a recognition that this female pharaoh, which really was female, not a male, which was another issue around all of this.

So over here about 20-odd years, this recognition that Nefertiti did actually continue on and continued on as a fully-fledged pharaoh is something which has sort of changed history in the last 20-odd years. Quite why she is then promoted to female Pharaoh is another matter for debate. It looks like it happens. Does this happen before her husband?

dies or after? A few months before. So one wonders whether it is that he is ill, expecting to be assassinated, or has some other premonition of death, that he decides he wants to make sure that there is an adult to carry on the revolution. Because at this point, his heir, the future Tutankhamun, is only a child. And I think that Nakhinaatenaten's concern was that. that as the death was staring him in the face, say whether due to a disease or whatever,

his concern was that if he died and he had just a young son, that whoever was the regent might well then start to dismantle everything. So he thinks, aha, if I make my wife, my co-ruler, who can then carry on as Pharaoh after my death, and probably acting then as co-ruler with my son, hey, it'll all be fine. But therefore, there's an adult contrarian. continuing revolution. Unfortunately, for Akanaten, we know that within three years, Nefertiti,

now known as Nefer Neferuartan, which is always part of a long name, but is now shortened as king, is dismantling his revolution, Ammon is back, and we're moving on. Now, Aidan, one of the other big developments in recent times has obviously been DNA, and people are testing mummies and finding relationships and so on. And you suggest that we might actually have Nefertiti's mummy. The mummy previously known, rather like Prince as the artist's previously known, this is the mummy previously known as the Younger Lady KV-35. It's catchy.

Yeah. Okay. What it is here is that a number of anonymous mummies were found in the two of Ammonhotep the 2nd, which seems to have been used as a store place for displaced mummies. Dumping rat. In 2010, the results of a whole series of DNA tests on mummies belonging to the Amarna period or suspected to belong were published. And the younger woman was proclaimed to be the mother of Tutankhamun. Also, it was proclaimed in the publication of this that Tutankhamun was the offspring of a brother-sister marriage.

and that the DNA of the father was that represented by a mummy which some have argued as Akan Atenham, some Svanghaer. There's probably a whole podcast purely on the wrangling around this. It's like an episode of dynasty. Yeah. Yeah. Goodness to me, what was going on here? To keep it very simple. The issue is that it was proclaimed that there was a brother-sister marriage and it was argued that Akanatenaten and a sister were married and

produced to Dan Camus. There are a problem with that in that we have no sister of Akinartan who is a potential candidate and the amount of material we've got from Amarna you'd expect her to be there. But if you're right, she was a cousin, would that be good enough?

Now that's the thing is that the publication 2010 only gave preferred interpretations of the DNA, not the full range of them. And it was only subsequently that a French colleague got a tame DNA specialist to look at the results again. And the same signature, genetic signature, is produced by three generations of first cousin marriages, as would be produced by a brother-sister marriage. So for clarity's sake, it's now possible to believe that

the younger lady, KV-35, is Nefertiti, that she's the cousin of Atnartan. She's nothing, she's not a sister marriage at all. Exactly. But that also would tie in with her first. rather being a brother of Queen Tea, etc. So it works relatively well. It all ties up, very nicely. Potentially anyway. But again, this is all work. I have to emphasise with everything I talk about in ancient days.

This is a working hypothesis. I'm not saying this is the fact, but for me, the data suggests that this is probably the best working hypothesis we've got at the moment. Now, I want to bring us to the fact that she sits now in Berlin, in a Berlin museum, and this connection with Germany is... completely fascinating as well, I think. Ludwig Brockhardt, the archaeologist, diplomat, nationalist, whatever you want to call him, who sort of first got his hands on the bust. He kind of walked into a workshop that seemed as if, you know, the sculptor just ran off into the

night and left everything. Including his name. Whatever the equivalent of, you know, ancient, you know, sketchbooks are, but a lot of material in a workshop that was just left like that. The thing is, the reason why it was all left was that after Akanatenaten's death, Amarna is abandoned fairly rapidly. Probably about three years after that, the royal family give up living there and return to their old palaces. And at that point, everything just shut up and left. Because, of course, by this time, Akanatenaten's dead, Nefertiti might be dead as well. So there's no actual point in taking this stuff with you. So they effectively just sort of, you know, lock the door.

and just leave it, and it all then just decays over the next few decades. Apparently, it was reckoned that the bus had been on a wooden shelf, which had then finally decayed a decade or so later on, and it'd fall into the floor. Luckily, by that time, sand had blown into the workshop to break the fall, whereas the corresponding Akinartan one clearly hadn't fallen on a pile of sand, and ends up shattering. you can actually still see it in Berlin it looks very horrible

because they've just sort of had to try and stick it back together again with a few other bits of completely pulverised there was no need for it anymore it had been the master model for sculptors nobody was producing sculptor of Nefertiti anymore so just leave it behind interesting and tell us about the German man who discovers it because there's a little bit of slight of handery

that goes on here with labelling it so that it does end up in it in a German collection rather than in Egypt? At that period, the basic rules were that the excavator got half their fines, the Egyptian government got the other half of the finds, except for exceptional pieces whereby Egypt had the first claim on those. And what would happen at the end of the season is that one of the Egyptian Antiquities Service inspectors would come

and look at what had been found and would sign off yes or no whether various things should stay or go. The story is that on the actual list that was given to the inspector, the Nefertiti bust was listed as being made of plaster rather than being a sculpture, because there was a whole load of other plaster pieces. The other thing is that it's been suggested that he wasn't given a very good look at the stuff. You know, things were already in their packing cases, so he's having to appear into these things.

He pulled a fast one. Totally pulled a fast one. Come off, Aidan. Come on. I know what basically happened was... Yes, I think he did pull a fast one. I don't know you'd fall out with the German museum, Aidan, but say it straight. No, no, but I think what Borkart was doing was he was making sure that it was as difficult as possible for Lefebvre, who was the inspector to look at the stuff.

And also was hoping that Lefebvre wouldn't ask for stuff to be taken out the crates. I think that was the point. It wasn't a complete... Maybe it's a French-German thing. Well, it's a German thing. German German thing, because it ends up that French don't get anywhere close to it, but it becomes this major thing for Germany. But I think what it was done was that it was made as difficult as possible for Lefevre to inspect these things in detail. And he was keeping his fingers crossed, but at no point with Lefebvre saying, no, can I get that out, please?

I want to have a close look at it. Presumably, it was late in the day. Lefebvre wanted to go home, and therefore he signed it off. Have a nice pastis in the evening, put his legs up. There is also wonder whether or not actually there was a nice dinner waiting once he'd done that. So let's just get the paperwork done and we can go and sit down and have a... Fine. You want to give him the benefit of that? That's fine. That's fine if you want to. I think it was skullduggery. But as a result of this, let's just... We haven't got much time left.

Yeah, absolutely. Definitely want to crowbar this story because I find it so delicious. The bus arrives in Berlin in 1913. It doesn't get publicly exhibited for a decade. But the crowds go wild when this, you know, the German press go nuts. They say the most beautiful woman in the world has arrived in Berlin and her faces everywhere. You know, like I'm saying, it's sort of, you know, on cigarette packets, on posters, on playing cards everywhere. Do you know, well, of course you know, Aidan, but I'm telling Willie, do you know Hitler comes into this story? I don't know Hitler's right.

Can I tell you this Hitler story? Because I like it very, very much. So by 1929, when Germany was looking for friends, and they were talking to the Egyptians, the Egyptians desperately wanted to get the back because they knew it was skullduggery what took it away from them. And so they've negotiated this. It's a successful negotiation. And right at the last minute, Hitler personally becomes involved because he sees the bust. And there is a quote attributed to him. He sends a message to Cairo saying, I am one of the big fans of Queen Nefertiti. She brings joy to my heart. He then said, he intended to build a new Egyptian museum in Berlin, in which his phrase, this wonder Nefertiti,

Petiti will be enthroned. The most beautiful face of the ancient world claimed personally by Hitler. Now, there we are. So this, you know, this relationship was important to Germany and there have been so many attempts by the Egyptians to get her back, which have all been rebuffed. I mean, she's not going anywhere, is she? I mean, they're not going to let go. The issue is that whether or not there was skull dougary involved. The relevant form was signed off by an appropriate official. So they can take a very, very legalistic view of it. And the thing was interesting, when...

The Germans would never do that. Never. But actually, because when the plan was to get, was to have been to return, it was actually negotiated by Herman Goring. He was the one who said, who sent it back. Goering was furious because he had to go back on his word. And Hitler just sort of trampled all over this delicate diplomacy that he'd just done with Egypt, yeah. The delicacy of it was.

was it was being given to the Egyptian king for his birthday or for his anniversary of accession. So they weren't admitting that it shouldn't have removed. They were taken to view it had been illegally exported to Germany, but now Germany was giving it to the king of Egypt as a present. So there was some important sort of subtleties involved in how the diplomacy was being done. Well, look, it's been a real ride talking about this, Aidan. We're so great. for you. So the next time on Empire, we are going to be talking about the boy King Tutankarmon, who was he really? How did he rule? How did he die? And we're going to have a bonus on the discovery of the tomb because all of that is very, um, Raiders of the Lost Ark kind of stuff. It's

very, very interesting. Full of mystery, full of drama, just like this one was. We look forward to seeing you then. Till we meet again, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, William Deroon. Goodbye from me. You know,