Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Downy, and our subject
Speaker 1: for today was called a historical hottie by People magazine,
Speaker 1: which of course is the most reliable of all celebrity magazines,
Speaker 1: so it must be true. But her name Nefertiti means
Speaker 1: the beautiful one has come or a beautiful woman has come.
Speaker 1: And she was also honored with a variety of very
Speaker 1: lovely titles Suite of Love, Lady of Grace, and some
Speaker 1: people have also called her the most powerful woman in
Speaker 1: the world. So not just a pretty face. And I've
Speaker 1: long loved Nefertiti. I actually was her for Halloween. I
Speaker 1: think I've mentioned it before. It was probably my best
Speaker 1: Halloween costume when I was about nine years old. And
Speaker 1: she's also a magnet, at least according to Molly from
Speaker 1: Steff Mom never told you on Molly's Fringe. So a
Speaker 1: good way to get Egyptologists into a fight, which you
Speaker 1: know who wouldn't want to do that is to debate
Speaker 1: Nefertiti because despite that famous bust of her that we've
Speaker 1: all seen that's in the Berlin Museum inspires all sorts
Speaker 1: of tales. We don't know much about her at all,
Speaker 1: so let's start with the basics. The things we do know.
Speaker 1: Nefer Titi was married to the Heretic pharaoh a Connaughton,
Speaker 1: who ruled in the eighteenth dynasty from thirteen fifty three
Speaker 1: to thirteen thirty six specs. So not all that long actually,
Speaker 1: and he's a bit of an enigma to us too.
Speaker 1: One thing we do know. Anton's father was Almand Hotep
Speaker 1: the Third, whose reign was known for being very peaceful
Speaker 1: and prosperous and for producing tons of buildings and statues.
Speaker 1: Thinks that you'd go to Egyptian and see and a
Speaker 1: NAT's name was actually Almond Hotep the fourth until he
Speaker 1: came into power and he didn't key to that name
Speaker 1: for too long. He changed it to akat in, which
Speaker 1: means one who is effective for Aughten, in honor of
Speaker 1: the new religion that he was about to bring the people.
Speaker 1: But before we talk too much about that, we want
Speaker 1: to talk about our girl, never Td. So because of
Speaker 1: that name we mentioned earlier, the beautiful one has come.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of speculation that never Td was actually foreign.
Speaker 1: Maybe from what is today Syria, and others think that no,
Speaker 1: she wasn't foreign, she was born Egyptian royalty. Maybe she
Speaker 1: was even related to Anton's mother, Queen Tie, or perhaps
Speaker 1: she was the daughter of I, who was an influential
Speaker 1: courtier and may have been involved in King Tut's death.
Speaker 1: He definitely succeeded him, but he must have been really
Speaker 1: old too. We're talking about fatherly age. Yes, well, all
Speaker 1: this really goes to show how much of an enigma
Speaker 1: she was. I mean, we're talking about her parentage and
Speaker 1: you know where she's from. Pretty basic facts that are
Speaker 1: really fuzzy, but it's just part of all the fascination around.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the Mona Lisa. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a great work of art. We're all really interested in
Speaker 1: it and the woman, you know, who it's based on,
Speaker 1: but we don't know much. We were always looking for her.
Speaker 1: So what we do know about never TDI comes from
Speaker 1: tomb scenes, inscriptions, temple scenes at Karnak, excavations at Amarna.
Speaker 1: And we do know again that she had six daughters
Speaker 1: with her husband in the first ten years of their marriage,
Speaker 1: one of whom married King Tat. And we also know
Speaker 1: she wasn't antons only wife. Notably, there was another woman
Speaker 1: named Kia who was described as being Ants greatly beloved,
Speaker 1: and she may have been King Tut's mom, although again
Speaker 1: other people say never TD was his mom, So more confusion,
Speaker 1: confusion about the parents and the kids and where she's from,
Speaker 1: but never TD had an important role in Acton's new religion,
Speaker 1: which we're going to talk about now. And when I
Speaker 1: think religion in ancient Egypt, I think of Bastet and
Speaker 1: Isis and Horace. But there were many gods, including solar
Speaker 1: ones like Almond and Raw, who were later to become
Speaker 1: simply Almond Raw together. But there's an important shift when
Speaker 1: Aknaton's dad declares that he was Almond's son and that
Speaker 1: he himself was actually Raw. Aknaton goes even further when
Speaker 1: he declares that there's only one god, Auton, who is
Speaker 1: the sun disc. And I'm sure you've seen pictures of
Speaker 1: this god. It's usually pictured just as a circle with rays,
Speaker 1: kind of like you draw a son when you were
Speaker 1: a kid, except that the razor hands shooting out, and
Speaker 1: lots of art shows Aknaton and Nefer TD worshiping it
Speaker 1: are just being engaged in daily family activity, hanging out
Speaker 1: with their son gods under their benevolent son God. This
Speaker 1: was a huge change though. You have to picture the
Speaker 1: dominant religion of the time, and you know, all of
Speaker 1: its gods worshiped in these dark temples. But now everything's
Speaker 1: in open air. The better to see the sun. With
Speaker 1: a sun god, you got to go outside. So Aknaton
Speaker 1: needed to build a bunch of new temples, and he
Speaker 1: wanted to do it quickly. So this meant a whole
Speaker 1: new way of constructing buildings. Instead of those giant blocks
Speaker 1: you think of when you think of say the Egyptian Pyramids,
Speaker 1: they had little blocks that could be carried like little bricks. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's oversimplifying things though to just say that we're
Speaker 1: going from a polytheistic religion to a monotheistic religion, because
Speaker 1: Anton and Nefertd are still depicted as god like themselves.
Speaker 1: It's been like a triad. Yeah with Auton, Uh, they're
Speaker 1: not going to give up their own divinity because they've
Speaker 1: you know, proclaimed that the sun God and the other
Speaker 1: religious cults never really went away, even though Aknaton tried
Speaker 1: to erase them and even moved the capital from Thebes
Speaker 1: to build a new one, to get away from all
Speaker 1: of the old ways, and so it's not surprising to
Speaker 1: your moving capitals injuring religion, the changing religions that suggest
Speaker 1: that this is not received universally. The reforms aren't really popular,
Speaker 1: and he and Nefertiti are definitely enemies of the priests,
Speaker 1: and the people probably want to keep their own religion, especially,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's something so radically different from what they're
Speaker 1: used to, as we will see later. But going to
Speaker 1: Nefertidis power, she may have been a sort of living
Speaker 1: fertility goddess. According to Britannica based on depictions of her
Speaker 1: from the time, she's always dressed really gorgeously in fine
Speaker 1: linens and fancy head dresses because she's supposed to be
Speaker 1: this alluring figure and she has her little egg shaped
Speaker 1: babies to eggheads, and that the temple in Thebes art
Speaker 1: suggests that she may have acted as a priest of
Speaker 1: bten and in Blocks from Karnak she's shown actually smiting enemies,
Speaker 1: and that fabulous blue head dress we all know her for,
Speaker 1: which was unheard of for anyone but a king and us,
Speaker 1: really suggest the influence that she had in Egypt at
Speaker 1: the tun precedented. Yeah, she was considered divine, as we mentioned,
Speaker 1: but on her husband's sarcophagus, she's actually pictured on each
Speaker 1: of the four corners, and that's a big deal. It's
Speaker 1: her pictured instead of uh, you know, the sun god
Speaker 1: or if it had been an older time, different gods.
Speaker 1: When you'll see her twice as often an art as
Speaker 1: you'll see Anton, and some people think she may even
Speaker 1: have acted as co ruler with him. But at the
Speaker 1: very least she's credited with making this new religion seem
Speaker 1: a little more warm fuzzy to the people, and that
Speaker 1: would be part of the reason why she's pictured with
Speaker 1: her daughters as this model of fertility and in lots
Speaker 1: of happy family portraits, which is always a good ploy
Speaker 1: for public sympathy. Just ask Marie Antoinette. Well, so what
Speaker 1: happens to Nefertiti, that's our question. We have these murky beginnings,
Speaker 1: but where does she have the middle two with all
Speaker 1: of her influence and her power. But a certain point
Speaker 1: she kind of disappears. So Acknton dies after seventeen years
Speaker 1: of rule, and none of the religious stuff really lasts
Speaker 1: very long after him. He has a co region named
Speaker 1: she Menkari, who keeps the throne until tut But from
Speaker 1: there things are a little strange. In ackns twelfth year
Speaker 1: of rule, one princess dies and three just disappear from
Speaker 1: the records. It's possible that they died of plague, and
Speaker 1: Kia disappears as well. Some people think Nefertiti might have
Speaker 1: gotten jealous and killed her. Kia is one of Anton's
Speaker 1: other wives. But then Nefertidi disappears from the records as well.
Speaker 1: So did she die, was she killed, was she buried
Speaker 1: in the royal tomb at Amarna? Or It's possible that
Speaker 1: she was Menkar this ruler and she's even more powerful
Speaker 1: than ever now. So we've mentioned that there was this
Speaker 1: co region after Acknton died, and this ruler had a
Speaker 1: throne name which was different from the birth name, which
Speaker 1: I can't pronounce. I'm not even going to try. And
Speaker 1: some say that there were two rulers under that name
Speaker 1: and that never Tdi was one of them. Although to
Speaker 1: go even further, some say that she became a female king,
Speaker 1: the new pharaoh, and some pictures do show a very
Speaker 1: feminine looking pharaoh. So well, we may never know, you
Speaker 1: know what exactly. Never Tdi's role was if she if
Speaker 1: she was a female king, or if she was a
Speaker 1: co regent, or maybe just uh the wife of the
Speaker 1: pharaoh still or maybe even dead earlier than we thought
Speaker 1: by not too long after the time she she does die,
Speaker 1: her pictures are being defaced because she is so unpopular
Speaker 1: with the priests. When Aknaton's buildings were largely destroyed, his
Speaker 1: name is completely erased from the king's list, so we
Speaker 1: didn't know anything about him until we found him. And
Speaker 1: it's not until nineteen twelve when she services again. That's
Speaker 1: when the bust of her was found at Amarna and
Speaker 1: dated tot BC, and of course it's beautiful, it's very beautiful.
Speaker 1: And ever since then we've been looking for her and
Speaker 1: one egyptologist, Joanne Fletcher, says that she's sure that never
Speaker 1: TD is the younger woman mummy from kV thirty five
Speaker 1: in the Valley of the Kings. And this mummy was unwrapped,
Speaker 1: so you can't tell the identity of an unwrapped mummy,
Speaker 1: but she has a shaved head, and someone tore her
Speaker 1: arm off too, as well as ripped her mouth and
Speaker 1: bashed her chest, so really defaced the body. There were
Speaker 1: two other mummies buried in this kV thirty five. One
Speaker 1: is known as the elder woman and one is known
Speaker 1: as the boy. And the elder woman has red hair
Speaker 1: and manicured hands, and the boy has a sidelock. And
Speaker 1: it's thought that the woman might be Queen Ty, who
Speaker 1: is never Ted's mother in law, in the boy might
Speaker 1: be Prince Tutmoses. But here's another important thing about these mummies.
Speaker 1: All of them have really messed up feet, which you know,
Speaker 1: in their belief system in the afterlife, that would mean
Speaker 1: they couldn't walk and never t D with this bashed
Speaker 1: in chest, if it is never t D wouldn't even
Speaker 1: be able to have the breath of life well. And
Speaker 1: according to Fletcher, since they are damaged in this way,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have been grave robbers who did this. It
Speaker 1: must have been intentional, you know, a calculated action by
Speaker 1: people who wanted to make sure they didn't have an
Speaker 1: afterlife destroy their afterlife. But Fletcher is very controversial and
Speaker 1: some say it was grave robbers looking for amulets on
Speaker 1: the mummies. And a lot of people say that the
Speaker 1: mummy is too young to be never t D. Perhaps
Speaker 1: she's the elder woman in the tomb and the younger
Speaker 1: one is one of her daughters, but unless one of
Speaker 1: them sits up and tells us, we probably won't know.
Speaker 1: We did get to play into that exhimation theme though,
Speaker 1: as we always do, and we have an art note
Speaker 1: to end that bust of Never TV shows an epicanthic fold,
Speaker 1: which we associate with an East Asian I, but it
Speaker 1: can also be associated with several medical conditions, and her
Speaker 1: daughter had it as well, so as always, people like
Speaker 1: playing posthumous medical detective and trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: genetically it could have been. So the epicanthic fold is
Speaker 1: based on the bus. But it's also important to note
Speaker 1: that the art change pretty dramatically during the Amarna period.
Speaker 1: They're really exaggerated figures with these long skulls for the royals.
Speaker 1: You know, I mentioned that the egg Fait baby earlier.
Speaker 1: I remember looking at this when I was a kid
Speaker 1: and just thinking what happened to their heads um. They're
Speaker 1: also often depicted with big stomachs and hips and skinny
Speaker 1: little torsos, and this may have been symbolic or it
Speaker 1: was maybe just about changing everything. So you change your religion,
Speaker 1: drastically change your capital. Maybe you change your art styles
Speaker 1: as well and just forge a new way. But it's
Speaker 1: also possible the art was more accurately reflecting how people
Speaker 1: look right, and perhaps Anton did have a skinny little
Speaker 1: torso and a big stomach and kind of womanly hips.
Speaker 1: And in one statue that may or may not be
Speaker 1: nef for TV, she's wrinkly and saggy. And again we
Speaker 1: should note that she looks very different in a lot
Speaker 1: of portraits, and she may not have looked like that
Speaker 1: bust at all. And speaking of that bust being different
Speaker 1: from real life, a CT scan recently showed a difference
Speaker 1: between what we see at the bust and the interfacial cast.
Speaker 1: It's not as symmetrical or as unwrinkled, So perhaps was
Speaker 1: made prettier by the sculptor, which is lucky for Nefertiti
Speaker 1: that she has to have a nice bust if she's
Speaker 1: going to be making people's historical hotties list. We should
Speaker 1: mention that the Egyptians want their bust back from the
Speaker 1: Germans byelve, although there's a bit of a debate about that.
Speaker 1: But we'd like to wrap up with a quote that's
Speaker 1: from him to Auton, but made us think of never
Speaker 1: t D. He has a million forms according to the
Speaker 1: time of day and from where he is seen, yet
Speaker 1: he is always the same. And that brings us to
Speaker 1: our listener mail from today, which is about our Charlie
Speaker 1: Chaplin podcast. So this message is from Suzanne, and she wrote,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to say I loved your Charlie Chaplin podcast.
Speaker 1: I wanted to recommend you take a look at his
Speaker 1: old film studio. I've been to the Chaplin studio a
Speaker 1: few times, although it is now the Jim Henson Studio.
Speaker 1: It's a lovely Tutor style building almost at the corner
Speaker 1: of Sunset and Libreya in Los Angeles, and she gave
Speaker 1: us some details about inside of the studio. I think
Speaker 1: our favorite point though, was when she mentioned that it
Speaker 1: looks like an old English style village. In the main
Speaker 1: reception area, there's a large black and white photograph of
Speaker 1: Charlie Chaplin at the groundbreaking of the studio. It's really
Speaker 1: cool to see what l A looked like back then,
Speaker 1: nothing around for miles. They also have one of his
Speaker 1: tramp suit with shoes underglass hanging on the wall. So
Speaker 1: I'd really like to see one of Charlie Chaplin's tramp suits,
Speaker 1: as would I, So please feel free to send us
Speaker 1: mail at History podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: If you're not much of an emailer, you can follow
Speaker 1: us on Twitter Missed in History or join our Facebook
Speaker 1: fan page or will keep you updated on what we're
Speaker 1: working on. And you should really read a very cool
Speaker 1: article called was There Really a Curse on King Tut's Tomb?
Speaker 1: Written by our own Lady of Grace, Sarah Dowdy, And
Speaker 1: you can search for that on our homepage at www
Speaker 1: dot how stuff works dot com. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
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Speaker 1: you missed in History. Glass blogged on the how stuff
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