now as I showed you with the Egyptian funerary sculptures with their Kings the Egyptian sculptures of their kings in ancient Egypt are pretty muchly consistent I mean it's terrible to say but it's true if you go to a museum and you walk through multiple rooms of Egyptian items after about the third room it gets a little weird because they all look like the same guy and I mean for example the pictures on your screen those guys those kings are from thousands of years apart and yet essentially all of the basic structure is exactly identical because every single Pharaoh is interested in tradition and maintaining this status quo of Egypt clear back at the very beginning when we started talking about Egypt I talked about how Egypt was cyclical that things change when they move forward but ultimately they value tradition and they want to keep things similar the images of the Pharaoh are an important part of that they are all similar to the others they all want to be associated with being the embodiment of the Egyptian gods frequently like you saw with Khafre's funerary sculpture they associate themselves as being guided by or embodied by Horus and from the point of view of the Egyptian people this tells them that the gods are always the ones watching over them no matter what the King looks like no matter what condition the king is in the king is ultimately not running the country as his human self is that gods who are overseeing and running the country that's visible on the bottom in that middle picture down there the Pharaoh the king of Egypt is actually the little guy facing towards you that's the king of Egypt whom we believe became Pharaoh when he was somewhere around six to eight years old he's depicted here sitting on his mom's lap yep that's that's mommy however the thing is that even though he is a child he's not depicted as a child he is simply depicted as a little person because the idea is as soon as he was crowned king of Egypt he fits in with this same tradition of the gods he is a part of this cycle this tradition it's not about the child ruling Egypt it's about the child being the face the front the the basically the embodiment for a larger force which is always the thing running Egypt now the bad part about this this means that basically we don't get much idea of what Egyptian Kings really looked like because it's all this very standardized stylized consistent appearance we do however get a break on knowing more personalized images when we go from Kings to commoners many well-off commoners also have funerary statues in their tombs those funerary statues for the commoners are very different than those of the Kings with the commoners the images in their tombs actually depict much more what they really looked like there's a sense of personality and life like this that you don't get when you look at the images of Egyptian royalty in the ancient world for example the seated scribe on your left there's a sense of attention and life likeness in the face that you do not see in the depictions of Pharaohs same way the village head man the mayor essentially on your right hand side his body type is quite different than what we see with traditional sculptures of Egyptian royalty his face is much more personalized he is shown as an individual the commoners in Egypt are able to be depicted as individuals simply because they are not clinging to that set of tradition and authority they do not associate themselves with gods in the same way that the Kings do so their sculptures give us a more clear window into what they truly looked like they are less rigid less bound by rules and requirements in keeping up a tradition the commoners are wonderful when we find their funerary sculptures because they give us that idea of what people really look like instead of clinging to that tradition let me let me give you an extreme example of what I mean when I say that when a king ancient Egypt is sculpted they are sculpted based on certain standards and it doesn't matter what they really look like all that matters is actually their portrayal as part of a tradition or a cycle this is the Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut Hatshepsut ruled as regent for a brief time and then became Pharaoh protecting a very young child who ultimately took over and became the next pharaoh that child was actually tough most the third however that that rule under the reign of Hatshepsut spans the early part of toddlers life in order we believed to protect cosmos now here's the interesting part you'll see that the images of Hatshepsut particularly the image on the right depict a standardized image much like the ones that I showed you just a few moments ago the interesting thing about hatch of said Hatshepsut is a woman she is a female Pharaoh of Egypt one of the few of which we are aware Hatshepsut we believe was Queen regent ruling on behalf of her young son however there was an assassination attempt on her son and in order to preserve her son's life she put the target on herself by accessing the rule of Pharaoh she stepped into that cycle that image of herself in the role of the leader of Egypt guided by the gods because of that when she was portrayed she was not portrayed in a feminine way she doesn't look like other queens of Egypt like you saw the image of Menkaur's wife instead her images are very definitely stylized in the tradition of the Pharaoh I mean in the picture on your right there is a beard case that's not about what had ships that actually looked like this is simply a matter of the Pharaoh the king of ancient Egypt looking like all the other Kings because even though Hatshepsut was a woman when she became clicking she became part of that same consistent cyclical tradition now Hatshepsut remains a bit of a mystery to us because although we do have some images of Hatshepsut most of them have had to be repaired and restored I mean you can see in both of these images cracks breaks that these pictures these depictions actually had to be recent from broken pieces almost all of the memories almost all of these sculptures and memorabilia of Hatshepsut's reign was destroyed shortly after her son came to power for example in this image you will see the smaller figure which is Thutmose the third however if you'll look you'll see if you have to squint at it you'll see a pockmarked bit of stone there on your screen that pockmarked bit if you can follow it with your eyes it actually forms the shape of a figure a very large figure that larger figure was actually Hatshepsut we don't know exactly what happened for a long time historians and scholars guessed that Thutmose the third hated his mother for not allowing him to become King and that after he did become King he destroyed or vandalized all remembrances of her we don't believe that's true anymore we actually believe the truth is a bit more complex the problem is again records are fragmentary we don't have a clean hieroglyphics story to follow we know that Hatshepsut as I mentioned a moment ago took over when there was an assassination attempt on her son when he was quite young the problem is that once a king exceeds through the rule of Pharaoh is into wealth why the God speaks for the gods on behalf of Egypt that is a job that they have until their death there is no stepping down from being Pharaoh once one is Pharaoh Pharaoh one is Pharaoh until one dies the fact that Hatshepsut rained so long while Thutmose is alive actually suggests that rather than hating his mother tough most may actually have loved her very much otherwise she might indeed have been assassinated by her own son we do however know that after Thutmose the third the third takes the throne there is a grab for power by the priests and the nobility and we think that it may have been and we're totally guessing on this we don't know we think it may have been under the idea or under the guise that Thutmose was a weak King because he had allowed his mother to be in power for so long we think that he may have gone back and vandalized the memories of his mother in order to establish his independence and power regardless it remains a mystery but we do know that there were female Queens of Egypt but that when those Queens took power they took on the same role as every other King and their depictions are that same standardized image the images on the outside of Hatshepsut temple her funeral a temple indicates that same idea or theme now unlike the earlier kings of the old kingdom Hatshepsut did not have a giant pyramid instead she actually created what was called a rock-cut tomb common for other kings of her time now archaeologists are not very creative guys a rock-cut tomb is called a rock-cut tomb because it's cut into rock oh my imagine that basically this is in the Valley of the Kings on the west bank of the Nile River I keep saying it west sunset and ending death the temple is actually cut into the rock on that side of the river it is a double layered temple you can see in the upper picture the tourists visiting it today the entire front area of the temple was lined with large sculptures depicting Hatshepsut in the role of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt if you'll notice the crown has both the flat top and the the nipple head it also depicts her in the role of Osiris with the crossed arms and the beard casing female Queen yet even in her burial they preserve that same image that same idea of the cycle no matter who the king or queen is they are still acting on behalf of the gods there is still that sense of consistency now funerary temples and temples to the Pharaoh as God and King are standard throughout ancient Egyptian history some of them are quite spectacular most of the most spectacular ones we have actually belong to one king a king with one of the longest known rules in ancient Egypt and from what we can tell quite a spectacular ego to match his name was Ramses II or Ramses the great we believe that he ruled for somewhere between 60 to 70 years which considering that he was not a child King is an unbelievably long time as king of Egypt during his reign Ramses II builds many massive statues and monuments to himself but one of the most fascinating is this temple named Abu Simbel it's one of a pair of temples one dedicated to Ramses the great one dedicated to his wife Nefertari not to be confused with Nefertiti they're two different people the temple of Abu Simbel was actually a temple honoring the rule of Ramses in other words it's not a funerary temple there's no funerary statue no bowl for offerings instead it focuses on depicting Ramses the great both as Horus in the land of the living and Osiris in his future role as Lord of the Dead and counselor to the king the temple entrance is flanked by four massive statues each one of those statues is between 60 and 70 feet in height here's a different shot of those four sculptures of course yes the sculptres have been damaged originally they were all intact but when we were unearthed when we unearthed them you can see that they have fallen apart you can actually see a broken piece of that second one lying on the ground in front of the statue itself now Abu Simbel is doubly fascinating to us number one because it shows us Ramses statement of power his establishment of his role again as king of Upper and Lower Egypt you can see the double crown has survived on one of the four statues the massive monumental scale 70 foot tall statues flanking the entrance to the actual temple but one of the most fascinating things about Abu Simbel actually is much more recent in the era of the 1960's between 1964 and 1968 the Aswan Dam was built in Egypt in order to control and mitigate the flow of the Nile River in portions unfortunately as the Aswan Dam was built someone realized they had not considered something they had not considered the Nile rivers adjacency to Abu Simbel this temple was going to be flooded and be under water during flood stage of the Nile River with the new Aswan Dam at this point they panicked they realized that they actually had to either ditch the dam project or change the location of Abu Simbel and this is where modern technology blows my mind the architects of the time actually cut Abu Simbel like the entire temple into pieces and moved it up the bank of the river away from the flood about a hundred and eighty feet after raising it about a hundred and eighty feet to the side they reassembled the temple they'd cut into blocks aligning it exactly the same direction that it was before they actually moved the structure that is unbelievable but it's absolutely true and it's the reason we still have Abu Simbel today and tourists can still go visit it now those giant statues on the front again show Ramses ii Ramses the great as king of Upper and Lower Egypt the mighty King you can see there that Horus the hawk or Falcon headed God associated with guiding the Pharaoh in the land of the living is depicted on the side of the tomb outside with these sculptures of Ramses the great marking Ramses is being guided by or indwelt by the spirit of Horus guiding them inside the temple though inside the narrow passageway things are a bit different inside that massive passageway is a long narrow temple hallway flanked by huge sculptures again of Ramses ii this time however instead of being portrayed as Horus as he was on the outside he here is portrayed as Lord of the underworld he is repeatedly portrayed as Osiris again emphasizing the cycle Horus caring for the living the son then in the inside Osiris caring for the dead the father in the afterlife Ramses has himself portrayed as both of those gods emphasizing the idea of the cycle between Horace and Osiris the living and the dead was very powerful during his time as ruler at the very back of the tomb you can see there are further doorways eventually this tomb leads to an inner chamber clear at the back of the tomb that inner chamber is only lit on two days in the year in those two days in February and October because of the position of the tomb remember they angled it exactly the same when they moved it up the bank to avoid the flood clear at the back during those two days in February in October the Sun hits the interchain inner chamber illuminating three of the four statues carefully positioned at the back of the tomb those four figures three of them were two of them represents the Sun gods one of them represents the king himself so there is Ra-Horakhte Amon-Re remember I mentioned we talked about the gods there are multiple different versions of the Sun God because he is so important and of course then a statue of king Ramses ii himself seated with the gods again the pharaohs associate themselves as king and god clear to the left however is the Theban god of darkness Ptah the Sun never strikes him appropriate perhaps for the god of darkness as you can see in the picture we don't have a good depiction of him most of the head of that sculpture has been destroyed but we believe because the positioning of the tomb was so carefully recreated this was actually designed so the god of darkness was never actually illuminated even on the two days of the year when the gods of the Sun and the Pharaoh are touched by the light itself now the sculptures at Abu Simbel like all the others are standardized we don't believe they actually look like Ramses ii personally they are simply that image of the Pharaoh has continued on as I said before we do not get depictions of the Pharaoh we do get more depictions of the commoners the commoners are not as aspiring to be part of the tradition they are not trying to associate themselves with the gods there's only one time during Egyptian history where that is not the case and we get a much more realistic depiction of what the kings and queens the nobility of Egypt actually looked like that occurs under the reign of a pharaoh named Akhenamun now like many other pharaohs he's named after one of the gods Amun-Ra in this case now King Akhenamun has a number of very revolutionary ideas of what he would like to do with Egypt he wants to make some serious changes I mean for example he actually wants to move the capital city of Egypt away from its traditional location he believes will be better for trade he wants to change some of the caste structure of Egypt reorganizing things to be a bit more like the Old Kingdom and the priests actively resist the changes that Akhenamun suggests ultimately Akhenamun claims that he has had a vision he says that in his vision a God appears to him that God tells him that is the Sun God okay there's lots of Sun gods in Egypt but Akhenamun says that this Sun God identifies himself as Aten-Re and a ten says that there are no other gods all of these other Sun gods all of the other gods the Egyptians claimed Horus Osiris those are all lies in fact there is only one God attend and Aten-Re the one and only Son God has chosen a phenomena to be his priests the only person he will speak to Akhenamun rejects his own name he doesn't want to be named after a false Sun God Amun-Re and changes his name to honor this new one and only true God he begins calling himself Akhenaton named after Aten-Re the one and only Son God because of his vision he rejects polytheism thousands of years of tradition in Egypt Egypt has always been polytheistic Akhenaton declares polytheism wrong incorrect a lie he basically bans the priests from their jobs because they are all liars and con men who are promoting the ideas of many gods and goddesses when there is only one attend and Akhenaton claims that he is the one and only deity he is the heir he Akhenaten is the servant of this one and only deity Aten-Re now Akhenaten because he is not trying to be part of this tradition he is not claiming to be a God in human form because he's not trying to do the same things that the kings of Egypt for thousands of years have done Akhenaten's artwork the artwork created under his time as king looks completely different than artwork from other times of Egypt Akhenaten himself abandons the very square traditional view instead Akhenaten's sculptures are very long and narrow his face is exceedingly long and thin with full lips he has a very low gut that you can see in the picture on the left very long spindly arms and legs and he's often depicted with what appeared to be rusts he's got some serious gynecomastia that's the scientific term for man boobs consistently throughout the sculptor's now we don't know why we actually believe it is possible that Akhenaten had a problem a genetic deformity or a disease known as Marfan syndrome which produces all of those symptoms that low-hanging gut gynecomastia is spindly arms and legs and elongated long face all of those things are consistent it is possible that this actually was the result of Egyptian kings inbreeding it is also possible that it was not a genetic deformity that Akhenaten was trying to portray himself with both male and female characteristics because of his worship of the Aten the Sun God this fertility God which one of those is true was it actually us getting to see the genetic problems for the first time since the artwork is more realistic or was it simply a new type of stylizing to create that fertility ideal we honestly don't know and we will not know until we accurately identify the mummy of Akhenaten we do think there might have been a mummy that might be Akhenaten we may have found him there are scholars who believe that it is the mummy of Akhenaten and they're trying to do DNA matching with other mummies to prove that point but there are other scholars who are challenging that idea so at the moment we are not positive yet whether we have found Akhenaten's mummy that's still a work in progress what we have found are depictions of Akhenaten which as I said consistently show these strange physical characteristics that is not however true of all the sculptures during Akhenaten's time Akhenaten creates a style of art called Amarna art that actually gives us a much more personalized a much more realistic image of what the individual being depicted looks like think more like the Egyptian commoner sculptures less like the Egyptian pharaoh sculptures among the most famous of the sculptures from Akhenaten's rule is actually a sculpture of Akhenaten's wife Akhenaten's wife is Queen Nefertiti the sculpture of Nefertiti is actually beautiful it is breathtaking and it's one of those things like the Rosetta stone that we are so grateful we found it was one of those impossible chances excavations actually opened a room a chamber that had been a sculptor studio and as we walked into the damaged decrepit half room that remained it was a sculpture a bust a head and shoulders sculpture sitting on the work table and that was Nefertiti now the sculpture of Nefertiti is breathtaking it depicts Akhenaten's wife Nefertiti the only other priestess the only other person that the God Aten-Re they're monotheistic one God would actually speak to she's depicted as absolutely breathtaking she has the long sloped crown on her head her features are beautiful now this is a bust just a head and shoulders she is slightly elongated like Akhenaten but most of that elongation that graceful stretch is in the crown and in her slightly longer than natural neck the rest of her face is exceedingly realistic we believe we think that this actually looks like Nefertiti herself would have looked part of the reason we believe that is because of the details and because modern science as we've studied this has shown us something truly remarkable about the sculpture Nefertiti's face was actually slightly altered after the sculpture was completed in doing modern scans on the sculpture we've discovered that another layer of plaster a very thin layer of plaster was added to both sides of the mouth and the corners of her eyes essentially deepening the wrinkles on the sculpture now that additional deepening of the lines on the sculpture was most likely not done to make her more graceful beautiful and youthful it gives a sense of age a sense of maturity and we believe that it was added later in order to make Nefertiti look more realistic again the details are beautiful from her cheekbones to the lines and the structure of her neck whoever carved this sculpture carved with a great deal of attention to what Nefertiti looked like in fact modern historians generally believe that this sculpture was kind of a template today and with artists will often paint draw sculpt based on a photograph of an individual in ancient Egypt of course they couldn't work from a photograph so we believe this sculpture was the original it was designed to look as much like the Queen as possible so then other artists could use this as kind of like a photographic reference they could use it as a starter for other depictions of the Queen instead of actually seeing the Queen they would look at the sculpture as an example of what she looked like to create other images and other sculptures of her Nefertiti and Akhenaten actually are depicted over and over again in artwork often shown either with their family in very casual poses or shown honoring the one and only God that they honored Aten for example in this picture Akhenaten is actually depicted with his mother queen ty I'll show you another picture her in a moment that's who's standing behind Akhenaten with that spectacular headdress on her head Akhenaten here is shown honoring the Aten the Sun God Aten-Re who is depicted of course as the round Sun he is offering lotus blossoms to the Sun now again in this depiction of Akhenaten you can actually see what I mentioned before with the exaggerated strange features which might actually be realistic if he had a genetic disorder from inbreeding or actually might be a representation of Akhenaten as both male and female in order to honor the fertility of the Sun you can see the low-slung gut you can see the the breasts in fact his figure looks very similar to his mother's figure behind him if you did not know as the inscription says that this is Akhenaten honoring the Aten it would be easy to mistake Akhenaten for a female figure nonetheless the depictions of Akhenaten are consistently this way over and over again so either again this is the only way he wanted to be depicted or it actually reflects some physical characteristics it's not only the fertility figure the head itself is elongated in a strange way and in other depictions the hands and feet are also elongated for example this is actually one of Akhenaten's hands from a different depiction you can see the extremely elongated shape of the hand and the long narrow disturbing fingers this very strange stylized image kind of depicts the pharaoh almost as if he's deformed and yet it stays away it still steers away from that extremely formal consistency that we see in depictions of other pharaohs in the more traditional Egyptian artwork Akhenaten actually is usually depicted in quite casual poses for example this image shows Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti actually playing with their daughters you'll see three little children I always call them alien babies because they've got really weird shaped heads Akhenaten and his wife here are being shown as blessed by Aten please note the round Sun shape in the center that depicts Aten their Sun God their one and only God now Akhenaten is depicted on the left again very strange elongated body long hands and feet he's wearing that rounded crown again you'll notice that he's actually kissing his little daughter you'll never see any other depiction of an Egyptian pharaoh in ancient Egypt doing this simply because the Pharaoh always has himself depicted as being akin to the gods there's always a sense of dignity and formality but Akhenaten doesn't have that he shows himself kissing his daughter because he's not trying to be a God he is simply the priest of the god he is just a man who is king and who loves his family on the right hand side you'll see Nefertiti with her to two of her daughters when I say that this is natural it sounds so silly because they look so stylized so flattened out so weird and yet if you look there's a little girl one of her daughters the youngest daughter the baby is kind of stuck up there on Nefertiti's shoulders he or she's just kind of like stuck up there if you'll notice what that daughter's doing that's what I mean when I say this is natural and informal the little girl Nefertiti is actually wearing big hoop earrings and the baby is actually reaching up to play with mommy's earrings that is so natural it is such a depiction of something beautifully realistic this family moment so as stylized as this is as weird as the bodies may look to us there's this wonderful sense of naturalism the sense of a casual family moment that comes through in Amarna art in this particular style of artwork that we do not see depicted any other time in Egyptian history it also gives us a glimpse of something else gives us a glimpse of what the royalty really looked like and just as I mentioned a while ago we know that Ramses ii Ramses the great was a redhead which implies a greater degree of diversity in ancient Egypt than most people would think we know again that there is diversity under Akhenaten's rule because we actually get to see it through the realistic depictions in Amarna art for example I mentioned a moment ago that Akhenaten's mother queen Tiye was there this is actually queen Tiye this is Akhenaten's mom queen Tiye is a fascinating figure we know a little bit around her but not as much as we would like we know that queen ty started at humble beginnings she is very unusual in a caste system like ancient Egypt because she comes from humble beginnings and rises to be queen she actually becomes an incredibly powerful queen who prior to Akhenaten taking them to be a single monotheistic system was actually considered to be a goddess now in the depiction of queen Tiye you'll notice queen Tiye looks very different than Nefertiti her facial structure certainly is still lovely but number one she is definitely an older woman the the marionette lines the lines on both sides of her mouth are far more pronounced you'll also note that she is definitely culturally from a different background we believe that queen Tiye probably came from either Indochina or she came from Central Africa possibly a little bit of both you get that depiction of her now originally queen Tiye would have had a rather spectacular headdress you can see she already has spectacular jewelry a golden headband golden earrings however originally that background that was not hair that was actually a headdress which has a spectacular spiked peak on top if you're calling the picture where I showed you she was standing behind a cannot and she had a really fancy hat with a very tall vertical spike on top that's not just in a picture this sculpture actually portrayed it as well let me zoom out here and give you an image of what the entire sculpture looks like now here you can actually see the side view you can see in the both of the pictures that there's a little section of blue beads on the back of the headdress originally the entire headdress would have been covered in that it's a technique of coating metal to give that blue color using chemical processes that's called fiance it's a very similar process to the way that they created the blue color on the Ishtar Gate back in Mesopotamia we believe that the entire headdress you can actually see the indentations where the beads would have been set in and then at the top as you can see on the side view on the left there's a large vertical piece that's actually the top of the headdress quite similar to the image that we saw earlier with her following Akhenaten in the worship of the Aten again Queen Tiye he's extremely accurate we believe in her depiction again Amarna art does not require all of the queens to look like Isis all of the kings to look like Horus or Osiris instead there is this sense of diversity now unfortunately or fortunately depending on whose side you're on when Akhenaten dies the Egyptian priests immediately return and push the following kings to once again go back to be polytheistic there is a period of chaos and turmoil after Akhenaten's death there's a pharaoh immediately after Akhenaten that we know almost nothing about we know his name and that's it his name is Smenkhkare and we know nothing about him we have no mummy no records in fact some historians have suggested that perhaps Smenkhkare was actually the name Nefertiti took Akhenaten's wife that she became Pharaoh after his death there is not a lot of evidence one way or the other it's a mystery again they're guessing archaeologists are assuming and hoping and trying to find evidence what we do know is that polytheism returns quickly after Akhenaten's death how do we know that for sure well there are two big ways we know the first is actually the temple building to many gods and goddesses starts almost immediately after Akhenaten's death the location where we find that is when one of the largest temple complexes ever built by man and that is Karnak the temple complex at Karnak is unbelievably huge it was being built upon so in other words construction was in progress for about 1300 years it covers an area of 247 acres and it is largely decorated to Amun and Atum the Sun gods and the Creator gods this huge temple complex is massive and construction on the temple complex is non-stop the only time it really changes is during the reign of Akhenaten when the temple complex is altered with a long temple area dedicated to Akhenaten as priests and Aten as the one and only God the central area of Karnak however is dedicated to the early in it earlier Egyptian Sun gods it is a massive temple area which you're seeing in the picture on the left there's a huge central hallway flanked by smaller shorter hallways again they're fairly narrow they have to be because of post and lintel architecture that central hallway is actually built in a form or style called a hypostyle Hall the hypostyle Hall has a long series of columns each one the capital the top of the column is painted as a papyrus plant or reed from Lower Egypt the hypostyle Hall itself covers around 50,000 square feet there are over a hundred and thirty four columns flanking it in sixteen rows working their way outward from this massive central series of columns these columns are remarkable you can see how narrow they are with the the single lintel going across the top you can also see that there are actually grid work at the top that would be for air flow to allow the air to come through the column part of what makes these columns and these grids for airflow so impressive is that these things are put together without any mortar there is no connective glue if you will between the stones in these areas instead everything was cut out of stone so perfectly that they fit together like an interlocking jigsaw puzzle that has survived for thousands of years now I can tell you the proportions I can tell you the measurements when I say this thing is 80 feet on high it is absolutely massive if you stand underneath and look up it gives you an idea of the scale here I can't take you there but I can show you a picture that's it that is looking straight up from underneath in the hypostyle hall at Karnak this place is beautiful it is incredibly impressive and it is dedicated again to the gods the Sun gods of Egyptian culture who are so central so important to their life because the Sun gods are what make their crops grow the Sun and the Nile are what bring Egypt through the millennia as a successful nation it allows them to have food it allows them to have plenty and the Egyptians honor those gods not only by associating their gods with their excuse me their kings with the gods themselves but by honoring the gods through these massive temples that honor the structure and tradition of Egyptian belief now here's the overhead map that gives you an idea what the hypostyle Hall looks like in terms of structure please notice everywhere that there is an indoor area you see a lot of dots on the map that is for the same reason that we've been talking about all the way back in Neolithic era basically you cannot have a large post and lintel structure without internal support they don't have steel reinforcing beams the reason that there are all those dots in the map is that those are columns and those columns are required in order to support the weight of the roof in any structure it's going to have lentils that's going to have those horizontal pieces covering the top of the structure now Karnak this temple we're building immediately resumes on the death of Akhenaten goes back to polytheism they start building to Aten and not to Aten forgive me - Atum and Amun goes back to those many gods and goddesses we know that that is almost immediate after Akhenaten's death thanks to the building at Karnak and we also know that because of the Pharaoh who follows the mystery Pharaoh Smenkhkare this Pharaoh actually restores Egypt to its polytheistic beliefs this Pharaoh comes to power is a very young man we believe eight or nine years old and when he comes to power his name is Tutankhaten we believe he may have been Akhenaten son because his name Tutankhaten actually means gift of or beloved of Aten that would be Aten-Re the one and only God that Akhenaten introduced the thing is that shortly after Tutankhaten becomes king evidently he believes the Egyptian priests he follows their suggestions and he takes Egypt back to being polytheistic he gets rid of monotheism and changes his name so that his name is no longer associated with Aten the supposed one true God and is instead associated with Amun-Re one of the gods that here in Karnak was deeply honored one of the gods that the temples in Karnak was were built to honor and instead of Tutankhaten this Kings name now becomes Tutankhamun now to tackle moon is familiar to most people because we're King Tut's tomb is well known the big thing with student commune is actually his tomb King Tut's tomb is so special because it was the first Kings tomb in ancient Egypt that we discovered before it had been robbed every other tomb we have found up to this point somewhat had been there robbed pillaged taken all of the things that the King had been buried with before we actually arrived King Tut's tomb wasn't like that when King Tut's tomb was discovered hidden the entrance was hidden inside another tomb King Tut's tomb when we opened it was intact in the 1930s at expedition opened King Tut's tomb and were shocked and thrilled it was the first time we had ever seen how an Egyptian King was honestly and truly buried now King Tut's tomb is interesting because it is different from other tombs in several ways one is that it is smaller than most other Egyptian kings tombs we believe because of a variety of different factors we believe that King Tut's tomb his burial was a rush job the kid died when he was in his late teens somewhere and although we we don't know I mean we don't think the Egyptians certainly the priesthood did not expect him to die that soon at that age we know that the burial was a rush job for several reasons one of them is actually the mildew in the tomb it appears the paint was still wet when the tomb was sealed so basically they weren't done decorating the tomb before Tut died and when he died they did a quick job and just kind of sealed the place up we think that because it's so small only three rooms we think that the tomb itself may actually been bury are borrowed from someone else when the King died this was available so they immediately rushed all of his property all of his belongings into it and placed his burial there now just like we talked in earlier tombs with a mastaba with Djoser's Step Pyramid with Great Pyramids whatever went into the tomb was believed to have a ghost equivalency in the afterlife and Tut's tomb includes a variety of different objects that tell us how seriously they took this idea for example King Tut's tomb actually included several chariots so he could race chariots in the afterlife it also included several sailing ships that had actually been carefully disassembled and packed so that he could actually go sailing on ghost lakes in the afterlife the first and third rooms the two of the two ends are actually the ones that contain most of the treasure and then the center room the one in the middle was actually the one where Tut was buried now a recent scholar has actually suggested that he believes there are hidden openings in Tut's tomb and there may be other rooms possibly another hidden tomb behind Tut's see here he shows this sketch shows where they believes those two secret doors are he believes that one of those doors actually might hold the tomb of Queen Nefertiti which we have not yet found no one is sure they actually did scans to see if there was a hidden chamber the initial scans said yes there was a hollow space a chamber and archaeologists got really excited about it they were making plans to open it a second scan by the Egyptian Department of Antiquities indicated that there is no chamber it is a solid wall so currently there are no plans to open the doors in Tut's tombs until there's some further development essentially this is a lot of expense and potential danger to the tomb and the two different evaluations of whether there are open spaces came up with two different answers so right now the entire thing is on hold for the current time now inside Tut's tomb we found over 3,000 different items that he was buried with and some of those items are highly decorated that artwork shows us that the transition is happening during Tut's reign between Amarna art that individualized unique personalized style under Akhenaten and much more traditional artwork here you can see the inside of Tut's tomb it looks nothing like I would expect it to look look's more like my garage then the movie version of a king's tomb you can see that there are boxes that would have been filled with clothing and other items you can see benches actually in the shape of animals and you can see part of a bed frame you can see a chairs like just right up on top of there all of these things are beautifully decorated objects which would have been intended for use in the afterlife they didn't just put the lousy low-rent stuff into the tomb they put in the items that the king would want to use in the afterlife fortunately for us like I said this lets us see the style of artwork that was used while King Tut was in power for example this is actually a golden throne that would have been used by King Tut you can see like the depictions in Mesopotamia on the standard of Ur there are actually animal feet on the bottom of the chair the back of the chair is decorated with an image of Tutankhamun King Tut and his wife actually she is serving him a goblet or cup of something now again you can see that this is a blend of styles there is a degree of Amarna art there Tut's body type looks very much alike Akhenaten's body type the facial structure is quite similar however there is a very strong formalized sense with that stylized shape his wife is much less similar to the depiction of Akhenaten or Akhenaten of Tut forgive me she looks much more like a traditional viewpoint there is this halfway in-between style of art that part of it looks very muchly like the traditional view the thousands of years that came before Akhenaten part of it looks much more like this style of Amarna art under Akhenaten's rule we do not know for sure the relationship between Tut and Akhenaten because well we don't have the mummy that we know is Akhenaten yet so we can't do full DNA testing the current theory is that King Tut was Akhenaten's son but we are not quite sure of that because of the mystery Pharaoh Smenkhkare between the two what we do know is that the priests made sure that King Tut was buried with all of the glory and luxury of a great Pharaoh even though he was very young even though he was not a great Pharaoh he did restore the priesthood to their place so we believe the priests wanted to honor that decision if you hear anything weird up there we go the dog just came up on the couch hello dog now we believe the priests actually made sure that Tut was buried with all of the luxury of a great King simply because he gave them their jobs back and they were grateful for that gift so they made sure that he was honored for what he had done King Tut's tomb is full of amazing treasures but probably the one that everybody recognizes and perhaps the most spectacular thing in that tomb was actually the sarcophagus in which King Tut was buried King Tut's sarcophagus was multi-layered there were actually five sarcophagi five different coffins this is the third of those coffins and this one this one's a doozy this particular coffin is actually made of solid gold about 243 pounds of solid gold to be precise it is inlaid with a variety of precious and semi-precious materials including red jasper or lapis lazuli fiance sections you can see that King Tut is depicted as the king his arms are crossed across his chest and if you'll notice yes like I mentioned earlier there are the wings necklace wings the goddess of sleep has wrapped him in her wings he's only sleeping until he is brought back to fight in the army with Osiris to finally once and for all defeat Set now this is a spectacular piece of work not only because it's solid gold but because of the detail and inlaid work on the coffin inside this was a wooden coffin and then inside that wooden coffin was the actual body of King Tut and over the head and shoulders of King Tut was yet another solid gold mask weighing over 40 pounds covering the head and shoulders that inner mask looks much like this sarcophagus you can see here this is actually the inner mask inside that solid gold coffin interestingly enough these depictions of King Tut both on the sarcophagus and the mask go back to being very similar to the tradition of the Pharaoh being depicted as part of the gods as part of that cycle that was very similar to all other Kings up to this point Tut looks very muchly like the earlier depictions of the Pharaoh he does not look in any way individualized and in fact because we do have Tut's mummy we have been able to reconstruct what Tut would have looked like and he doesn't look anything like these depictions now King Tut's body is a hot mess oh I made a pun it didn't mean - King Tut was buried in a rush I said that before they didn't expect him to die in his teens so they buried the body very quickly they actually did not take all the time on mummification and embalming that they should have taken it was a rush job and because of that we know that the chemical processes involved in embalming had not completed when King Tut was actually placed inside the sarcophagus we know that after the sarcophagus was sealed he kind of caught on fire um there wasn't a big flame or anything like that because he was inside of five layers of sarcophagi so there was very little oxygen in there but we do know he cooked the body actually reached several hundred degrees Fahrenheit and he's very crispy there are a lot of questions about King Tut's mummy because it is kind of baked however there is enough of it that we are able to do some reconstruction King Tut was severely inbred we do believe that King Tut and his wife had only one set of grandparents between the two of them which is absolutely horrifying yes we believe King Tiye was probably his grandmother for him and his wife we know that Tut had a severely bent club foot the poor kid was buried with over a hundred and fifty walking canes and we do not think those walking canes were just for show we don't think tuck could have stood for extended period of time or could have walked very easily because of that deformity probably from severe genetic inbreeding we know that there were a lot of serious problems we also know that King Tut the body actually has a hole in the back of its skull and early scholars believe that Tut might have actually been assassinated he might have been murdered they believe that his skull was bashed in we know thanks to more advanced modern science that that hole was actually made in the back of King Tut's skull posthumously it actually happened after he was long dead we actually now the current theory is that King Tut's skull actually had to be opened because we know that King Tut had a cleft palate a rather severe one and we do not think that they could access the brain cavity through the nose as would have been traditional in embalming because King Tut's cleft palate was so severe they couldn't access it because of skull deformity they think that hole in the back was actually to help with the mummification and embalming process we do not think King Tut would have looked anything like depictions of him we do not think he would have been an extremely handsome young man because well genetic problems inbreeding we do not actually know what King Tut died of there are all different kinds of theories there's a lot of damage to the body we're still arguing over whether that's posthumous or not what we do know is that there's something really really really odd about King Tut's body King Tut's mummy does not have a heart inside the chest cavity now that was extremely important the other viscera removed during the embalming process King Tut however the heart was not replaced and we don't know why there are a number of different theories one of the theories is that Tut was actually killed in a chariot accident there was a guy I'm not kidding he actually did studies paralleling the damage to King Tut's body and bone structure with modern crashes automobile crashes he believes there are very strong similarities and parallels between auto injury damage and the injury done to King Tut's body his theory is that Tut actually was severely injured in some sort of chariot racing a scholar has since refuted that said no no that's not true he says that because of King Tut severely twisted leg and foot he would not have been able to stand in a chariot he couldn't have been chariot racing because that would not have been physically possible for him the first guy is currently refuting that but it's an argument between archaeologists and watching archaeologists fight they do it in peer-reviewed journals through journal articles that come out like every few years and so it's really slow it gets really mean and brutal but it doesn't work very fast so there's still an open question as to exactly what it was that killed King Tut what we do know is that King Tut gives us just one window one glimpse into exactly how seriously the Egyptians took the idea of their Pharaohs ds the embodiment of the gods and how much effort they put into burying them with what they would need in the afterlife for the Egyptians like the Greek said religion is incredibly important it is in a very serious way the center of their culture and as part of what makes it so strange and so fascinating to us