Vulgar History - The Gorgeous Legacy of Egyptian Queen Nefertiti

00:00:00.000 hello and welcome to vulgar history a feminist women's history comedy podcast my name is ann

00:00:13.820 foster and this is a super special episode i just want to clarify i explained last week so

00:00:18.960 we're in the midst of doing the mary queen of scots season there's something about mary queen

00:00:23.320 of scots but the way it's going to work just to make everything a bit more doable for me

00:00:29.120 is we're going to talk about a Mary Queen of Scots person. And then we're going to take the next week

00:00:32.680 to have a super special episode where I have a guest talking about something that interests them

00:00:37.920 or about a book that they've written, that sort of thing. And then next week, we're going to be

00:00:41.800 doing the next person in Mary Queen of Scots. And that way, there can be episodes of Vulgar History

00:00:46.100 every week. But also I have time to do all the research I need to do. And we're all having a

00:00:50.380 good time. And when I was thinking of guests to invite to do these super specials, I was like,

00:00:55.360 oh my God, I need to invite Gina. So this is my friend, Gina Berry. And I don't even remember

00:00:59.760 how or why we became friends, but we became friends on social media. And we talk about it a

00:01:04.940 bit in this chat that you're going to hear. But basically she is all about ancient Egypt in the

00:01:10.720 same way that I am all about Mary Queen of Scots. Like I knew this was her passion. I knew Nefertiti

00:01:15.100 was especially like, that's her person. That's her Empress Sisi, like Empress Sisi is to Lana

00:01:20.240 Wood Johnson. This is her person. And so I was really excited when Gina agreed to come

00:01:24.640 be on the podcast. And as you can probably see just by the time signature on this episode,

00:01:29.800 like we get to talking, like we discussed this fully. And I just want to also set the scene a

00:01:35.180 little bit. So what we're looking at is ancient, ancient Egypt, like ancient, this is longest to

00:01:42.200 go of anything that has ever been discussed on this podcast. Like Cleopatra, for instance,

00:01:46.860 was around 69 BCE.

00:01:49.960 Artemisia I of Caria, who we talked about,

00:01:52.300 she was like 400 BCE,

00:01:54.940 but we're talking about like 1550 BCE,

00:01:59.320 like 1,000, 1,500 years before Cleopatra,

00:02:04.680 1,000 years before Artemisia of Caria.

00:02:06.440 It's incredible how much information we have

00:02:08.300 considering how long ago it is.

00:02:10.040 Like this is, blows my mind how long ago this is

00:02:12.380 and how we still have some things from them,

00:02:14.980 some artwork and some writings and things but anyway this is gina's this is her expertise so

00:02:21.580 um i hope you enjoy this really uh in-depth conversation with myself and gina berry about

00:02:28.940 nefertiti okay so i'm here joined by gina berry who i'm excited to be talking to you i feel so

00:02:38.080 comfortable is that weird like we've been friends on social media for years we have and we've never

00:02:42.960 actually like spoken spoken it's always just exchanging dms or whatnot exactly it's like

00:02:48.680 one of the things we have in common is we both really like re um reimaginings of like what

00:02:53.320 people look might have really looked like yes based off of statues or paintings and things

00:02:58.360 we're always sending those back and forth yes because some of them i'm like that's not quite

00:03:04.240 what i would have thought but you know interesting it's interesting it's interesting because one of

00:03:08.920 things is like the skin tone sometimes people go with can really vary when you're looking at it,

00:03:14.500 especially ancient Egypt, right? Yes. Yes. Well, because they had so many different

00:03:19.160 variations because even though, so like, you know, kind of like with ancient Rome,

00:03:25.000 you had a lot of people coming from different areas that all converged on the city of Rome.

00:03:31.160 That's why they had at one point, you know, over a million citizens within the city walls. So,

00:03:37.300 So, you know, if you think about it, ancient Egypt, Egypt, Thebes, you know, they all had these vast civilizations, these vast amounts of people.

00:03:49.680 And it wouldn't just be people that were born there.

00:03:52.700 It would be people that migrated there from different areas, you know, even different countries, but definitely different areas.

00:03:59.700 So, you know, even look at, you know, I was born and raised in the upper Midwest.

00:04:04.900 West. So I don't have a whole lot of color to my skin tone because there's not a whole lot of sun

00:04:11.300 up there or a whole lot of heat. You know, it's probably snowing there right now. Whereas, you

00:04:15.820 know, down South, you have a lot of sun, you have a lot of heat and people are going to have darker 0.69

00:04:20.780 skin tones. So, you know, just, you know, Upper Egypt, Lower Egypt, you're going to have different 0.99

00:04:25.160 skin tones. So it just really depends on not necessarily specific regions, but just where did

00:04:33.100 that person migrate from. And so I picture Thebes having just, I mean, every shade of brown possible

00:04:43.360 walking around the streets because you would literally have people from just everywhere. 1.00

00:04:48.700 And then, I mean, if you were able to get away with it, you would even have some Nubians in there, 1.00

00:04:52.340 which would be even darker than everybody else. So like I said, if you could get away with it, 1.00

00:04:57.760 I'm not really sure if they would have been allowed to stay or not because they would have

00:05:00.900 stood out but I just I like to think of it as as every shade of brown possible would have been

00:05:06.780 walking the streets in ancient Egypt and to me that is so I mean for me being a person of color

00:05:13.520 that to me that would just be I mean that would be like heaven to me to see so much melanin

00:05:20.660 walking around next to me that that would just be amazing I would love to see that

00:05:26.120 well I mean everybody can tell right now like you're very passionate about ancient Egypt

00:05:30.840 This is why I really wanted to have you on the podcast and just to talk about this, because I know this is like as much as Mary, Queen of Scots and like the Tudor era.

00:05:40.680 Like that was just I've been learning about so much other stuff now, but that was really my entry point into history, like as a child.

00:05:46.880 That's what I was interested in. So can you talk about your interest in ancient Egypt and where it came from?

00:05:52.200 You know, it didn't start out with ancient Egypt. It actually started out with Rome.

00:05:57.340 And I think the reason that is, is because I've mentioned before, you know, we can translate Latin because people today can still speak Latin.

00:06:07.220 And the ancient Romans were meticulous record keepers.

00:06:12.280 So there's not a whole lot of guesswork involved in that.

00:06:16.100 There's a lot of information available.

00:06:19.240 And it actually I mean, whether you can say it's factual or not, because, you know, obviously they're going to write what they want to write.

00:06:26.600 Yeah. So, you know, whoever was in charge was going to be made to look the best, obviously.

00:06:32.020 But it started with ancient Rome because there was just so much information available.

00:06:36.660 And I kind of backtracked a little bit to ancient Greece because obviously the Romans took a lot from the Greeks.

00:06:44.860 So I don't know as much about the Greeks because I haven't studied them quite as much.

00:06:49.660 But my segue to Egypt was was Rome. And what got me was when I got to the point of Cleopatra.

00:06:59.480 And I was like, OK, you know, we got this this ancient Egyptian queen wrecking shop here, you know.

00:07:07.600 And then I really started studying Cleopatra. I'm like, wait, she's not even Egyptian. 0.96

00:07:13.680 what the hell yeah what's going on here so um I was like well you know I want to know about 0.75

00:07:20.520 the real quote-unquote the real Egyptians and that's when I started going back further in time

00:07:27.020 and that's when I just kind of fell down the rabbit hole of of learning more it starts with

00:07:32.920 the gods because that's the thing that's really talked about the most when it comes to ancient

00:07:36.440 Egypt is the the pantheon of gods and I was like you know this isn't really where my interest lies

00:07:42.000 Because I'm a financial analyst for a living. So, you know, details, facts, logic that my brain, that's how my brain works. And so I wanted to know facts. So I started studying specific people, specific time periods, specific events that happened at specific times.

00:08:03.280 And that's when I came across, I started coming across the women that were considered to be the most powerful in ancient Egypt, the ones that they stood the test of time.

00:08:15.400 Their names were carried through because, I mean, how many women existed in history where we don't know their names?

00:08:21.400 But they had a huge influence on what took place within those civilizations.

00:08:26.200 But the women that were strong enough and badass enough for their names are still spoken to this day. 0.99

00:08:33.440 Those were the women I wanted to know about. And when I started learning more about Akhenaten, I realized that's when I made the connection between him and Nefertiti.

00:08:43.360 I'm like, OK, well, this is definitely a time period I want to know about.

00:08:46.640 So to be honest with you, I know the most about that time period of his reign than I do about anything else when it comes to ancient Egypt.

00:08:56.200 Which is probably a good thing that this is what we're talking about, because this is actually what I've dug into the most, because it just, it was so far out there from anything else that happened within ancient Egypt.

00:09:12.340 So, like I said, what got me into history was ancient Rome.

00:09:16.440 What got me into ancient Egypt was Cleopatra.

00:09:20.020 What got me in even deeper was Nefertiti.

00:09:24.260 And here we are.

00:09:25.300 I want to also just let everybody know, because I'm positive I said this when I did my Cleopatra episode a few years ago, but you were so helpful for me with the Cleopatra research, because I was like ancient Egypt. I was just like, I don't know anything. I'm like, Gina, explain this to me. And that's where I was just like, wait, she wasn't Egyptian? Wait, she was Greek? Like, I was totally just learning this stuff for the first time.

00:09:44.960 Yes. And that's the thing that, you know, if you want to learn about an ancient civilization, you have to go back far enough before anyone invaded, anyone came and, and obviously ancient Egypt was ruled by, by people other than Egyptians.

00:10:01.300 They were conquered a few times over the years. For the most part, they were ruled by Egyptians. And, you know, other than maybe, you know, China or Japan, you know, something like that, you can't really compare any other civilization like that because, you know, the Germans came and wiped out the Romans, you know.

00:10:23.020 So the Egyptians, when it came to ruling yourself, I think they ruled themselves the longest out of any other ancient civilization, as far as what I've come across. 0.81

00:10:35.480 So that right there.

00:10:37.400 No, exactly.

00:10:38.160 So this, it blew my mind when I was starting to just like, I've got my little notes about Nefertiti.

00:10:43.660 You're going to be leading this to discussion.

00:10:45.240 But just for me reading, I was just like, wait, this is like how long ago?

00:10:49.140 Like, it's so incredibly long ago.

00:10:52.460 Like this is longer ago than anything I've ever talked about on this podcast.

00:10:56.360 Like the longest ago I've ever been was like Cleopatra.

00:10:59.040 And that's like what, like 60, like 60 BCE.

00:11:02.120 And we're going like a thousand, 2000 years before that.

00:11:05.220 Like this is, I was trying to be like, wait, okay.

00:11:08.540 I forget.

00:11:09.540 I forget if I say this message, I was like, wait.

00:11:11.060 So the difference between when Nefertiti was around to when Cleopatra was around

00:11:15.000 is a difference between like us here today and the year like 800.

00:11:19.500 Like, yeah, it's so spread apart.

00:11:21.960 But to me, like, who doesn't know about ancient Egypt, I just think like, oh, ancient Egypt, it was kind of this brief thing.

00:11:26.820 It's like, yeah, no, this is like, like you were just saying, it's like one of the longest civilizations ever.

00:11:35.260 And, you know, it's funny because I was talking to my mom and man, you know, I just lost my mom in January.

00:11:43.160 So she would be so proud of me doing this.

00:11:46.540 Oh, I'm so sorry for that.

00:11:49.200 But I was talking to her once and I said, you know, when you watch a movie or a television show, they'll show the Pharaoh's residence, this big, huge structure that they would have built for themselves.

00:12:06.840 And they'll be standing on their balcony and they'll look out the balcony and they'll be looking at the Great Pyramid.

00:12:12.480 And I'm like, Mom, if people really did their research, they would see that any pharaoh's residence was at least 400 miles away from any pyramid that they could have seen.

00:12:29.780 But if you don't study it, you don't know.

00:12:34.000 So if you watch a movie, you read a YA fantasy book or whatever, you're going to see someone looking out their balcony looking at the Great Pyramid.

00:12:44.040 And that's just not the case. And that goes back to what you were saying about, you know, the time distance between Nefertiti and Cleopatra.

00:12:54.400 When you think of the great queens, you think, okay, Hatshepsut ruled, and then a couple of years later, oh, bam, then you've got Nefertiti.

00:13:03.260 And then, you know, maybe 50 years later, bam, you've got Cleopatra.

00:13:06.680 But that's not the case.

00:13:07.660 You've got thousands of years between each one of those women.

00:13:12.360 And that goes all the way back to the point that I made earlier, that the fact that those women's names have still carried over to this day.

00:13:22.000 Cleopatra kind of expected because she was part of the Roman writings.

00:13:26.100 So you would expect to see her, but Nefertiti and Hatshepsut, you would not expect to see those names still existing.

00:13:33.460 But I mean, you've got one of the greatest wonders of Egypt.

00:13:37.040 When you go and you look at things, what do you see?

00:13:38.660 You see the funerary temple of a queen, not a king, see a queen.

00:13:43.620 That image is something that people have seen a lot of.

00:13:47.040 And then, oh, you know, that's just something from ancient Egypt. 0.95

00:13:49.160 no that that was built because of a woman let's get that straight that was built because of a 0.97

00:13:55.940 woman and i just i have to be in awe of these women i i do that they they weren't killed the

00:14:04.140 moment they tried to assert any kind of authority and that we're still talking about them today 0.79

00:14:08.560 i i want to aspire to be those those women when i grow up exactly i know it just like you

00:14:15.680 describe it that's really like before I started really looking into Nefertiti that was basically

00:14:19.940 my understanding I'm like oh ancient Egypt you know it's like there was Hatshepsut Nefertiti

00:14:24.400 Cleopatra it was kind of this blip but it was like to have I think you said this too like China

00:14:29.520 and Japan like I think the only other culture I've seen where it's like they were their own culture

00:14:34.080 and not invaded for thousands and thousands of years so their culture could really flourish it

00:14:38.940 was places like china like it's because i read so much about european history and it's always

00:14:46.380 changing somebody's invading from germany somebody's invading from italy from france

00:14:50.600 like it's always changing but egypt because they had this consistency they just their culture was

00:14:57.040 consistent like it was just kind of like here's what we do and here's what our religion is and

00:15:01.340 here's so and because they were able to do that would you agree because the nile just gave them

00:15:08.540 like the fertile land they're able to just really flourish because they didn't have to depend on

00:15:13.600 anyone for very much for for the vast majority of their existence um they really were very

00:15:19.760 self-sustaining and i think that that that is a key to any civilization lasting um in any vast

00:15:27.900 amount of time because i mean you know ancient rome was very dependent on everyone like what

00:15:34.020 what Antony and Cleopatra did to them with holding the grain. So, you know, if you have

00:15:38.920 a self-sustaining society, you can continue on with your ways, with your culture, with your

00:15:46.180 religion, with your beliefs for as long as you want, because you don't have anyone else coming

00:15:51.940 in there trying to dictate to you what you can and cannot do. You are the dictator of all of that

00:15:56.580 because you don't need them. I know. And that's such a different thing than like the history

00:16:03.500 that I've studied so much of, European history where they had to trade

00:16:07.220 just because of different crops and things.

00:16:09.240 So yeah, so thank you for explaining that. 0.64

00:16:11.660 Egypt was self-sustaining and that's why they're able to just like stay the same way. 0.90

00:16:16.400 I mean, they did trade with, because I mean, look at when trade broke down with Punt, 0.90

00:16:22.960 you know, Hatshepsut had to come in and get that reestablished. 0.88

00:16:26.200 And it's always been kind of funny to me that it took a woman to get that reestablished. 0.81

00:16:31.380 dudes couldn't get it done 1.00

00:16:33.320 all they wanted to do was argue and fight 1.00

00:16:35.840 she had to come in and be the voice of reason

00:16:37.760 and she got it reestablished

00:16:39.280 and I personally believe 0.96

00:16:41.600 that's what started Egypt

00:16:43.320 towards getting to

00:16:45.500 the 18th dynasty which is considered to be

00:16:47.460 the golden age of ancient Egypt

00:16:49.720 by her opening up

00:16:51.380 that pathway to be able

00:16:53.420 to start trading again

00:16:54.760 that gave them

00:16:57.260 that solid foundation to be able to

00:16:59.340 start expanding the way that they did

00:17:01.380 Again, just personal opinion.

00:17:03.240 So you mentioned the dynasty.

00:17:04.680 I want to say that too, because this is also like, again, I host this podcast, but I'm just like, I learn things and then I talk about them.

00:17:11.160 And today you're teaching me things.

00:17:13.700 But when I was researching for this to prepare, it's always talking about the different dynasty or like it would describe as like in year five of his reign.

00:17:20.960 So like the way their calendar worked, it seems like every time a new pharaoh took over, they're like, okay, it's year one again.

00:17:26.820 So even that makes it harder for me to keep track of like, wait, but what year is this?

00:17:31.060 Because to them, it was just kind of like, now it's this RAIN.

00:17:34.900 Yeah.

00:17:35.420 And I think the only way that we're able to really figure that out is someone that has

00:17:40.560 a much better mind for math.

00:17:42.800 You know, it's funny because I'm in finance, but math is not my thing.

00:17:46.460 Someone that's much better at math than me took the time to sit and figure out that time

00:17:50.660 frame of, OK, so you're right.

00:17:53.300 It would start over again with year one of RAIN up to whatever.

00:17:56.500 and then it was set over again, year one of rain to 20 to five to whatever, someone sat down and

00:18:03.420 actually mapped that out. My father is a former pastor. And so he does a lot of digging into the

00:18:11.880 Bible. And so he wanted me to try to help him figure out around what the timeframe was between

00:18:19.040 when they said Adam and Eve came along up until I think it was Moses. And we were trying to map

00:18:25.200 that out. And so I saw how difficult that was, because they say this person lived to be X amount

00:18:33.160 of years, but at year whatever for this person, this person was born. So you have to kind of

00:18:38.080 start all over again with, okay, so we're starting at age 300 for this person, where this person

00:18:43.440 that was considered to be important was born. And then we got to count up to where,

00:18:48.480 okay, when did they die? How old were they when they died? But this person that was

00:18:52.220 was important was born at this point in time of their life so someone sat and figured that out

00:18:57.640 when it comes to us being able to figure out um what time period these different dynasties um

00:19:02.620 took place and i'm very grateful to that to them for that because i would not be able to sit and

00:19:08.440 figure that out my brain just starts to short circuit after a while actually that reminds me

00:19:12.740 so the um they just like papyrus right this is a lot of the records are on those sorts of scrolls

00:19:17.780 And it's funny to me, I did an episode a while ago about, it was like medieval France, and they tried to use like papyrus type scrolls. And it's so damp there. Like, the records are all lost. But Egypt, I feel like it's a dry climate. So that's part of why. So that's why we have like, not just the carvings in the temples and the drawings, we also have like written records, right?

00:19:39.920 Well, but, you know, the sand kept things very, very preserved. I mean, it took them years to dig out the Sphinx because, you know, face it, there are certain regions of Africa as a whole, they're a desert.

00:19:57.220 and so you've got years and years of the wind just whipping the sand around and people had

00:20:04.500 already moved away from wherever certain things were so that's why they're constantly digging

00:20:10.180 and finding things so well preserved because they kept them dry they kept them away from

00:20:14.340 any sort of elements that would have been wreaking havoc on them that's why they're still trying to

00:20:19.320 figure out how those those water marks took place within the bottom of the sphinx sphinx because

00:20:26.000 there's no water around there i didn't know that there's water marks on the sphinx yeah there's um

00:20:31.500 the the erosion that's at the bottom of the sphinx is actually considered to be water erosion

00:20:36.280 and so um they've come up with their different theories of maybe the now rose extremely high

00:20:43.280 a few years and eroded it away in that way because it's not super super far away from where the now

00:20:50.920 would have been back then because obviously climate change, the Nile shrunk compared to

00:20:56.580 what it used to be. So the banks of the Nile would have expanded out further than what they do

00:21:02.600 current day. So the banks of the Nile could have been closer to the Sphinx, which could have caused

00:21:08.880 the water erosion at the bottom of the Sphinx. I don't know. I'm not an archaeologist, so I don't

00:21:15.280 know but you know those are the sand we have to be grateful for the sand even though I don't want

00:21:22.800 sand in my toes we have to be grateful for the sand because if it wasn't for the sand we wouldn't

00:21:27.480 have all the things that we have when it comes to everything that they found from ancient Egypt

00:21:31.780 it that's just the way it is and so because you know like in France or anywhere in England

00:21:38.620 I'm obviously because it's just kind of a damp area that would not have held up as well because

00:21:44.320 it would have had way too many elements bombarding it all these years it's just the way it is it's

00:21:50.320 it's great it's a great combination of like the ancient egyptians they kept such good records

00:21:56.200 and like and they intentionally used techniques to make them last but also sand like yes so it's

00:22:04.080 just kind of lucky the the overall brilliance of that civilization is just mind-boggling if you

00:22:09.900 really start to think about it i mean how how how i'm granted they didn't have social media and

00:22:17.400 television to to distract them from anything so they could just sit and devote their entire day

00:22:21.940 to figuring out you know right angles and whatnot but honestly how well and that's the thing when

00:22:29.360 it's so incredibly long ago i'm just opening my notes because i want to remind myself but like

00:22:35.120 yeah so what i have here is like what we think of as ancient egypt started to sort of like really

00:22:41.300 found itself around like 3100 bce i've read further back i'm sure it is yeah they actually

00:22:49.900 i there are some people that have come up that said that they think that it actually might have

00:22:53.800 been 2 000 years before then which is i can't even comprehend and the fact that they were

00:23:00.840 living I mean obviously like differently from us now but not that different you know like human

00:23:07.360 society like and they and like you said like they're figuring out right angles and like astronomy

00:23:13.540 and like I mean the way everything is lined up to the stars that in and of itself I mean

00:23:21.000 without technology today would we be able to do that probably not they did it just by eyeballing

00:23:27.760 I mean, how? It's just everything about them is just phenomenal. It just is. I mean, they might have had some some traditions that we might in today's age think are kind of backwards, but it worked for them.

00:23:44.800 Yeah. You know, that was that was their understanding of life at that point in time.

00:23:48.940 And like for people in whatever, 5000 BCE, it's like, yeah, of course, there's going to be some cultural differences.

00:23:55.720 Exactly. Well, you've got time period chain differences plus just culture differences. I mean, even to this day, you've got, you know, different cultures that do things differently. You know, they do different. I mean, people in Canada do things different from what we do in America.

00:24:15.160 You know, you've got these differences that exist today. So why wouldn't they be existing back then? And in our minds, be a little bit more aggressive in the differences. So I just I you know, you can't knock people that you don't know that.

00:24:36.480 And, you know, that's that's kind of my theory in life in general is you can't hold something against someone that you don't fully understand.

00:24:45.880 Can we talk about like we're going to dive into we're going to so we're talking about Nefertiti today.

00:24:51.700 But like you said to me and from everything I've read as well, like we have to, I think, start with her husband and what you do.

00:24:57.840 You absolutely do. And if you really dig into him, you have to kind of look at, and I kind of, this is my perfect example for why he possibly was the way he was. In today's age, who are the two royals, just look at it as just royal, that they compare the most?

00:25:20.580 it's it's prince harry and prince william now one thing that they have always talked about is prince

00:25:30.340 william was always the heir apparent so he was raised differently he was he had to follow a

00:25:38.240 different standard than what harry did because harry was always the spare from from the day he

00:25:44.280 was born he was always the spare it's the same for akhenaten or we'll call him amenhotep the fourth

00:25:49.900 right now because that was his given name at birth. He was not born to be pharaoh. His older

00:25:56.720 brother, Thutmose, was born to be pharaoh. So Thutmose would have had that training. He would

00:26:03.060 have lived that life. He would have been groomed from birth to become the next pharaoh. Amenhotep

00:26:08.820 IV would not have been. He would have been given liberties to basically think outside the box,

00:26:15.200 to be his own person he was already a grown-ass man by the time his brother passed away and it

00:26:22.900 was determined that he was going to become pharaoh well by that time he had his way of thinking his

00:26:29.220 way of doing things established you know i think at one point i saw he was like maybe like 30 or

00:26:35.920 close to 30 at the time that his father passed so it's like you're not going to change a mindset of

00:26:43.220 someone that old someone has kind of been allowed to do whatever he wanted to pretty much his whole

00:26:48.820 life as long as you live within the the parameter of a royal you could do whatever you want and so

00:26:55.360 when he when it became apparent that he was going to be feral I don't think he was ready for it

00:27:01.600 I don't think he had the proper training for it and I don't think he really actually even wanted

00:27:07.000 it honestly and so um when he did get thrown into that position i think he was kind of just like

00:27:14.660 you know f it i'm gonna do me you know because who's gonna tell me i can't i'm zero yeah that's

00:27:21.520 the thing like we're gonna okay so that you're gonna explain all this stuff but like the fact

00:27:26.280 that so he came in so amenotep what is it the the fourth amenhotep the third was his father amenhotep

00:27:33.720 the fourth later Akhenaten exactly so he came in and he's just like here's what I'm gonna do

00:27:38.900 change the way that we've had religion for the last thousands of years it's like guess what 0.92

00:27:45.740 there's only one god anymore there's not all these like to just come in and change everything but then

00:27:50.600 what I found crazy just well not crazy but just like surprising based on what I've read about

00:27:55.460 other leaders later in other civilizations no one stopped him he just kind of did this and

00:28:01.520 everyone went along with it and i think would you think that's partially just like i'm sure people

00:28:05.700 did not enjoy it but it's like he had such complete power like he was such everyone's like he's the

00:28:13.020 pharaoh and he's like god's representative on earth and everyone's like if he says this i guess

00:28:17.000 like we're like they did for years it's not like he tried to do this and then he was kicked out

00:28:21.040 it's like he did this right he did this until he died and like changed all of the entire culture

00:28:27.780 yep and you know it's funny i was thinking about because the the deity that he selected

00:28:34.960 was a lesser known one aton who you know yeah everyone knew about the sun disc but why would

00:28:44.340 he pick one that wasn't popular and i got thinking aton sun disc aton you know what

00:28:52.680 what's the most powerful thing we know the sun the sun gives life the sun can take life away

00:28:59.380 the sun if we don't have the sun we don't have anything so why not pick the most powerful

00:29:06.780 basically the most powerful entity out there to be the one true god in in your your mind

00:29:15.680 it if you really think about it it makes sense to pick the sun well i think especially if you're in

00:29:21.480 like egypt like a place that's like very sunny like it might be weird to choose the sun if you

00:29:27.580 live in like scotland but like in egypt of course like you'd see it every day you'd see its power

00:29:33.180 you see it rise every morning to give basically the way they looked at it is it was the rebirth

00:29:38.600 of egypt when the sun rose and um it was the considered to be the the death the sleep of

00:29:45.860 life when it, when it would set, but you would always have the rebirth of Egypt every morning

00:29:51.860 when the sun rose. So, I mean, honestly, the sun was the most powerful thing in existence to them.

00:29:58.240 So obviously he's going to pick that one. I mean, I would.

00:30:02.100 Well, no, exactly. So just, so, so he becomes Pharaoh, like after his father dies.

00:30:06.940 I want to talk just about him and kind of the religion and stuff before we talk about Nefertiti,

00:30:10.840 just to really set the scene so can you explain kind of he came in he became pharaoh and then he

00:30:18.560 just just describe how he changed the religion so um i have obviously read a lot and i know i

00:30:27.280 i cannot remember the exact book i read it in but i know i read that amenhotep the third

00:30:33.440 actually had been, from what they were able to translate, he wasn't really happy with the amount

00:30:42.000 of power that the priests of Amun had amassed. He felt they were becoming a little too big for

00:30:51.560 their britches. And if you think about how the priests work is, you know, in today's society,

00:30:57.780 we say that each individual person can pray to God for whatever it is that they want to ask for,

00:31:03.260 back then it wasn't like that you had to go through the priests to pray to the gods you

00:31:07.320 couldn't pray directly to the gods and expect to get anything in return it had to go through the

00:31:11.720 priests because it was considered that they had the direct line to the gods to really truly get

00:31:15.960 you what you wanted but in order for them to do those prayers for you you had to pay them

00:31:20.120 they didn't do anything for free so the priests had power because they had the direct line to

00:31:27.160 the gods and they were getting paid so they're they're they were stacking their chips over there

00:31:33.420 and they're getting close to having as much money sitting back in their little dens or whatever

00:31:38.320 as the royal family and amenhotep III didn't like that and so but he didn't do anything to

00:31:46.060 necessarily knock them off their pedestal he let them because it was tradition he had to let them

00:31:52.000 do what they were going to do because that's just the way it was um but he said he did build a temple

00:31:57.960 to Aten um he built a great barge dedicated to Aten so Amunhotep III was already leaning towards

00:32:06.880 Aten that people don't really understand to realize that one but he was already leaning

00:32:11.200 towards giving more more worship to Aten still respecting Amun-Ra because Amun was you know the

00:32:20.040 end all be all. But Akhenaten would have seen that. He would have seen that his father was 0.91

00:32:26.380 shifting towards Atten. He would have seen that he was shifting away from really liking exactly

00:32:32.220 what was happening with the priests. So by the time Akhenaten got in there, he was like, you know

00:32:36.860 what? Dad didn't like your asses either. So, you know, I'm just going to get rid of you and head 0.99

00:32:42.160 on over here to Atten. He didn't start out right away with considering himself to be a god.

00:32:50.040 But once you start making shifts like that to where you're going to change the entirety of how the religious system works within your country, it's not going to take long for you to start calling yourself a god, too.

00:33:04.240 I mean, that's just the next logical step.

00:33:06.040 So I think that it started with Amenhotep IV watching his father kind of start to detach himself from the priests and from that line of religion.

00:33:18.720 And then he just took it a step further when he took over.

00:33:22.840 But again, that's my theory on how he decided to go from the pantheon of gods to the one what he considered to be the one true God is he saw it happening.

00:33:35.380 Well, and then simultaneous, I don't know if it's exactly like he was slowly developing these ideas, eventually leading to him seeing himself as a god.

00:33:42.920 But also he changed the art style, which I thought was really interesting in terms of changing the culture.

00:33:48.720 I don't understand that one. I think that was just a power play on his point. Honestly, he just, you know, if you look at all of the statues up until then, for the most part, all those thousands of years, the art style did remain the same.

00:34:05.920 You know, you would have the pharaoh depicted as a chubby-cheeked kid a lot of times or as the pharaoh's face would be the head of a sphinx, you know, or the head of a lion, you know, have the pharaoh's head with the lion body.

00:34:23.380 So it just, it always carried over. And I think he really, he really felt like he needed to establish himself. And that might go back to him. Like I said, he wasn't, he wasn't born to be Pharaoh. So I think that he kind of had a chip on his shoulder and might've felt that he needed to prove that he could rule just as good as anyone else. And these are my ideas of what I want to happen. So this is what's going to happen because again, he's Pharaoh, who's going to stop him.

00:34:51.780 So, you know, I think that's why the art style changed, because he could, you know, and that was his idea of what he thought art was.

00:35:03.040 I don't really have any good theory on why you would completely change how everything was done, especially to the point that he did, because it's so different.

00:35:15.300 Can you explain what it looks like?

00:35:16.220 like his, like the art during his, like, instead of being, you know, when I think, or I think when

00:35:20.560 other people who don't know lots about this would think about ancient Egypt, you picture those sort

00:35:24.180 of like the two dimensional, like very angular sorts of drawings. And he brought in this very

00:35:29.040 like curvaceous, more of a 3D, I wouldn't say not realistic, but more realistic than it was.

00:35:37.960 It was absolutely. It was definitely more, um, I think it reflected an actual person a bit more

00:35:45.600 than, you know, you had the triangle bottoms to most of the drawings that you would see.

00:35:53.140 You would see legs coming out, feet both pointing the same direction, and they would have basically

00:35:59.860 like this, it looked like a triangle skirt that they would be wearing. And then they would be,

00:36:05.820 it was mostly men that they depicted, so they would be, you know, bare-chested. That's what

00:36:10.620 you saw constantly in most of the carvings whereas he had it where it looked more like an actual body

00:36:17.600 it wasn't um it wasn't obviously anatomically correct it was a bit more elongated like you

00:36:25.540 had mentioned but it was still closer to what an actual body looked like beside you know beyond

00:36:32.860 that to that triangle skirt and the the legs coming out with the feet going the same direction 0.98

00:36:38.040 the only difference between if you were royal or if you weren't is if you had a one foot that was

00:36:44.280 was standing was positioned a bit ahead of the other that showed that you were royal if your

00:36:51.820 feet weren't completely side by side if one was was ahead of the other then you were important

00:36:56.860 you were royal if they were side by side you were just a person so that's another thing people don't

00:37:01.360 always necessarily realize too so start looking at their feet and then you'll know if that person

00:37:05.880 was important or not um but i think that he wanted to show what he felt he really looked like

00:37:12.540 and they weren't triangles you know they weren't these square bodies you have curves you you and

00:37:21.600 men have curves too men don't want to admit it but men have curves too and he wasn't afraid to

00:37:27.120 show it yeah people like oh you know it looked really feminine how he had himself depicted

00:37:33.260 because he, you know, he had the pooch stomach, you know, he didn't have the six pack abs that

00:37:39.820 everyone always says that you have to have. He might not have had the big stomach. He might not

00:37:47.580 have had the long torso. He might, he definitely didn't have the elongated head that was always

00:37:54.880 shown because when they found his tomb, his head wasn't shaped like that. So it was just something

00:38:01.500 he decided but maybe he did that because he wanted to prove that he had a bigger brain than

00:38:05.580 everyone else and he just needed space for it to fit into i don't know but i think that he really

00:38:10.880 wanted to show i think he wanted to show a more anatomically correct body but he just he didn't

00:38:17.740 understand exactly how to do this but because that's how it came out of what we see that was

00:38:23.520 his idea of what was anatomically correct but i think he was really just wanted to assert his

00:38:28.340 authority that he just wanted to say i can do this because i can and this is how i want the

00:38:33.420 art style to be and this is how it's going to be because i like to be represented in this way i

00:38:38.000 find that so interesting because like we live like now for sure in a culture where every

00:38:42.520 every month it's like oh this is like how the jeans are going to be looking now it's like now

00:38:46.760 we're doing like a boot cut now we're doing like you're always changing the aesthetics of what you

00:38:51.200 know now we like a big eyebrow now we're like a plucked eyebrow like we're always changing what

00:38:54.460 looks good and what doesn't look good but if you slow down and look back even you know the

00:38:58.220 difference between medieval european art into when you get into the renaissance you know where

00:39:04.880 it starts being more anatomically correct more it's like art developed over time like in western

00:39:11.320 art so to me i'm just like oh he changed the art style but it's like no but you don't understand

00:39:16.320 it's like no one changed the art style for like 5 000 years and then he suddenly one day was like

00:39:21.300 let's change the art style like that was huge it's not a society that's used to change and he

00:39:26.140 just brought in right every change all at once yep and that's why they call him a heretic because

00:39:32.820 they they couldn't get on board um and it and i think it was because

00:39:38.860 it was twofold i think because it was instant he didn't it wasn't spread out over years

00:39:46.980 a bit rounder a bit rounder in the art he's like no it's like it's going from triangles to like

00:39:53.980 curves like yeah and it was it was just an instant change and it was a demanded change 0.92

00:40:02.280 that went outside of it was thinking outside of the box and Egyptians didn't to the most for the 0.72

00:40:09.280 most part they didn't think outside the box with things they did when it came to their construction 0.99

00:40:13.440 because I mean if you look at the the step pyramid compared to the great pyramid you you can see the

00:40:20.260 progression of them starting to think outside the box and figure things out better but when it comes

00:40:24.740 to pretty much everything else in their lives you don't think outside the box if they ain't broke

00:40:29.880 don't fix it that was their theory so they kept with that and he stepped outside of the box and 0.68

00:40:36.200 they're like oh no that's not okay so that's why they labeled him a heretic because he wanted so

00:40:42.920 much to change that had been the same way for so long and he wanted it to change overnight and they

00:40:49.400 couldn't handle that. Oh, that included

00:40:51.620 he ended up creating a new

00:40:53.540 capital city, which was

00:40:55.060 Akataten? It's like really close to his name.

00:40:57.980 Akataten, yep.

00:40:59.600 And he always wanted to make sure that he had

00:41:01.980 Aten in there somewhere

00:41:03.860 to pay homage to the deity.

00:41:06.320 Just like, you know, when he

00:41:08.000 changed his name to Akhenaten. 0.78

00:41:09.800 Aten is at the end. He always wanted 0.95

00:41:12.020 Aten to be in everything.

00:41:14.120 So, if it

00:41:16.000 wasn't, you have to think

00:41:18.140 you have to think ignorance sometimes for us to be able to have some of the things that we have 0.56

00:41:22.900 today because if they weren't so ignorant and just buried everything we would have never known he

00:41:28.560 existed that's the thing okay so i promise we're going to talk about nefertiti eventually but um 0.89

00:41:36.780 you you gotta lead up to it because if you don't it doesn't make any sense you just set the scene

00:41:41.340 so like what akitatin was the capital city that he created and it was um in a new place where the

00:41:47.880 didn't used to be a city he had the city created really weirdly quickly i read that like they found

00:41:53.360 like the bones of like people with like lots of workplace injuries because he worked them like

00:41:57.800 children like everybody's so hard to just build this city but then right after after his reign

00:42:03.760 had ended people were like they just boxed up that they just left that city they abandoned it

00:42:08.640 because they're like let's pretend this never happened yeah yeah but then i mean there was

00:42:13.720 there was no way to sustain themselves yeah he was thinking outside the box but like not

00:42:18.960 practically not yes he had lots of ideas um big ideas not not long-term planning not good

00:42:26.940 execution no but then what's so interesting about that so he built this city in this random desert

00:42:31.860 area it was abandoned and shut up and then you know the sand blew over and whatever but then

00:42:37.000 that's why it's so well preserved and that's why we know about him and nefertiti because he made

00:42:44.300 this new city so instead of like destroying it you know intentionally so everyone would forget

00:42:49.200 they just abandoned it but then the sand preserved yeah they took what they felt they needed you know

00:42:55.100 they took some building materials and whatnot to help build other temples and whatnot back where

00:43:00.280 they wanted to actually be so um you know you they always say unless it's written in stone

00:43:06.560 Well, you know, everything they did was written in stone.

00:43:09.400 So in order to get rid of it, you had to chisel it out.

00:43:12.220 And so what they did was they basically just chiseled out what they didn't want to have in some of this stuff and reused the materials in other places.

00:43:21.720 And I have read some places where they didn't get to everything.

00:43:25.660 They didn't chisel everything out.

00:43:27.020 So you'll find a reference to someone in a temple dedicated to someone else.

00:43:33.320 Like, oops, you missed a spot.

00:43:34.820 So that's what they ended up doing

00:43:37.320 With some of the stuff that they took from Akataten 0.61

00:43:39.600 And I'm grateful 1.00

00:43:41.460 I mean, you know

00:43:42.740 As precise as they were, sometimes they made mistakes

00:43:45.820 And it just benefits us

00:43:47.540 Yeah, well and wasn't there part of his reign

00:43:49.720 To like before, you know

00:43:51.340 During when he was thriving, when he was in charge

00:43:53.980 Where he went around, he was chiseling out

00:43:55.700 The names of other gods from other temples 0.52

00:43:57.380 Because he was like the only name that there should be is Aten 1.00

00:43:59.640 So he was just chiseling 1.00

00:44:00.700 He tried to get rid of Amun 0.99

00:44:03.960 because Amun was the main god, the main deity. 0.98

00:44:07.680 That's who everybody worshipped.

00:44:09.640 That was, you know, he was the head of the pantheon.

00:44:13.520 You know, to this day, people still consider Amun to be the head of the gods.

00:44:18.360 And so how do you put your god on top? 0.61

00:44:23.320 You get rid of the one that's on top.

00:44:25.160 I mean, that's how everything works.

00:44:28.560 You know, you got to knock the king off the hill before you can put a new king up there.

00:44:35.020 And so that's what he did is he started trying to get rid of, he had the temples ransacked.

00:44:42.540 He had a lot of the priests killed.

00:44:45.460 He had their riches taken and put into the royal coffers.

00:44:50.600 um obviously he didn't get rid of all of them because there were people that were still um

00:44:56.740 worshiping a moon in secret couldn't do it out in public because you would have been killed for that

00:45:01.580 but um people never stopped worshiping a moon they never stopped worshiping all the other gods

00:45:07.480 they continued on with what they knew they continued up continued on with their tradition

00:45:11.700 in in the safety of their own homes you know or wherever their little meeting places would be

00:45:20.760 So that's why I think it was so easy for them once he died to go back to the old ways because they never really truly gave it up.

00:45:30.580 And I mean, that's human nature.

00:45:32.440 Yeah.

00:45:33.060 You know, it doesn't really matter what a civilization it was.

00:45:35.940 It's human nature that you're not going to just ditch everything that has meant everything to you your entire life, that you don't know anything different.

00:45:45.180 You're going to hold on to that.

00:45:46.960 And so that's why when Aten was no longer the head god, they're like, OK, bet.

00:45:53.560 I'm just going to go back to what I had before.

00:45:58.320 So it's just I understand what he thought he was trying to do.

00:46:05.420 He just didn't do it the right way.

00:46:08.240 But I think that all goes back to how he grew up.

00:46:12.360 He was not groomed to be the next pharaoh.

00:46:14.780 he was allowed to be a royal but to do whatever the heck he wanted and he just he carried that

00:46:22.600 mentality into his reign exactly so it's like in Egypt there's lots of examples of like you know

00:46:29.040 a child like Tutankhamun eventually but like a boy who becomes king and then it's all the advisors

00:46:34.200 can really make him do what they want but the fact that Akhenaten became pharaoh when he was

00:46:39.360 30 years old or at least an adult man yes he couldn't be like he was coming into that like

00:46:44.860 i'm a person i have opinions like you're not gonna yeah and he had his advisors and he had i

00:46:50.580 there um you know which that's a whole nother rabbit hole we can go down without um and i will

00:46:58.760 bring him up later when we start discussing nefertiti because he i think he plays a more

00:47:03.500 pivotal role than people give him credit for. But you're right. He walked into it as a grown man

00:47:10.480 with his own beliefs, with his own ways of wanting to do things, with his own ways of what he had

00:47:15.500 been allowed to do his whole life. And he didn't have to be directed. Like I said, you always have

00:47:24.160 regents. In every culture, you have regents because the reigning monarch would pass and

00:47:30.880 you've got a eight-year-old that is now the person that's in charge well what's an eight-year-old

00:47:36.600 gonna do you know i want candy all day you know that's what an eight-year-old is gonna do

00:47:40.660 not a 25 30 year old man he's gonna walk in and be like all right look this is what's up

00:47:46.740 we about to do this you know like it you ain't gotta be here yeah

00:47:51.360 that's what made it so easy for him to do what he had to do because he was a grown man

00:47:57.600 and there was i mean you can't tell a grown man you don't understand he's a grown man and he was

00:48:05.740 coming to a system too where like he came in in this really different way from anyone before him

00:48:10.320 but it was a system that was designed to let the pharaoh do what he wanted it's just previously

00:48:15.600 the pharaoh hadn't been this outside the box like so he came into a thing where like inherently

00:48:21.900 like it was i don't know what the word is authoritarian like the pharaoh just had complete

00:48:27.760 control on what he said goes so he just came in i mean it was the same with king henry the eighth

00:48:33.060 you know he had his advisor he had his privy council he had all that stuff but what the king

00:48:38.760 wanted the king got he changed the whole religious system in england you know he created the church

00:48:44.580 of england so you know it's it wasn't necessarily it even though ancient egypt existed so long ago

00:48:53.080 it still wasn't a new concept to have the person that in charge to be in charge you know that's

00:49:01.460 just the way it was set up from the beginning yeah so there's really no even if everybody

00:49:06.640 around him was like we don't want to do any of this no one could stop him that's that's how it

00:49:10.640 was designed off with his head if they didn't do it i'm glad you mentioned that because i was

00:49:15.800 reading about him like destroying the temples and stuff and i'm like this is just like henry

00:49:19.080 the eighth like like what he did to the monasteries like it's a really it's a similar thing of just

00:49:23.900 like changing the religion and how well and that's where i thought it was so interesting

00:49:29.120 the differences because in like the henry the eighth story there was lots of stories of rebellions

00:49:33.080 and people who were like no we're not going to change our religion and you know then he had

00:49:36.740 those people killed versus in ancient egypt at least we don't have records of um much resistance

00:49:43.760 like he just came in and this happened and you know the thing is that it doesn't necessarily

00:49:49.460 mean that there wasn't resistance it just it didn't get recorded exactly and why would it why

00:49:54.580 would it exactly and whereas you know with with um when it happened with with henry the eighth

00:50:01.840 you know you had other people that could record things granted not everybody was super educated

00:50:08.080 but there were still people that understood how to write you know and so you had records that went

00:50:13.940 outside of what the king had written down where you wouldn't have that in ancient egypt so like

00:50:20.080 i said it doesn't mean there weren't rebellions it just didn't get written down exactly and it's

00:50:24.660 like yeah because not exactly that's another good point like not everybody knew how to read and write

00:50:28.480 It was just the scribes, right?

00:50:29.680 So like only a certain class of people knew how to read and write.

00:50:32.960 And those were the people who wrote down what the pharaoh wanted them to write down.

00:50:36.280 Right.

00:50:36.540 And really, honestly, if you think about it back then, why did you need to know how to

00:50:40.480 read and write?

00:50:42.020 Why did you even need to know what the king and what the pharaoh and the queen actually

00:50:46.360 looked like?

00:50:47.260 You didn't need to know any of that stuff to survive day to day life.

00:50:50.640 But you needed to know was what does it look like when a hippo is about to start racing

00:50:54.460 out of the water?

00:50:55.560 That means you need to get your tail out of there.

00:50:57.540 what does it look like when a crocodile is coming down the stream you need to get your tail out of

00:51:01.700 there what does it mean where your crops look like they're withering a little bit you need to get them

00:51:05.680 a little more water that's what you needed to know back then you needed to know how to make a basket

00:51:09.520 to hold your stuff you needed to know how to sterilize your water because i mean let's face

00:51:14.620 it they got their water from the nile well you can't drink that i mean you're gonna die because

00:51:19.660 whatever's floating around in there you needed to know practical things to survive life you didn't

00:51:24.960 need to know anything else beyond that so i mean i think that there were a lot of there were probably

00:51:31.540 a lot of different settlements that didn't even know that they weren't still worshiping the pantheon

00:51:37.980 of gods yeah it was just it was life as usual for them because word hadn't got to them yet

00:51:45.820 so that's why i think well a contributing factor is why it wouldn't be so difficult to get egypt

00:51:53.940 back on board with with um worshiping the pantheon because there were probably thousands of people

00:51:59.480 didn't even know they weren't supposed to i love that i love that idea and i completely agree with

00:52:03.300 you yeah there's a bunch of people who are like oh okay so we don't have to change anything because

00:52:06.860 we never changed right so we'll just exactly okay and see this is where my i start going

00:52:13.500 rabbit holes of things and thinking about things that really probably aren't even important but

00:52:17.520 it was probably something that actually happened and i think that's so important and that's part

00:52:22.280 of why i'm so excited to talk to you about all this stuff because the um you know historical

00:52:27.100 documentation like what this podcast is is we're just like you've got theories and i'm here and i

00:52:31.840 love the theories but when people are writing a historical thing they're like well we found this

00:52:36.000 and it said this so it wasn't written down that this happened or you know when they saw the the

00:52:41.300 carvings of what akhenaten looked like they're like well i guess he had this like really long

00:52:45.880 head and this really distended belly and then i found it was interesting when they found his um

00:52:50.320 They found his remains, right?

00:52:51.300 They found his mummy.

00:52:52.140 And they were like, oh, wait, this is just like a typical human form. 0.61

00:52:56.400 Yep.

00:52:56.900 And KV-55, that's his tomb number, KV-55.

00:53:02.000 When they found it, I think that they were probably taken aback when they saw that he really was just a normal person.

00:53:10.040 because if you know all the archaeologists had led you to believe that you were supposed to be 0.55

00:53:17.560 seeing some alien looking ass dude and you open this up and really the biggest difference with

00:53:24.300 what they found in his tomb compared to others is his cartouche was um was chiseled away because 0.95

00:53:29.980 they considered him to be um a heretic so they don't want if you have their their theory on the

00:53:37.260 afterlife is if you don't have your name established, you can't get through the afterlife

00:53:42.400 the way you really wanted to be getting through it. So, you know, if we destroy some of these

00:53:47.640 things here on earth and he's going to have a messed up afterlife. So they, that was the

00:53:52.740 biggest difference between, you know, what they found in his tomb compared to others. But I think

00:53:57.780 that they just, they couldn't wrap their minds around it at first. They had actually found

00:54:02.220 akhenaten and he was just a regular guy yeah i think that they i think some of them were really

00:54:08.820 crushed when they found that because there's one book that i was looking at where she i forget what

00:54:13.600 it was she'd written a book and then she like re-released it because new stuff is being found

00:54:17.460 all the time but i think for a long time like the older writings were like akhenaten like he had all

00:54:22.340 these and they were like diagnosing him with like various like medical symptoms based on this art

00:54:28.600 So I think if you extrapolate that to, if you're looking and you're taking so literally the writings, then you're missing so much nuance.

00:54:37.240 If you think like the only things that we know are true are like these specific words where it's like, but you're translating them in the first place.

00:54:45.060 Exactly.

00:54:45.860 And from a picture, you're translating words from a picture.

00:54:51.120 You're assuming you're reading this picture correctly to write down these words that you think go along with that.

00:54:57.860 Yeah.

00:54:58.600 I'm sorry, there's going to be some mistranslation in there.

00:55:01.100 No, obviously.

00:55:02.120 Yeah, so I think this nuance and this sort of conversation, I think, is so valuable.

00:55:06.700 Because otherwise, all you have is, like, the document I have that I sent you that's just, like, a list of, like, birth dates and death dates.

00:55:12.160 It's like, this happened, this happened, this happened.

00:55:13.860 And it's like, yeah, but why?

00:55:15.200 One of my most favorite authors is Aidan Dodson, and he has really studied the 18th dynasty a lot.

00:55:24.100 And he has published and re-released and re-released because he keeps finding new information.

00:55:31.260 And I just keep buying his books because I'm like, OK, you said blah, blah, blah in this book.

00:55:37.520 But then after doing more research, finding more, quote unquote, facts, you're like, I might have to amend what I said earlier and go to this.

00:55:47.500 And that's why I really I appreciate people that really study their art.

00:55:52.240 don't just walk up in there and be like oh you know what this is what we've translated this is

00:55:56.720 what it is all right on to the next thing yeah i don't like that because that's not necessarily

00:56:03.020 how it is you know you've got to make sure that you've really taken the time to dig into it just

00:56:09.120 like everyone says you know this person was talked about a couple of times all of a sudden they just

00:56:14.000 disappeared we have no idea why well there are numerous reasons of why that could have happened

00:56:19.280 you know and we're gonna get into that later too we're gonna get into that sort of thing soon

00:56:24.360 but yeah i found it but you guys you gotta make sure you dig you gotta dig and literally in egypt

00:56:29.800 you gotta dig yeah you never know what you're gonna find you have to be prepared like i really

00:56:34.620 appreciate what you're saying about this author like that he accepts as new things come then that

00:56:38.620 would change the context of some things you found before to the point you have to like rewrite your

00:56:42.860 book you can only you can only talk about the things that you know at that time and if uh if 0.93

00:56:51.680 you learn something new later on don't be such a jerk that you can't accept that you've gotten 0.57

00:56:58.200 new information and amend what you if if needed amend what you've said in the past because you 0.98

00:57:05.200 know just like they'll release something on cnn and then an hour later oh based off of new

00:57:11.060 information the bubble that's just that's the way it is you don't know all the facts the first time

00:57:17.100 you look at it be willing to accept the new facts that you find i want to i want to make that a

00:57:23.100 poster and like hang it up and like make everybody put it in their house because that's that's so

00:57:27.740 much of like what's going on just like i'm not going to say like in the world today but like in

00:57:32.300 so many things like in history and on people like what's coming out the the 1619 project and stuff

00:57:38.620 And people are being like, no, I don't accept that.

00:57:40.540 American history is like this and this and this.

00:57:42.100 And it's like, but we have this information now.

00:57:44.780 So like, how about we like amend our understanding?

00:57:47.740 And people are just like, no, like that's where it's like historical fact.

00:57:51.000 It's not, well, I was going to say carved in stone, but like it could be carved in stone

00:57:55.960 and chiseled off.

00:57:57.180 You know, it's like, it's always changing our understanding.

00:57:59.560 So to just be like, well, I was taught this in third grade.

00:58:02.120 And that means this is what the pilgrims did.

00:58:05.920 And that's it.

00:58:07.060 That's it.

00:58:07.600 I learned math and I learned this and like I'm not going to change what I think like that's just

00:58:11.640 I think with history a lot of people who aren't like you and me who aren't like

00:58:15.160 constantly studying and keeping up with it like somebody with a casual understanding they're just

00:58:20.480 like oh well that's that's what it was like Columbus was a hero or whatever you know where

00:58:24.540 it's like and you know that's like that drives me crazy when it comes to history because someone

00:58:29.660 will find one book written by one person read that and be like oh okay well that's it whereas

00:58:37.300 Whereas based off just that one subject, you could have 10 different authors with 10 different books with 10 different ways of looking at it.

00:58:46.500 And people just, I don't, it drives me mad that people will just read one thing and take that to be the hard and fast fact and move through the rest of their life thinking there isn't anything else to it.

00:58:58.780 It's like, no.

00:59:00.480 I mean, the 80s, granted, I would like to believe it wasn't that long ago, but my knees remind me on a daily basis that it was.

00:59:10.760 Different things that have come out about the 80s just, you know, over the past few years that people would not have thought about in the 80s because that's just the way it was in the 80s.

00:59:22.380 But if you really dig into some of the things that were happening in the 80s, both political and nonpolitical, you know, fashion wise, whatever, everyone's tripping about all the bright colors in the store at Target for in the boys section.

00:59:36.280 Well, look at the 80s. Men walked around in pink on a daily basis, didn't think anything of it, wore eyeliner, had their hair all spiked up like, quote unquote, women. 0.79

00:59:47.500 no one thought anything of it because that was the way it is and all of a sudden you're having

00:59:51.860 a fit because there's a bright yellow shirt in the boys section of target i mean if you don't

00:59:56.720 go back and really dig into things and just take it at surface value you're always going to have

01:00:02.600 a very skewed idea of what reality is and that's why so many civilizations crumble at a certain

01:00:12.180 point because they they continue to look at that skewed view of what life is supposed to be and

01:00:18.560 they can't accept the things that are happening around them and then the things that are happening

01:00:22.960 around them converge and crush them yeah and i mean rome perfect example of that they just

01:00:31.820 couldn't believe that anybody was any better than them they believed they were the top of the food 1.00

01:00:36.280 guess what the people that you consider to be barbarians rolled your ass so what 0.98

01:00:44.160 you got you got to look at it all and that's why i try to get young people 0.97

01:00:50.420 history it already happened there isn't anything you can do to change it you're correct

01:00:54.920 it already happened but we need to learn from history and not just the bits and pieces that

01:01:02.120 people try to take from it and tell you this is what the overall history is. You need to understand

01:01:08.780 the whole of the history and you need to learn from that history. And that is humankind's worst

01:01:16.700 downfall is they refuse to learn the proper things from their history. They take the bits

01:01:23.420 and pieces they think are the most beneficial to them personally, and that's how they live their

01:01:28.980 life you want to look at oh uh julius caesar was a great commander he he won wars yes yes he did

01:01:36.660 all that dude was psychotic and self-absorbed and he he was the main reason why things started to

01:01:46.080 fall apart in the republic just look at the whole of his history not just the fact that he won wars

01:01:52.760 you know and that's such a good comparison to julius caesar because that's another one where

01:01:56.380 he was just kind of like hey this is how it's going to be i'm changing some stuff he was stabbed

01:01:59.860 he was assassinated you know so the fact that akhenaten got away with what he did i feel is

01:02:05.000 notable because every other example i can think of where someone with a lot of power tried to do this

01:02:10.120 they were poisoned or stabbed or whatever and no one there's no proof that he was killed yeah he

01:02:16.660 just died and that is amazing because everyone everyone was being killed constantly

01:02:26.200 in ancient egypt like murders and assassinations and he like what you're just saying sorry i

01:02:30.900 interrupted you but like the fact that he did what he did and he wasn't yes he just as far as

01:02:38.080 we can tell yeah he was just he died from natural causes and you know life expectancy back then

01:02:43.720 wasn't what it is today the pharaohs that ended up reigning for 80 years or whatever they're an

01:02:49.140 anomaly you know because people just didn't live that long back then so he died from what i can tell

01:02:55.700 at the general age that most people would die in that time period how it's not someone not just

01:03:06.040 slit your throat okay so this is where i think it's a perfect segue because we're getting into

01:03:10.020 like his one of his secret weapons was his wife nefertiti because she was that was his no that 0.92

01:03:16.240 was his weapon period not so secret that's a secret weapon um so we're gonna we're gonna get

01:03:23.220 it's so funny when we were messaging i was like gina you know this might be like 30 minutes this

01:03:27.900 might be like 45 minutes we're in an hour and we're just getting to never td but honestly because

01:03:33.000 there's so much that you have to understand before you can get to her and you do because

01:03:37.280 if it if it wasn't for how he actually was we wouldn't even know she existed yeah no exactly

01:03:43.960 and the thing is is we know she exists because of and and this is just another theory of mine

01:03:50.500 is he grew up seeing a specific example. So when you hear about Nefertiti,

01:03:59.400 not everybody understands that she's directly connected to Akhenaten.

01:04:03.860 People have no clue who Amenhotep III is. But you say Queen T, and people have heard that before.

01:04:12.720 People have heard her name. People have seen her bust. People know about the pretty lady that they 0.73

01:04:18.740 found, you know, in the tomb that she had, she still had the full head of hair. You know, everyone,

01:04:24.700 more people know about Queen T than they do Amenhotep III. And you don't hear about Queen T

01:04:30.420 without hearing about Tuya and Yuya. Those were her parents. And you don't hear about Yuya without

01:04:37.640 hearing Tuya. You don't. She is always mentioned with him. Anyone that talks about Amenhotep III,

01:04:46.100 Queen T is always mentioned, always. So you talk about Akhenaten, Nefertiti is always right there.

01:04:55.520 He saw the example of the men in his life and his family elevated women to levels that women

01:05:03.400 hadn't necessarily been elevated to in the past. And they were just the royal wives, the queen

01:05:10.160 consort, whoever, just that's my girl. But they still held them to a level, to a standard

01:05:16.760 they hadn't been seen before. And that, I think, the reason why he held Nefertiti to the standard

01:05:24.820 that he did, you see so many inscriptions of her and you hear so much about her is because

01:05:28.900 he saw that in his dad with his mother. He saw that with his grandparents. It was just kind of

01:05:34.220 instilled in him to respect your damn woman so i think that's how she got to the level power that 1.00

01:05:41.360 she did because he understood he needed to respect the fact that women are just smarter 0.99

01:05:45.240 so i'm just gonna say right now like i'm gonna call her nefertiti throughout she changes her

01:05:52.240 name and i know you know what she changes her name too and i think you can respect that i have

01:05:56.740 no concept of how to pronounce that um you me both okay so i'm just going with nefertiti because

01:06:02.780 that's how she's known i can't go with that oh my god when i was typing it it's so long my spell

01:06:08.760 check was like what are you typing wait no right i mean sometimes it can't even get past nefertiti

01:06:14.920 so there's no way it's gonna get past anything else so she was what is your concept of like

01:06:20.180 so nefertiti the name it means the beautiful one has come so she was potentially raised in

01:06:27.920 the palace but she was maybe from somewhere else initially okay so this is where my theories start

01:06:33.980 with her i truly believe that she is the daughter of i can you explain who i is i was um the the

01:06:46.620 great counselor to amenhotep the third um and akhenaten but he was also the brother of queen t

01:06:54.180 so with him being and people dispute that one too but there's more proof that he was than he

01:07:01.700 wasn't so if you think about it if he's the brother of the queen where is nefertiti going

01:07:07.700 to be raised in the palace this is how it's going to go um because it is actually documented that i

01:07:15.760 is the father of mut nudgment who has always been assumed to be the younger sister of nefertiti

01:07:21.860 a nudge bit goes on to marry a horn have well you can't be a no one and not marry horn have

01:07:27.980 who ends up being pharaoh after tut so there's that whole thing right there i truly believe

01:07:34.860 nefertiti is the daughter of i i would have been the uncle of akhenaten so when they say the theories

01:07:46.340 of oh you know there was the whole um inbreeding the whole incest thing when it came to the royal

01:07:52.500 families which carried on all the way up through Habsburgs yeah so you know that's just the way

01:07:58.540 it's been with royal families um it makes sense that if you did some sort of DNA testing that

01:08:06.100 Akhenaten and Nefertiti would would share DNA because they would have been cousins they would

01:08:11.560 have been first cousins so you're gonna have you're gonna have matching dna there so that's

01:08:18.140 my theory on where nefertiti actually came from so i think she was just overall part of the royal

01:08:23.840 family yeah and i think um again like i've just like the basic notes that i've read of like fact

01:08:29.720 based books it sounds like there's evidence that she was raised in the palace like she had a tutor

01:08:34.540 like she had a wet nurse and that was only things that you got if you were like really high up in

01:08:38.800 society right yep which leans into my theory of i was her father yeah i mean how else how else do

01:08:46.280 you we see throughout all histories that people are always trying to claw their way up the ladder

01:08:51.980 to get as high a status as possible i mean when i watched the movie or the the television show

01:08:57.340 the tutors i'm like wow you all were ruthless as hell to try to climb that ladder to get next to

01:09:01.640 the king or at least in his royal court in some way it's always been that way so but if you're a

01:09:07.260 no one how do you how do you quote unquote claw your way up to to being raised in the palace

01:09:13.540 to marrying the pharaoh because he wasn't married when he got when he became pharaoh

01:09:18.560 so how how do you do that other than the fact that you've just always been there because that's

01:09:23.920 where you belong and i think it's interesting too that if like given that we know that she had she

01:09:30.480 was tutored and especially if she was the daughter of i like she would have he would have probably

01:09:34.460 mentored her in some way so she entered this relationship marrying him becoming the wife of

01:09:39.100 the pharaoh as an educated woman so she would have known she wasn't just there's been other

01:09:45.700 examples i've read about you know where like a wife was brought in and maybe she didn't really 1.00

01:09:49.160 know she wasn't up to date with current events or whatever but like nefertiti came in she slept with 0.99

01:09:53.180 the harem you know because that's where he put her and she was just his breeder yeah that was 0.97

01:09:58.380 for the most part that's what the queen did yeah yeah but she came in and she like knew 0.69

01:10:02.940 new things like she she grew up she grew up in the royal court like she would have been trained

01:10:08.280 she would have been educated so she kind of knew what was going on which i think is important to

01:10:13.200 know for what she ends up doing later on but then yeah so as like and again like what we know

01:10:19.760 comes a lot from the artwork of the time and the artwork of the time shows them being very

01:10:24.200 affectionate towards each other, which was unusual, right? Very, very. PDA wasn't really

01:10:32.940 a thing in royalty, still isn't, which is why some people have problems with certain sections

01:10:41.940 of royalty. You don't do PDA and you definitely don't carve it in stone, you know? So that was

01:10:50.800 another thing that kind of had people side eyeing him because you know it's like dude you got your

01:10:56.200 chick all up uh you know standing next to you and and kissing on you and you're throwing your

01:11:01.060 daughters up in the air having fun with them what what what it's and again yeah it's so weird to me 0.64

01:11:06.040 like to think back and try to imagine what it was like to the people then who saw it because to me

01:11:09.460 now i'm just like you see every day on instagram is he like oh there's like you know whatever a

01:11:13.820 family and their kids and they're hugging and they're laughing it's like of course like you

01:11:16.780 see that all the time but to them to see the royal family and like nefertiti's like sitting

01:11:21.180 on his lap and they're like snuggling and their daughters they had like several daughters

01:11:24.620 they're very six daughters all girls right no sons yes well there's a theory on that one too

01:11:30.720 but we'll get to it but yeah so like the scenes like they have this like distinctive art style

01:11:35.640 these long heads and and it's showing these like happy family scenes yeah it is and um

01:11:43.980 i honestly think that is really the relationship they had honestly i don't think that he would

01:11:52.620 have he had no one to try to prove anything to he had no one to impress so why would he have

01:11:58.160 that stuff carved if it wasn't and that wasn't impressing people that was just freaking people

01:12:02.240 out all right so why have it carved if it wasn't reality you know so i i do believe

01:12:10.460 we'll get into other things later, but I do believe they really did have that affectionate

01:12:16.600 relationship. And because, dare I say, they actually loved each other, that allowed her

01:12:24.300 to do some of the other things that she did later on because he trusted her. He respected her. He

01:12:31.200 loved her. Why not give her what she wants? And now we're just going to take a break for a word

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01:15:04.980 Yeah, if he respects her, he understands that if he gives her more power, he knows what she's going to do with it.

01:15:10.820 It's not just ceremonial.

01:15:12.020 And she's going to help him.

01:15:13.600 And that's the thing.

01:15:14.260 And I think that, you know, throughout time, and people can dispute this all they want to, every man in power had a woman in his ear.

01:15:24.320 Whether it was his wife, whether it was someone in his concubine, whether it was his mistress, it doesn't matter who it was.

01:15:31.120 Every man in power had a woman in his ear.

01:15:33.460 And I promise you, 90% of the things that happened in history, wars, treaties, whatever, was because of something she whispered in his ear that he took credit for, or he took the blame for, depending on what the outcome was.

01:15:50.540 But every man in power had a woman right there next to him, just as powerful as him.

01:15:57.420 She just didn't get the recognition for it.

01:16:00.200 Nefertiti got the recognition for it.

01:16:01.840 Yeah. Can we talk about so. So in after the 12th year of his reign in the artwork, a new co-king started to be shown in the artwork with him. And that was Nefertiti, right?

01:16:14.760 Mm hmm. Yep. I believe so. Yes. Because I think that and this is just how I see it, because people don't typically just die, you know, usually.

01:16:29.400 And back then, it probably was just an ongoing chronic illness that eventually took him out.

01:16:35.640 And I think that at the point that you started seeing this co-regent, this co-king, is when he realized that his health was really truly fading. 0.89

01:16:45.560 And he wanted to start giving her the power because he knew she would continue on with what he wanted for Egypt. 0.70

01:16:53.100 and so he started giving her more power and and depicting her basically as a as a male because

01:17:00.480 you can't really necessarily depict i mean later on she was i'm getting ahead of myself he started

01:17:07.000 giving her more power and showing her more powerful because he knew she had his best

01:17:12.180 interests in mind she had his back she was ride or die you know yes what what my man wants that's

01:17:19.380 was gonna happen and so i think he started trying to depict her as more powerful to try to get

01:17:24.180 others to respect her the way he respected her obviously that wasn't gonna happen but you know

01:17:30.220 he had his he had what his desires and what he wanted it just wasn't gonna happen but you know

01:17:37.300 men and there's something about the artwork you were saying like she's depicted as a man and it's

01:17:42.340 like that gets back to hatch upset who i'll talk about some other time on the podcast probably with

01:17:46.300 you um but because there's something about there's like a gender thing where it's kind of like well

01:17:51.880 this is like dressed like a man but there's some feminine characteristics to it as well so it's

01:17:55.520 like this is a carving of a woman we're portraying as a man but who is a woman it's right and that

01:18:03.220 was that i think that was a compromise honestly to do that instead of um showing them full-blown

01:18:08.640 male i think they were like okay you know you're in charge so we're gonna somewhat give you what

01:18:15.200 you want but you're still a woman so we're gonna throw in these little slight hints here and there 0.51

01:18:20.960 that you're still a woman you're in charge yeah you know bow down but you're still a woman and 1.00

01:18:27.280 we're not gonna fully get past that so this is the best you're gonna get from me when in my carvings 1.00

01:18:32.360 so i really think that some of those that were showing um vastly male still hinting at female

01:18:39.100 i think that was a compromise honestly so there was one theory i read that maybe like

01:18:44.360 i think it made track so like if he was ill or like becoming ill he needed somebody to step in

01:18:49.660 and so she would be the person who maybe would be doing the day-to-day administrative tasks

01:18:53.160 sort of stuff right because at that time tech would have been even younger because um i believe

01:18:59.840 he uh came into power when he was 10 as it was so you know you can't if you're a child you can't

01:19:09.160 rule anything you gotta have someone that you know is gonna continue on with what you want

01:19:13.560 And that was her. And so, you know, I don't think that he felt he had any other options or I don't think he really even wanted any other options.

01:19:22.940 I think he really wanted her to rule. And I think that he was thinking that she could based off of of what had taken place in the past with some some of the women taking over, you know, as regents for the younger boys.

01:19:36.940 I think that he really truly believed that since he had changed so many things already

01:19:41.680 he could just outright change how things were done and just put her in complete rule

01:19:47.060 regent or not she's just feral that's just how it's gonna be and delusional obviously because

01:19:54.760 you know a society that has always been run by men for thousands of years it's not gonna change

01:19:59.700 like that especially when they didn't even like how you were doing things yeah exactly if you die 0.90

01:20:03.660 and you're like okay my heir is going to be this woman it's like first of all they're not cool with 0.85

01:20:07.320 women rulers and second of all like everyone wants to undo everything he did yeah yeah they don't

01:20:13.320 even like you bruh so they're sure not gonna let her be in charge no exactly so can we talk about

01:20:18.860 what happens after Akhenaten died because this is where I was just like I almost sent you a message

01:20:25.160 before because I'm just like I need to know what you think about this so so a new pharaoh came on

01:20:31.460 the scene after Akhenaten died

01:20:33.400 whose name was, I'm not going to pronounce

01:20:35.560 it, but it's

01:20:37.020 Smankare.

01:20:39.540 Smankare.

01:20:40.920 And no one's really sure who that is.

01:20:43.240 And there's a theory that... I believe that's her.

01:20:45.060 And that's what more and more people, I think,

01:20:47.320 are thinking.

01:20:49.020 However, if you really think about it,

01:20:51.360 who becomes 0.88

01:20:52.360 Feral after Smankare? 0.99

01:20:55.780 Two in common, right? 1.00

01:20:57.840 Correct.

01:20:58.960 Now, there have been

01:21:01.240 theories, whatever, on who's Tut's mother. There are a lot of people that say it's Kia.

01:21:09.180 Kia's mentioned a couple of times as one of the lesser wives of Akhenaten, and then all of a sudden

01:21:14.000 she just vanishes, like literally vanishes. I mean, even with Nefertiti, they found a few things,

01:21:21.500 even after they stopped talking about her, they found a few

01:21:24.880 things here and there where people were still talking about her years after she stopped being

01:21:33.520 depicted in anything else so i think we'll get into that i think kia was actually just

01:21:41.800 wiped out and i do believe nefertiti did that i want to believe tut was nefertiti's son

01:21:52.560 but everything that I've read leans more towards Kia being his mother and I think that's why

01:22:01.220 Nefertiti got rid of her because all Nefertiti bore was daughters six girls she had no boys 0.82

01:22:08.680 Kia comes up with the boy I think she got rid of Kia and just took Tut as her own again my theory 0.88

01:22:16.200 But I think she realized once she took over after Akhenaten died that it wasn't sustainable. 0.96

01:22:26.860 So I believe she took over.

01:22:30.500 And at that point, she started trying to shift things back over to worshipping Amun.

01:22:37.340 Well, because that's where the city was abandoned, right?

01:22:39.580 The Akhenaten? 0.97

01:22:40.400 Correct.

01:22:41.460 Yes.

01:22:41.760 And I think she started trying to shift things back to quote unquote normal. So when Tut took over, that he wouldn't have as many obstacles in front of him to be a true ruler, if she could undo as many things that his father did as she could before she, I think she self-exiled personally.

01:23:04.360 that's just always been my theory

01:23:06.760 that she's self-exiled 0.95

01:23:07.920 I think that she tried to fix

01:23:10.660 as much as she could

01:23:11.680 and then said okay it's up to you now

01:23:14.540 little man I'm out

01:23:15.920 I did everything I could for you

01:23:17.960 be good

01:23:19.140 it's very mysterious

01:23:22.300 and it's also mysterious because

01:23:24.500 you know the Egyptians kept these

01:23:26.000 really long lists of like

01:23:28.440 every name of every pharaoh and all the

01:23:30.440 dynasties and a lot of those

01:23:32.060 just don't mention Akhenaten

01:23:34.400 because they're like, we just pretend like that didn't happen. 0.83

01:23:37.060 Right. So Smakari would be

01:23:38.260 part of that as well. So it's just like, who was this

01:23:40.240 like short-lived

01:23:41.540 pharaoh after

01:23:44.040 like between Akhenaten?

01:23:46.100 I think it was her. And I think it was

01:23:48.220 just her trying to write some things

01:23:50.340 that I wouldn't

01:23:52.340 necessarily say she felt that they were wrong

01:23:54.160 because I think she was

01:23:56.280 the reason why most of it happened.

01:23:59.180 But I think she was just

01:24:00.240 trying to, I mean, and

01:24:02.040 that kind of just goes to any good parent would try to leave things as good as they could for

01:24:07.120 their child right and i think she was really just trying to to get things back in an order

01:24:14.320 to to get things set up as good as she could for tut so he'd have a good start at his part of the

01:24:20.740 thing too i didn't mention this before but um all the stuff that akhenaten was doing like egypt was

01:24:27.980 doing amazing when he took over

01:24:30.080 as Pharaoh, like financially, like the

01:24:32.020 crops were good, like everything was good. And then he just

01:24:34.040 started like, he bankrupted them

01:24:35.980 because he was just like, I'm just going to build a new

01:24:38.120 city in like just a couple years in the

01:24:40.020 middle of nowhere. Like, so

01:24:41.660 Tunikaman was inheriting a

01:24:44.020 kingdom that was not doing great 0.93

01:24:46.080 because Akhenaten. Yeah, the coffers were 1.00

01:24:47.860 definitely depleted by the time he took over.

01:24:50.580 And so I think that was

01:24:51.860 that was the point of the whole

01:24:53.740 Svenkari time period. I think

01:24:55.880 that she was just trying to

01:24:57.800 get things reestablished for him so he could somehow start to to rebuild the the grandeur

01:25:04.440 and the the wealth and the status of ancient Egypt and like I said any good parent would try

01:25:11.060 to set their kid up to be the most successful and you know she had option a option b you know

01:25:18.180 do this then disappear or try to just outright rule and someone's gonna they're gonna get you

01:25:24.220 so I think she went with option a this reminds me of like I have some um there was a book that

01:25:32.920 I read like when I was a teenager ages ago it was like the murder of King Tutankhamen

01:25:36.500 and that was one of the books that got me really excited about history because it was written in

01:25:40.320 this really exciting accessible way it wasn't like um like a textbook sort of thing so and

01:25:46.600 that talks about I and so like getting back to this man who is potentially Nefertiti's father

01:25:51.960 and what his role was because he's still on the scene when Tutankhamen takes over yeah he was the

01:25:57.160 counselor for I'm going to hold up the third he was in the counselor for um for Akhenaten he was

01:26:02.920 the counselor for King Tut um and then when Tut died he became pharaoh because I mean honestly 0.85

01:26:09.400 who else was there because Tut didn't have any heirs and you're not going to put a woman in 0.91

01:26:15.120 charge so the most logical person to put in charge was the person that was directly related

01:26:21.180 to the royal family and that was I and he ruled for four years until he died I personally believe

01:26:27.120 Hornhebb had him killed but you know that's my theory but if you think about it I don't think

01:26:32.680 Tuck was killed because like I said earlier I believe that Akhenaten and Nefertiti were actually

01:26:39.980 blood related which you have incest which you have everyone knows with the genetics of that

01:26:46.820 you're going to have medical issues, which I think is why some of their daughters died so young

01:26:52.160 because they just had medical issues that just at that time could not be overcome.

01:26:56.940 And I truly believe that with the proven injuries that Tut had, with the leg injury and all that

01:27:03.420 kind of stuff, I think it all caught up to him and that's what killed him, honestly. But then

01:27:08.220 once you have I take over, you stop with the whole inbreeding. That's where it stops.

01:27:15.280 because um then hornheb takes over he's married to mutt nutramet who he's not related to so you're

01:27:23.720 no you no longer have that that inbreeding right of the royal family health problems

01:27:28.980 right so i think that's why after after tut you know then you have you know setty and ramses and

01:27:37.480 all of them and you know they ruled a long time they lived a long time well because they didn't

01:27:42.940 have those health issues that the inbreeding royal family had before then so i don't think

01:27:49.540 tut was killed i think he died of just health issues and i stepped in because there was really

01:27:56.600 no other logical person to put there but then i like i said i think hard have killed him well no

01:28:01.500 and it's really a situation like anything is possible but just like ambitious people could

01:28:07.800 especially in that context like could have done anything really because if you think about it i

01:28:15.340 mean granted it's not like mitana mitani and syria it's not like they weren't flourishing

01:28:20.140 they were but and i this is probably going to come off wrong and i don't mean it that way but

01:28:26.540 ancient egyptians really truly believe themselves to be superior that they were literally above

01:28:33.480 every other human being that could possibly exist in the small earth that they believed existed.

01:28:40.420 And so it would have been their, whomever's ambitious goal to be in charge of the most

01:28:49.660 powerful, of the greatest civilization ever known to man. And to them, that was ancient Egypt.

01:28:57.280 So who wouldn't want to be in control of that? I mean, I probably wouldn't because that's a whole

01:29:02.440 lot of responsibility i don't want to have but like an ambitious person who like wants power

01:29:06.960 yeah of course yeah and i mean and they would view it as i can literally be sitting on top of

01:29:13.280 the world that's the way they would have viewed it is they were they were on top of the world

01:29:16.980 they were at the right hand of all the gods in fact they considered themselves to be god kings

01:29:22.080 you know that's just that's just the way they were so i think that i became pharaoh because

01:29:29.880 Because he was just ambitious enough and he was close enough to the family to where it just, he was just able to move in and who was going to question it.

01:29:36.520 Well, and also I think like the fact that he was a counselor to like, I'm going to tap the third, the fourth, like, it's just sort of like someone could take over the office.

01:29:45.660 It's like, oh, you know where we keep the paperclips, you know, you know, the login to the computer.

01:29:49.440 It's like, you can just do this because you've been here doing it.

01:29:52.480 Yeah.

01:29:52.900 He was the logical choice.

01:29:54.100 He was related to the royal family.

01:29:57.280 He had been the chief counselor to the royal family for how many different reigns, for how many years, because I mean, look how long Akhenaten's dad was in charge.

01:30:07.760 So, I mean, like you said, you're the person that has all the logins.

01:30:12.120 We might as well just put you there.

01:30:13.800 Exactly, exactly.

01:30:14.460 And but I can also see where it's very tempting to see somebody like that and be like, oh, of course he murdered Tutankhamen, because it feels very Shakespearean.

01:30:22.900 It feels very much like this guy, the advisor lurking in the shadows waiting for his chance.

01:30:27.660 You know, and I've seen different depictions of Tut.

01:30:31.140 I've read different things about him.

01:30:32.840 And I honestly don't think he had the heart for it.

01:30:36.820 Personally, I don't think he had the heart for it.

01:30:39.360 I don't think that he wanted it.

01:30:41.920 I don't think At-Naughton wanted it either.

01:30:45.900 But he had these ideas of what he wanted the country to be.

01:30:49.680 So he he ran with it. I don't think Tut had the heart for it.

01:30:56.060 And so I think that, like I said, I think he did actually die from natural causes, but I think they would have just killed him because he was weak, honestly, because, I mean, look how it looks like it was pretty easy for him to get hurt.

01:31:09.120 And the only reason why I can go along with that theory is I have a bone condition called osteogenesis imperfecta.

01:31:16.840 Basically, it means I break easy. Who's to say he didn't have something like that is why he was always getting injured. You know, we don't know. He might have just been a naturally more fragile person. And if he had a more, quote unquote, fragile personality to go along with that, and he wasn't able to produce any errors, it would not have viewed him as a viable option to retain as pharaoh.

01:31:45.380 So had he not died, they would have got rid of him.

01:31:48.220 I have no doubt.

01:31:49.460 And what is wild to me?

01:31:51.200 Because we're kind of like at the, so the tail end of like, in terms of our retelling

01:31:55.660 goes, Nefertiti is dead.

01:31:57.540 Tutankhamen is dead. 0.87

01:31:58.320 The fact that those are like the two most famous ancient Egyptian people is bananas. 0.99

01:32:05.320 It is.

01:32:06.660 If you really stop to think about it, like the two people that didn't reign a long time,

01:32:13.140 that were part of a reign that was a huge upheaval

01:32:17.720 in everything that the entire country knew

01:32:19.920 are the two people we know the most about.

01:32:23.140 The two people that get talked about the most.

01:32:24.900 Tut gets talked about.

01:32:25.880 You say ancient Egypt, and I have asked you,

01:32:28.420 I've tested this theory out with some teenagers.

01:32:31.340 I'm like, when I say ancient Egypt,

01:32:32.780 what's the first thing you think of?

01:32:33.980 And they always say Tut every time.

01:32:36.500 There's this exhibition that's like,

01:32:39.020 my friend saw it, I forget where.

01:32:40.180 It's like touring around various cities in North America.

01:32:42.200 it's one of those like you know those projections where it's like it's like the king tut experience

01:32:47.080 so you like go into it it's actually here in vegas right now it's at the luxar yeah so exactly exactly

01:32:54.060 so people like love king tut and that was because well just because this tomb was found and there

01:33:00.500 was so much stuff in it and there's so much stuff in it because no one knew about it or cared to

01:33:06.360 rob it because it just got buried no one really knew about him because he he came after the

01:33:13.200 heretic he he was the son of the heretic he didn't rule very long so no one knew about tut because

01:33:20.500 he wasn't he wasn't setty he wasn't ramses he wasn't the popular ones so no one knew anything

01:33:27.040 about him he wasn't his grandfather no one knew anything about him and then they find this and

01:33:32.700 They're like, wait, hold up.

01:33:34.180 What?

01:33:34.840 Yes.

01:33:35.820 And how does he have all of this stuff?

01:33:37.820 I promise you, a third of what was in there didn't ever make it to getting logged and put into any kind of museum.

01:33:45.360 It's sitting in some rich person's house right now.

01:33:47.760 Speaking of.

01:33:48.460 So the fact that we know, like one of the reasons why Nefertiti is so famous is because that bust was the bust.

01:33:55.360 So I just want to explain because I didn't know any of this.

01:33:58.120 There's a whole book written about it, actually.

01:33:59.680 And it's like about what happened.

01:34:01.420 it's a it's a controversial subject trust me oh my god so yeah so it was found when they were

01:34:07.780 excavating what's now amarna but it was akataten and they found it was like the studio of a sculptor

01:34:14.200 yeah it would it basically would have been yeah it was yeah it was an art studio in today's uh

01:34:21.140 terminology where he would walk in and find um finished unfinished pieces that someone decided

01:34:27.380 to work on yeah that's what they found it in and it's like how how did this go how is this still

01:34:34.920 sitting here how did no one take this how about when they were taking things from there exactly

01:34:38.960 when they were like up and leaving and like boarding up how did no one take that with them

01:34:43.600 they were just like even the sculptor himself he's like yeah i'm just gonna leave that i'll

01:34:46.940 make any sculptors who cares like he just left it yeah i know i know and everyone says i can't

01:34:54.620 be a very good uh true-to-life depiction of her because it's just too symmetrical okay well when

01:35:00.780 you are are carving something you are going to be very symmetrical with what you're carving you're

01:35:04.800 not going to have eyes offset from one another and whatnot that's just that's not how people

01:35:09.820 carve things that's that's not how art works unless it's abstract and they didn't view things

01:35:16.240 in abstract back then so yes it's going to be symmetrical i truly believe that there were some

01:35:22.420 liberties taken when, when carving, she might not actually look exactly like that, but I think it

01:35:28.840 was very close to it because you don't, I mean, if you really look at some of the, uh, the

01:35:33.740 inscriptions carved in stone, that bust isn't that far off from what you see in the other carvings. 0.73

01:35:42.840 So I truly want to believe that woman was just damn gorgeous. You know what? I bet she was.

01:35:50.000 i mean if you look at the egyptian women of today they're gorgeous so why wouldn't she have been 0.52

01:35:58.320 no exactly and also if there's like various women around that akhenaten was growing up nearby like

01:36:04.900 he chose he would have if she was a daughter of ai that would be like another benefit but like

01:36:09.680 she stood out for some reason i think it was a combination of her see and that's the thing you 0.97

01:36:17.040 and I talked about this when I came to Cleopatra she was probably a bit fugly but you know whatever 1.00

01:36:22.520 it wasn't her looks that got men always want to say oh the wily woman used her looks to get what 1.00

01:36:28.300 she wanted no that woman was just smart she was just smart and then she wasn't pretty she was 0.99

01:36:32.860 smart I think Nefertiti was smart and pretty and you you can't win against that combination

01:36:39.440 you're lost dude you're just you're gonna have to give in well and also I don't think there's

01:36:46.920 any reason to think that this sculptor would have tried to carve her to look prettier than she was

01:36:52.200 i don't think so either especially when the art was making them look so weird

01:36:55.820 yeah i think you know like i said as far as is the setting of the eyes and whatnot it's obviously

01:37:02.020 going to be symmetrical because that's just what artists do but i really truly believe that there's

01:37:08.220 a lot of reality to that but i think she just really was that beautiful yeah the fact that

01:37:15.960 It ended up out of Egypt the way it did.

01:37:20.060 No, that's exactly what I want to talk about.

01:37:21.380 I want to talk about what happened.

01:37:22.760 So just like quickly.

01:37:24.380 So, oh my God.

01:37:25.640 Okay.

01:37:26.840 So the best was found 1912, which is like around the same time they were excavating other parts of Amarna, like what used to be Akitadan.

01:37:35.520 Because they just discovered it at that time.

01:37:37.900 That's the thing.

01:37:38.820 A person digging for pottery or whatever it was they were digging for happened across something.

01:37:45.320 was like hmm this looks kind of interesting brought it to someone they're like oh where

01:37:48.940 what where did you find this in the middle of the desert yeah yeah oh i found it over here 0.87

01:37:54.020 they started digging they find a whole city a whole ass city oh my gosh so and of course that

01:37:59.660 was so this is 1912 so it's like a very it was the time where there's like newspapers are a thing

01:38:04.700 there's like international you know there's one of those the um anyway like you could news could

01:38:11.200 get around the world pretty quickly so the fact that they've found this yeah they were wiring

01:38:14.740 things at that point so yeah they could do news could travel a lot faster at that point than it

01:38:21.260 ever exactly so like at this point like the world was poised to to be really excited about this 0.88

01:38:26.800 and like the people who were doing the digging were just like the worst yeah european white

01:38:34.360 colonizing men um so this german guy so he found the bust and then he kind of tricked the people 0.78

01:38:42.740 in egypt to say like oh yeah it's not actually that exciting it's not actually that good i'll

01:38:46.620 just take it like it's not it's basically i'll take it off your hands it's crumbling like i'm

01:38:51.340 sure it's nothing and the egyptians were like okay and then they found out because they took

01:38:56.400 it back to germany and started displaying it in a museum and people freaked out like

01:38:59.960 understandably it's a beautiful artifact it's like in excellent condition and egyptians were

01:39:06.360 like wait that's wait that's like in really good shape like you told us it was in really bad shape

01:39:10.860 Like, can you send it back to us?

01:39:12.700 And then for the, that was like 1924 when they started exhibiting it in Germany.

01:39:16.820 Since then, unrelentingly, Egypt has been trying to repatriate this bust.

01:39:23.380 They're never giving it up because that's all they have.

01:39:26.580 That is what draws people to that museum that it's sitting in. 0.97

01:39:30.120 No one goes there for any of the crap that's in that museum except to see that bust. 0.92

01:39:35.260 They're not going to get rid of that revenue. 0.98

01:39:37.120 They won't do it.

01:39:38.020 No.

01:39:38.280 Because they know no one's going to come in

01:39:40.380 Guns blazing and steal it

01:39:42.500 They know no one's ever going to

01:39:44.400 Truly be able to make them give it back

01:39:46.660 So they're not going to give it back 1.00

01:39:47.520 Well and here's the thing like Egyptians have been trying to make them give it back 1.00

01:39:50.180 Like politicians like 1.00

01:39:51.840 Everybody like

01:39:53.540 Are suddenly like demanding it back

01:39:55.640 But it's something like so it's in a space in Berlin

01:39:58.020 And

01:39:58.920 Let me see

01:40:01.580 So I don't know at one point

01:40:03.880 So like World War II happened 0.98

01:40:05.500 Hitler loved it

01:40:07.080 which i mean he appreciated art true and and so i it's funny that you know it's it's to him he

01:40:15.740 would see what he would have called a colored person but he still appreciated the beauty of

01:40:21.800 it because he appreciated art so it's it's really kind of odd to hear that how much he really liked

01:40:27.580 it considering it wasn't a blonde hair blue-eyed person great point yeah so like world war ii so

01:40:32.840 it was sort of like put into hiding it was sent over to the u.s at one point and then back

01:40:36.760 so just what i have here written down is so the minister of state for antiquities affairs

01:40:42.320 in egypt in 2005 he requested that unesco intervene to try and bring it back um he

01:40:49.380 threatened to ban exhibitions of egyptian artifacts in germany if so like egypt is just

01:40:54.160 like they give no fucks like they're just like they're trying they tried asking nicely they 0.98

01:40:57.400 tried whatever they're trying to like blackmail them they're just like give us this damn bus back 0.98

01:41:00.680 and they won't do it they're never going to do it i love him so zahi hawass so he requested a 0.94

01:41:09.000 worldwide boycott of loans to german museums to initiate a scientific war he called it just to try

01:41:15.620 and like starve them out and then i hate this the body of nefertiti exhibition oh yeah that was that

01:41:25.720 was not a good look oh my gosh so in 2003 um a hungarian artist duo placed the bust atop a nude

01:41:34.180 female bronze statue and they called it the body of nefertiti they said it was an attempt to pay

01:41:40.060 homage to the bust and that makes me feel as it's so gross it's like hugh hefner bought the burial

01:41:46.820 plot next to marilyn monroe like it's those same vibes so it's just like let this woman rest

01:41:51.180 like how dare you use her body to like get tickets to your museum like i know oh i know

01:42:00.980 that's it's gross it's just and the thing is is they they really truly believe that they're doing

01:42:06.440 something artistic and and you know just and like you said they felt they that they were paying

01:42:14.020 homage no you're not you're being extremely male and disrespectful yeah and just like to exploit

01:42:22.120 a woman's body and also everything we just talked about like how many people who went to see that 0.63

01:42:26.520 knew what she did and who she was other than just like oh look she was beautiful and she lived a

01:42:31.160 long time ago you're right and and that's why there's so many people with such skewed views

01:42:36.800 of history because they'll see something like that or they'll read one opinion of one person

01:42:43.060 and then it's just and i'm kind of like that like um i my favorite genre of music is classical music

01:42:50.280 mostly the baroque period so that's gonna you know include bach i will hear a piece of his

01:42:56.660 played by one person at one time and my brain will tell me that's the way it was supposed to be

01:43:02.420 so if i hear it played by someone else and it's a little faster or a little slower i'm like that's

01:43:07.700 not right that it doesn't sound right that's not how it's supposed to be played and it's the same

01:43:12.220 way when it comes to people studying history if you read something your brain tells you that's

01:43:17.120 the way it was supposed to be and if you read something else like oh no that's not right

01:43:20.080 that person's wrong and we just need to learn to be more open-minded myself included because you

01:43:26.620 know some of these pieces are actually really good i need to give them a little bit more credit

01:43:30.200 but we really need to be more open-minded to different theories and different studies because

01:43:34.620 we don't know that was thousands and thousands of years ago like i said you can't even get it

01:43:41.140 right when it comes to the 80s so how are you gonna get it right for 5 000 bc you've got to

01:43:47.280 take all the facts in and lead through it and see what to you makes the most sense but you're still

01:43:53.640 looking at all the facts you know if you don't take in all the facts then your theory is kind

01:43:58.000 of out the door well and that's the thing like new discoveries keep being made and as of right now

01:44:03.580 like nefertiti's tomb has still not been uncovered i that's i said i think she's self-exiled

01:44:10.120 and I think she might have went to Mitanni or Syria or whatever because I mean you didn't have

01:44:15.920 social media back then there is no place that a Kardashian can go that people are not going to

01:44:20.540 recognize them makeup no makeup it's not going to matter you're going to get recognized everywhere

01:44:24.900 you go Angelina Jolie you're going to get recognized everywhere you go no one knew what

01:44:30.100 Nefertiti looked like except the people that were in the royal palace those are the only people that

01:44:34.760 knew what she looked like she could literally go anywhere and no one would have a clue who she was 0.97

01:44:39.280 she could tell him any name she wanted and she could live out the rest of her life in complete

01:44:44.180 oblivion to anyone around her. And I honestly think that's what happened is why you're never

01:44:50.420 going to find Nefertiti because I think she went to a completely different country and just lived

01:44:54.340 the rest of her life there. I hope she did. I love that for her. I really, I started writing 0.72

01:45:01.740 a YA novel. I don't know if I, I think I told you about it. My theory on why Akhenaten would

01:45:08.000 have changed over to the one the one deity to and in in my my book in my theory of things

01:45:17.000 she does self-exile but for a very specific reason not just because she was trying to avoid death

01:45:24.160 it was just to try to protect the rest of Egypt um again that could have been why Nefertiti would

01:45:29.720 have done something like that in in reality as well is if she would have stayed if she would 0.60

01:45:35.220 have tried to keep that power, if she would have tried to hold fast to the different changes that

01:45:40.380 Akhenaten made, it could have made things worse for the country as a whole. And I think ultimately

01:45:46.520 he, probably too, really did care about Egypt as a whole. They were doing what they thought was 0.75

01:45:54.460 best for their people. Now granted, calling yourself a god doesn't have anything to do with

01:46:00.740 the people. That was just a whole selfish thing right there. But honestly, I really do think that

01:46:04.880 They cared about the country as a whole.

01:46:07.560 And I would like to believe, like I said, that she was Smankari, that she was trying to get things set up to where Tut could come in and have a good run and start at things.

01:46:17.260 And then she left because she felt that that was probably the best thing for the country and for him as a whole.

01:46:22.740 i think that would be i hope in a way that her tomb isn't discovered because i like

01:46:29.700 the mystery of it and i like that that supports that maybe that is what happened you know

01:46:35.380 but then also i think there's something about um king two and common's tomb like he died so young

01:46:40.940 like some of the things that are in there they wouldn't have had time to prepare that much stuff

01:46:45.620 for him because no one would have expected him to die that young so potentially some of those

01:46:48.740 things had been meant for her tomb oh absolutely yes um and that's the thing as soon as somebody

01:46:56.640 came into power is when they started the construction of their tomb because you you

01:47:02.480 never knew how long you're gonna rule you know back then you you could die at any time you know

01:47:07.420 you could get water that wasn't quite pure enough and some bacteria would get you so it really was

01:47:14.040 you know it really was kind of a rush to get things done back then because you just never knew

01:47:20.680 when your time was going to come to an end and so they wouldn't have even started on a tomb for him

01:47:27.080 I think he he actually I think I read at one time that he actually took over a tomb that was

01:47:32.140 not even really for him it had been started for someone else or for something else and they just

01:47:38.680 kind of just converted it for him in fact I think I read at one time that the paint wasn't

01:47:43.960 really even dry on the walls at the time they put him in the sarcophagus so you know it's just

01:47:50.020 because that's how quickly everything happened with him and so they would not have had time

01:47:54.680 to give him a proper tomb um even though they stuffed so much stuff in there i think that was

01:48:00.120 just another theory i think that a lot of the stuff that had been kind of left over that wasn't

01:48:07.520 put in akhenaten's tomb was just stuffed into tuts and it was sealed up and it was like okay

01:48:13.620 They were, you know, brush your hands clean of him and that whole debacle that happened and just move on with life.

01:48:20.440 And so I think that's how he ended up with so many things in his tomb, because they were trying to bury, hide, get rid of any kind of remnants from his father.

01:48:31.900 I truly believe that.

01:48:33.800 Hide it away like in a storage space and just.

01:48:36.100 Yeah. And and just weird that no one found that tomb all those years, thousands of years.

01:48:43.620 no one found that tomb how i mean did they they thought so little of him to where they didn't even

01:48:51.560 bother to try to find him or was it just really that well hint how did it go that many years

01:48:58.560 without being found when everything else had been pillaged around him it's so interesting and like

01:49:05.120 you were saying earlier on like you know if there's like these small communities who didn't

01:49:08.120 even know that the religion had changed and stuff like a lot of so I don't know how many people knew

01:49:13.780 that Akhataten had even been made as a city and the people who knew about it once they all died

01:49:18.940 the new generations didn't even know that that had ever happened exactly there's a whole section 0.98

01:49:25.580 actually I would have to say that the vast majority of commoners for lack of better word

01:49:31.560 would not have even known anything about their own country because honestly like I said before

01:49:39.360 why would they need to what benefit did it hold for them to know any of that stuff all they needed

01:49:46.780 to know was that looks like the nostrils of a hippo coming out that water let me dip you know

01:49:51.800 I need to water my crop this day this day and this day to make sure that I'm gonna get the

01:49:56.980 best bounty you know i need to sterilize my water i need to make sure that you know my kid is at

01:50:03.460 least fed before they go to bed that's the stuff they needed to know they didn't need to know

01:50:09.360 anything else which is also it's interesting about what nefertiti and akhenaten did well i guess

01:50:14.300 especially him but to be like okay like we're gonna change the art style we're gonna like change

01:50:18.400 the religion like this is the new because by the end of his reign like there's probably lots of

01:50:23.420 people who never knew the name of the pharaoh and he's like i'm gonna change everything and it's

01:50:28.420 like well you're changing everything for this like bubble of people who are around you

01:50:32.180 i think and this directly relates to nefertiti i think she

01:50:40.820 we established earlier that um they had a probably a bit more loving relationship he he

01:50:49.720 loved her he respected her he appreciated her and i think that in just general ramblings of his

01:50:59.380 like you would talk to a spouse or significant other where you just be like throwing out ideas

01:51:05.740 just talking about things i think she latched on some of the things that he just kind of rambled

01:51:11.180 about and was like you know what if we do this this and this we might actually be able to make

01:51:17.500 that come into fruition you know you know if that's something you really want to do i can help

01:51:22.140 you with that i honestly think that some of the things that happened in his rule was just something

01:51:27.420 that he kind of just threw out there and she might have kind of taken it and run with it and kind of 0.97

01:51:33.240 pushed him towards and i don't want to make it sound like she was this bitch dictator that you 0.96

01:51:39.660 know she tried to rule through him or tried to control him i don't think it was anything like 1.00

01:51:44.620 that, I think that she, it was probably more of out of love where she heard these ideas that he

01:51:53.080 had, things that he would really like to see happen. And she's like, well, then why can't

01:51:56.160 they? You're Pharaoh. You know, I've got your back. I support you in every way possible. If

01:52:01.900 this is what you want, I'm going to help you accomplish this goal. And I think that that's

01:52:06.060 why a lot of things happened is she pushed him to do the things that he mentioned that he might

01:52:12.540 want to do. I think that 90% of what happened during his reign was because of her. And I don't

01:52:20.720 think it was necessarily her idea to do things. I just think that she just pushed him to make his

01:52:26.700 ideas become a reality. Well, I'm just trying to picture that, like that dynamic, it's familiar

01:52:31.400 to me. But, you know, if there's somebody who's like, a man is just like, oh, you know, I really

01:52:35.840 want to like learn to play guitar. I want to start a band. And if he has a supportive partner, he's

01:52:39.340 like well why don't you like just take a guitar lesson you know someone who's just like there's

01:52:43.200 someone who's a dreamer and then there's someone who's the like practical well you know you can do

01:52:47.480 that like right and if she was the daughter of i and she was raised in the palace and she did have 0.90

01:52:53.620 the education that she did and she obviously would have had the the air about her that she was for 1.00

01:53:03.260 lack of a better way of saying it superior to others because she was basically part of the royal 0.95

01:53:08.480 family why wouldn't she be like yo man if you want this do it you're feral they can't stop you

01:53:15.720 and i think she she was his hype man i think she was back there cheering him on to do all this

01:53:21.860 stuff that to everyone else was messed up but to him that's what he wanted and she was like that's

01:53:26.580 my man i'm gonna support him if this is what he wants this is what he's gonna have but i mean

01:53:33.240 again just a theory but you know like every theory is like that's just as valid as any of

01:53:38.740 any other we will never know but that's like a dynamic the word that makes sense the context

01:53:43.440 why not but i mean if you just look at how she was always depicted and you know how he clearly

01:53:52.020 viewed her in a completely different way how why would you think that that wasn't possible

01:53:58.620 to happen you know i mean he clearly valued her so and she clearly valued him so you know why

01:54:06.020 wouldn't they just be each other's biggest that's the thing like if they both like as we see in the

01:54:10.020 art like if they really valued each other and we see what they did when they were in charge it's

01:54:14.780 like obviously they were both interested in this if they both cared and respected each other and

01:54:20.780 then this is what they accomplished then those two things had to have been related somehow

01:54:25.260 their relationship and what they did yeah and have you heard about the whole theory of their

01:54:30.060 their oldest daughter mirataten um that actually went over to ireland have you heard of that whole

01:54:36.760 theory oh you need to look into that one ireland um well just think about it a lot of the irish

01:54:43.280 people have the red hair right it wasn't really talked about up until a certain time of people

01:54:51.660 having red hair what has been proven the royal family in egypt had red hair oh i didn't know

01:54:58.400 that you did they had that they had red hair that was that was a trait for them um and they're

01:55:06.720 they people have dug into things they say they have their proof that the oldest daughter

01:55:11.860 maritatin actually ended up over in ireland and that's how the red hair started in ireland

01:55:17.520 You know what? I believe it because I believe anything because because it's like anything is possible. Who knows? Like people moved around a lot more back then than I ever realized they did.

01:55:30.220 and and that is so true because and really people are like well how did how did people get to

01:55:38.560 um the continent of north america well we all know the barring strait existed obviously it's

01:55:43.900 covered by water now but there was a certain point in time where you could cross that landmass

01:55:47.980 and get from asia over to at least alaska well you know then you've got all of north america

01:55:55.220 that is completely connected so all you had to do is just migrate south at that point

01:55:58.780 so I truly believe that it was easier for people to get from continent to continent back then

01:56:03.960 even though you did have to do some travel by sea but there were still easier ways to get to where

01:56:08.820 you wanted to go back then the people really realized it would have been a long trip because

01:56:13.200 I mean obviously you know it even takes 10 hours to fly from you know Minnesota to Paris so to

01:56:20.120 travel by boat travel by horse to travel by foot it would take you a long time but you couldn't do 1.00

01:56:25.920 it and so you know to think that no one from africa ever traveled to north america you're an idiot 1.00

01:56:33.240 i mean you're an idiot to think that no one from asia made it over to england you're a fucking 1.00

01:56:40.780 idiot if you think that that didn't happen people got places trust me because you always have even 1.00

01:56:46.900 to this day you have people that have a restless soul and they have to explore alexander is the 1.00

01:56:52.500 perfect example of that they didn't want to sit in one spot they wanted to see what else was out

01:56:57.960 there what makes you think that they didn't get there come on well this reminds me of like we

01:57:02.940 at the very beginning you're talking about your image of egypt and you know the kind of all the

01:57:07.560 shades of brown and all the people who are living there it's like everything it's not so cut and dry

01:57:13.800 and i think this is the sort of thing that we i would have been taught in school it's like this

01:57:17.860 there was this country there's this culture this culture and this culture and they were and they

01:57:21.360 We were just there until one day, you know, exploration or colonization or whatever, where it's like, no, like people are coming and going.

01:57:29.040 And like Egypt, where it's located, like it's so close to so many other regions.

01:57:35.120 Like, of course, people would come and go to trade or whatever.

01:57:38.500 And it's even proven that many different countries came to Egypt, you know, like you mentioned in your notes, they traded with Syria.

01:57:47.180 They traded with Mitanni.

01:57:48.200 they traded with all those different countries that are up there those people existed too

01:57:52.780 what makes you think that they weren't traveling back and forth it's not like

01:57:57.160 land borders aren't real like it's not like somebody's walking up like oh i guess i just

01:58:02.500 crossed the border between like this and this it's like you just walk and then suddenly like

01:58:06.140 oh here's some people and they speak a different language that's interesting like yep exactly

01:58:10.680 exactly i mean it's been proven that the vikings made it all the way over to north america because 0.95

01:58:15.860 that was one restless ass culture right there. They needed to see everything. I truly believe 0.84

01:58:21.220 they, they hit the shores and they're like, you know what, this ain't for us. Let's go back.

01:58:27.800 You know, but I just, it's complete ignorance to believe that there wasn't any sort of

01:58:35.420 intermingling of anything that everyone just stayed right where they were. That's, that's not,

01:58:40.380 and so the white folks decided to start going places. I'm sorry. That's just not how it works.

01:58:44.740 Exactly, exactly. And that's where I think a lot of it comes from. It's this need of some people to believe that if it wasn't for white people exploring, no culture would have ever found any other culture. So then they have to pretend like it never happened until then, you know?

01:58:59.900 i know i know and um and that has been um that that makes historical research very difficult for

01:59:10.680 me as a black woman well i shouldn't just say just black my mother was white german and irish

01:59:17.460 i'm not really sure you get any whiter than that and then my father is black and cherokee

01:59:21.960 so um someone at some point told me i think it was when i was in college my humanities teacher

01:59:27.420 told me that I'm the perfect example of what America was supposed to be. I'm sort of a melting

01:59:32.100 pot of things. I'm not just one thing. I'm a combination of different cultures. And so I look

01:59:41.420 at it as I want to study history and I want to read the facts that people have come up with,

01:59:48.660 but I also have to accept the fact that the people that wrote this stuff

01:59:53.360 are typically white males. And they're always going to write it the way they really want it

02:00:02.880 to be viewed. And is it really how it happened? Is it really exactly what you found or what you

02:00:11.880 read? Or is this just your view of it, your interpretation of it? And this is what you want

02:00:18.040 the people that read this stuff to believe. So I'm really torn when it comes to reading

02:00:22.440 historical facts, because I want to believe that what they've written is factual, but I have,

02:00:32.640 as a Black woman that has experienced what I've experienced in my life, I have to accept the fact

02:00:39.940 that their view is skewed you know it just is and just and it's not necessarily white males

02:00:48.040 against cultures that are outside of theirs they do it within their own as well you know so they

02:00:54.220 labeled women to be who it was the spanish spanish princess which one did they say it was

02:01:02.340 completely crazy the princess the yeah uh she ended up being queen at one time she was married 1.00

02:01:08.640 Yeah, yes, yes. They labeled her as completely crazy. Well, she probably wasn't. She was just 1.00

02:01:15.780 probably very assertive and you didn't like that. But history dictates that woman had 1.00

02:01:21.900 severe mental illness. I don't think she did. I just think she decided she didn't want to fit

02:01:27.760 the status quo of the quiet little woman that sat there and did everything she was told to do.

02:01:32.740 So males in general are just going to write history skewed, period, because they don't

02:01:38.040 ever want to believe that a woman can do anything well and then what's so dangerous one of the

02:01:42.020 things that's so dangerous about that is then you get into a moment like we're in right now 1.00

02:01:45.740 where it's just like oh traditionally women were so quiet and whatever and we need to like get back

02:01:50.420 to that where or where it's like no in no society has every woman ever been quiet ever like and

02:01:57.840 there's so many examples of it and like we were saying like the women whose names we remember

02:02:01.020 like from ancient egypt or from wherever it's because they spoke up and did something that

02:02:06.940 people thought was crazy or whatever. So this, this, this understanding that people somehow now

02:02:12.560 are different from people 5,000 years ago, it's just wrong. And it's, it's unfortunate. There's

02:02:18.700 certain groups of women that refuse to come out of that thinking. But I think that the, 1.00

02:02:25.640 the way society has progressed actually really even in the, in the last five years is women are 0.50

02:02:31.680 really starting to realize that, you know what, I don't have to. I don't have to. And I have to do

02:02:38.660 what you tell me. And I have to think the way you say it. I have to think. I am my own individual.

02:02:44.320 I should be allowed to be my own individual. I'm not saying go out and break laws. I'm not saying

02:02:50.060 to do that. As long as you're living within the parameters of what the law is, you should be able

02:02:55.800 to be who you are. And that goes for men as well. Be who you are. I'm always posting stuff about

02:03:04.220 that on Twitter. Be you. Be happy with you. Do what makes you happy. Listen to the music that

02:03:11.740 makes you happy. Do the things that make you. Be you. And those women back then, they were being

02:03:17.260 themselves. They were doing what made them happy. They were doing what they felt was best for

02:03:22.860 whatever their situation was, and if that didn't go along with what the patriarchy thought was

02:03:28.160 supposed to be happening, they were labeled as this, that, and the other. And so I will always

02:03:34.680 be in awe that these women's names thousands of years later are still spoken about. And with the

02:03:40.840 strength that they are, it's not a passive thing with these women where, oh, you know, they existed,

02:03:46.620 but you know whatever no they're spoken about within the rank for the most part that they 0.70

02:03:53.120 deserve they were strong powerful women and they are they're viewed that way by most people granted 1.00

02:04:02.520 you're still gonna have your neanderthals that are gonna be like oh that was a woman didn't know

02:04:06.540 her place okay that was a woman that absolutely knew her place and she asserted it and you're

02:04:15.020 just mad no and this is why um we've been talking forever and i never want to stop but we do need

02:04:21.740 to wrap it up at some point but i i think it's obvious why you and i are friends because

02:04:26.780 we're coming from a very similar viewpoint about history i think i i do agree and it's funny i was

02:04:37.680 thinking about it just this morning i'm like you know i've actually never like physically met this

02:04:41.900 woman. I've never seen her. We've just exchanged, you know, messages on social media, but damn,

02:04:49.460 I'd go to war for that woman. So there's a thing I do at the end of every podcast. So I give a 0.99

02:05:00.280 score to everybody. So there's four categories of, I'm just trying to find my thing. Just to

02:05:07.240 see where Nefertiti ranks on our scandalousness scale. So, so I'll get you to help me figure out

02:05:17.080 the score and then we can compare after to see like who she's near of all the people we've talked

02:05:21.740 about on the show, which is like an increasingly large amount of people. So the first category is

02:05:26.860 scandalousness, which means like for her time and period, like how scandalous would like the

02:05:34.480 everyday person in egypt have thought she was you know the everyday people that knew who she was 0.77

02:05:41.800 that understood the way society was supposed to function i think that um they would have

02:05:47.740 they would have buried her in the sand if they could okay so it's a scale i should say also

02:05:52.480 it's a zero to ten scale so ten being like the most scandalous and zero being nothing um the

02:05:58.640 fact that um they knew she had some influence on the the only pharaoh that was ever considered to

02:06:05.580 be a heretic i would say that though that patriarchy would have put her at a ten yeah i think to the

02:06:11.720 people who knew who she was they would have been not impressed with at all like not just that she

02:06:17.520 was a woman with power and it's funny because you know if you read you see that um akhenaten really

02:06:24.280 revered his mother Queen T

02:06:26.860 and I

02:06:28.920 have actually read a few times where she

02:06:30.900 did have some influence on some of the things

02:06:32.880 that he did when it came to

02:06:34.580 relations with other countries and whatnot

02:06:37.020 and the fact that

02:06:38.740 apparently she never

02:06:40.880 tried to get him to ditch

02:06:42.640 Nefertiti tells you

02:06:44.860 something that you know

02:06:46.880 she probably didn't

02:06:48.680 she might not have necessarily agreed with everything

02:06:50.800 that Akhenaten was doing when it came to

02:06:52.600 you know switching from the pantheon to the one deity but i i don't think she had major objections

02:07:00.480 to it either i don't think she she doesn't strike me as the one that would have been kind of like

02:07:05.900 oh well you know he's he's the man in charge i i really think that she kind of just went along

02:07:11.440 with it because she didn't necessarily see it as being a super bad because like what you were

02:07:17.120 saying what Akhenaten's father had already been trying to sort of like downplay yeah yeah he had

02:07:23.220 already started uh elevating Aten to a level that people were kind of questioning and he was

02:07:29.280 questioning the the level of power that the priests of Amun had so that that whole way of

02:07:36.180 thinking would have been part of that royal family so I really think that Queen T supported him more

02:07:43.100 than people talk about as well because I you know she would have been a very powerful woman at the

02:07:48.640 time as well he he kept her right by her side by his side so if she didn't like Nefertiti I think 0.94

02:07:55.340 Nefertiti would have been gone in fact she probably isn't even the one that got rid of Kia you never

02:07:59.660 know so so I think that Nefertiti had more support Akhenan and Nefertiti had more support within the 0.99

02:08:08.820 whole um ruling family than they had from anybody else and that's probably what kept them the safest

02:08:17.200 that's true because yeah it is truly so wild to me that they did everything they did and both

02:08:23.060 like neither of them as far as we know was assassinated and it's because everyone around

02:08:27.860 them and especially if she was the daughter of i then he would be protecting her and him

02:08:31.380 like they had they had all the right friends in all the right places to yeah they did and but

02:08:37.100 you know when it came to outside of the family outside of the royal court they would have been 0.98

02:08:42.520 like that bitch needs to go yeah very much so there was one thing i read it was a festival 0.97

02:08:48.640 that they held early on and it was like in one of their new temples to aten who was the sun 0.99

02:08:53.900 king and so it was like an open air temple or something so they could also it was just like

02:08:58.880 getting sunburned passing up from heat stroke because they're like so many they would because

02:09:04.160 it would be so arid and the sun would just be beating down on you and and i've even people

02:09:08.800 that have gone to visit egypt you know in our time period and be like man you just you fry in

02:09:14.640 that sun so if it's that hot right now imagine how hot it was back then so i'm just picturing

02:09:18.840 all these people where he's just like okay there's one god it's the sun everyone has to like stand

02:09:22.300 outside for hours like of course they would hate him of course i mean i'd be like nah dude i can't

02:09:28.740 i'm sorry i can't i can't support this i'm moving away like you're completely changing a religion

02:09:33.580 And you're making us worship the sun and everyone's getting a heat stroke and passing out.

02:09:37.760 It's just like.

02:09:39.560 Yeah, it would have been a hard sell.

02:09:42.120 It would have been a very hard sell.

02:09:43.380 And clearly it didn't go over because it didn't get continued beyond him.

02:09:47.840 As soon as he died, that was kind of it.

02:09:50.480 So the next category is scheminess. 1.00

02:09:53.360 So like how clever was she with like plans and what she did and how schemey she was basically.

02:09:59.460 Okay, so my idea of a schemer, I don't think necessarily applies to her. I think she was just a ride or die supporter. So in scheminess, as far as how the patriarchy would have viewed her, she would have been a 10 again, because they would have seen that she was supporting him and all his heretical things that he wanted to do. 0.99

02:10:25.580 so they'd have been like nah she's the bitch that's convincing him to do all this crazy shit 0.95

02:10:29.580 because there's no way he'd do it on his own so i really truly believe that as far as outside of 0.99

02:10:35.340 the royal family they would have viewed her as the main culprit of scheming all this stuff and

02:10:40.420 was whispering in his ear getting him to do and that's the same thing you still see today god

02:10:44.360 knows where it's just like a man does something that somebody doesn't like that's like oh it

02:10:47.600 must have been the wife made him like prince harry writing his book or whatever it's just like oh

02:10:50.940 megan markle must have made him write a book it's like or maybe he wanted to write a book

02:10:53.620 like it's so easy to blame a woman because you know he hasn't he hasn't been talking bad about

02:10:59.500 the royal family since he was a teenager no it was her that made him do that exactly so it's easy 0.88

02:11:03.540 well especially when it's anyway a black woman go ahead and say it when it when you got a society 1.00

02:11:11.580 of people that will burn as soon as they stand in the sun and all of a sudden you got and the 1.00

02:11:17.080 thing about it is is there are so many people that until it was said they didn't even realize

02:11:22.140 she was black because she is so fair skin. I'm not that fair. However, I am the same color as

02:11:29.660 anyone from any Pacific Island. And I have, because I'm not full black, I have a different 0.53

02:11:36.340 hair texture. So my hair is straighter. So I cannot tell you how many people in my lifetime

02:11:42.800 have asked me which island I'm from because I do look like I have the same skin color. I have the

02:11:49.420 same hair I actually even have some of the same features I could tell someone I was Hawaiian or 0.98

02:11:54.180 Samoan or from New Zealand I could tell them I was Kiwi and everyone be like oh okay without 0.85

02:11:59.780 hesitation people believe me and so until someone brought up the fact that that woman was black 0.97

02:12:06.620 no one had a problem with her because I knew she was black I've always known that but there were

02:12:12.440 so many people that looked at her and saw a white woman and they were fine with her until some 0.99

02:12:17.900 raggedy ass man said something about the black woman and then oh wait wait what we can't have 0.98

02:12:23.860 that and so i mean and it wouldn't have been a color thing during nefertiti's time but it would 0.98

02:12:29.980 have been where akhenaten is coming up with whatever idea he's coming up with and all of a sudden they

02:12:35.680 find out that nefertiti 100 supports him they're like oh wait wait wait hold up she had to be the 0.72

02:12:41.200 bitch that told him to do this well that's the thing there's no way he'd do it because if you're 0.98

02:12:45.360 a society that really values 1.00

02:12:47.060 a royal man then you're

02:12:49.400 you can't allow yourself to think that

02:12:51.340 maybe he would do something you don't agree with

02:12:53.280 so it has to be right it has

02:12:55.620 to be her just like

02:12:57.280 in with Cleopatra

02:12:58.940 now granted she was smarter than 1.00

02:13:01.440 every man she was ever around so

02:13:03.260 she probably did convince Anthony

02:13:05.440 to do a lot of things but you know what

02:13:07.360 Anthony was not a weak man he did those things

02:13:09.400 on his own and so he

02:13:11.260 did what he wanted to do but yeah you 0.98

02:13:13.340 can turn around and blame the woman all you want to that's fine she might have planted the seed but

02:13:19.460 anthony was not a weak man he did what he wanted to do but it's always easier to blame the woman

02:13:25.000 always because the woman has always got to be i mean look at what eve did to adam okay you know

02:13:31.340 that's perfect example but like even thinking the fact that we're talking about this with

02:13:36.980 akonat and nefertiti and it's like still today we're seeing the same thing that's where i was

02:13:40.540 like the amount of time between us or the difference between nefertiti and cleopatra was

02:13:46.280 however many thousands of years it's like humanity is a young thing you know and we're still the same

02:13:53.240 there's so many things that are going on now that were happening 7 000 years ago in the exact same

02:13:59.500 way it's just like i know and it's like how have we not evolved how how have we not evolved past

02:14:08.440 this we've had enough strong women come up throughout history that you could have taken 0.98

02:14:13.820 a cue from that you could have learned from that you could have adjusted some things but you still 1.00

02:14:18.480 decided to be stuck in the mud and muck of maildom and continue on with this messed up view of life

02:14:25.400 and it's like why why it's just it's it's definitely disheartening for the scheminess

02:14:34.540 I think I think I'm gonna give her like a seven and I'll tell you what because people would have 1.00

02:14:41.780 seen her as schemey but she wasn't actually she wasn't I don't think she was at all I think she 0.99

02:14:48.080 was just supportive but the way but you're right the way they viewed it she was schemey her actual

02:14:55.360 her in actuality she was not I completely agree so the next category is significance and you can

02:15:02.300 interpret that however you want so not so if it's at her time but so if it's now and i mean

02:15:07.220 like how that how much do people know her name how much did she affect well i guess how much

02:15:14.240 did she affect things after she died not much because the whole city was buried but

02:15:19.400 her significance people do know her name they do um her significance i would have to say i'd put

02:15:27.180 at about an eight because when when you say the name nefertiti people think the bust and they

02:15:34.720 don't think anything beyond that um for someone to be at a higher significance level than a seven

02:15:41.360 or an eight um i would i would feel that people would need to know more about them and people

02:15:46.660 don't know anything about nefertiti they don't even know who you say akhenaten they're like i

02:15:51.060 have no idea who that is you say nefertiti you think you see king king tut oh yeah i know who

02:15:56.800 that is um do you realize that akhenaten is his father oh really i have not what so so significance

02:16:06.280 beyond that bust she doesn't have any honestly unless you are unless you study history no until

02:16:13.760 i read these books i was like oh now i see why gina loves her story so much i see now because

02:16:19.500 I just I knew the best and I vaguely knew a bit anyway but I agree I think that's correct that's

02:16:25.280 a good score and then the final category so this is like a different point of view so this is so

02:16:30.660 it's the sexism bonus where it's like how much did sexism and the patriarchy hold her back like 0.68

02:16:38.520 so if she could have done a lot more but she was held back like Juana of Castile would get like a

02:16:45.020 10 for sexism because she was treated like an insane person and locked away but um someone like 1.00

02:16:51.020 i don't know elizabeth the first she would get a zero for sexism because she she went along with

02:16:56.260 everything they told her exactly and she made it work for herself so where would you put nefertiti

02:17:00.840 on that scale oh wow so you know honestly i don't feel like she had ambitions beyond supporting her

02:17:10.320 husband so um this one is a difficult one for me if she had ambitions to go beyond anything that

02:17:20.100 Akhenaten actually wanted I probably put her at maybe a six I just really think that I don't

02:17:29.020 necessarily think that she was raised to to be that queen that just supported her husband and

02:17:37.180 everything because if you look at it they they estimate that she was between the age of like

02:17:42.840 maybe 11 and like 15 or so when she married Akhenaten so she even though um back then young

02:17:52.300 when you were younger you still thought older because you had to because life was just different

02:17:57.580 back then her brain still would have been that of a kid for the most part so she would not have been

02:18:03.940 someone that had already developed a whole lot of ambitions on what she thought needed to be

02:18:09.320 happening within the world around her. I think that she really just fell into the, I just support

02:18:16.340 my man and I'm going to push him to be all that he can be. So that's why I rank her so low on that

02:18:25.160 because I don't think that she, I don't think she really would have had, based off of everything

02:18:31.020 that i've read i don't think she would have had anything any sort of ambition or any kind of goal

02:18:36.720 beyond whatever he wanted not in the i'm gonna follow my man in every way possible way just the

02:18:43.600 i'm gonna support my man until y'all do what my man says to do yeah and i think like the fact that

02:18:49.020 she like that she was elevated to the level that she seems to have been you know it's like another

02:18:55.000 royal wife maybe would have not had that much power but she got like because of their strong 0.98

02:19:00.860 relationship she got so yeah so it's not like sexism got in her way i don't think it did um 1.00

02:19:09.300 and i don't think that she was this conniving witch either um i think she was very smart and

02:19:15.720 i think she was very loyal and i think that she just really wanted to support him and everything

02:19:21.480 that he did because she believed that that was going to be the best thing for the country overall

02:19:27.120 so what number did we decide on did we say did you say six seven yeah i i put her like in between

02:19:33.760 a six and a seven kind of because i just i just don't see her as that person that really was out

02:19:39.660 to try to rule the world kind of thing you know not everybody has to be no you don't that's not

02:19:45.380 the expectation in order to get things taken care of you don't have to be that person i mean you

02:19:50.120 don't have to be alexander the great he wanted to rule the world he wanted to to take over as much

02:19:55.160 as he could that's why he ended up in Egypt in the first place because he heard that there was

02:19:58.660 this thriving civilization that he wasn't in charge of let me let me go see what's happening

02:20:04.240 over here you know and that's really what it boils down to he heard that there was someone

02:20:08.780 out there doing better than him and he didn't like that so he trekked his way on over there

02:20:13.520 and took it over because obviously he would have had better weapons he would have had a better army

02:20:18.680 than them because and then that turns into where they'll say oh they were uncivilized 0.80

02:20:24.880 that's bullshit because egypt was probably the most civilized civilization to ever really truly

02:20:30.100 exist because they didn't have all that outside stuff they did it all themselves so i i think 0.97

02:20:36.580 that he was really jealous i think alexander was jealous and that's how ptolemies ended up in power

02:20:41.620 because he left ptolemy there right and that's cleopatra came from that right she was a ptolemy

02:20:46.240 correct she came from that lineage so uh i that whole the downfall of the true ancient egypt

02:20:54.040 was over alexander's jealousy that is the scheminess that is all this stuff that they

02:21:02.220 try to accuse women of being alexander was the epitome of just like narcissistic like petty

02:21:07.720 yeah all those all those things were just like women are so emotional like says a man who's like

02:21:13.020 scream crying that is like supreme court hearing or whatever um okay so that ends with Nefertiti

02:21:21.340 so she out of a score of a potential 40 and no one's ever gotten 40 she has 31.5

02:21:26.140 and I just want to give you a sense of like where other people are so actually the last episode I

02:21:33.100 did was a Margaret Tudor who is Henry VIII's sister I don't know if you know her story but

02:21:38.000 She got a 31.5 as well, which is an interesting coincidence.

02:21:42.800 She had a really chaotic life. 0.54

02:21:44.540 She did not have a supportive husband.

02:21:47.780 Agrippina of Rome, do you know her story?

02:21:50.180 She was the mother of Emperor Nero.

02:21:55.000 She has a... 1.00

02:21:55.480 She was conniving as well. 1.00

02:21:57.680 She has a scheminess point. 1.00

02:21:58.680 She has a 31.

02:21:59.960 So she's in that same neighborhood.

02:22:01.740 Really?

02:22:02.620 How did she...

02:22:03.740 Wow.

02:22:04.140 Okay.

02:22:04.400 because yeah some of the i've just kind of briefly touched on that one and i think she's a reason why

02:22:11.580 he was so damn crazy i don't know and also i just give these scores based on what my mood is that

02:22:16.580 day but i think agrippina as i recall i think she had a lot of i think she got full points for

02:22:20.020 scheminess but i think she got not so much points for significance or maybe she did because she was 1.00

02:22:24.900 she murdered a lot of people she got high points for sexism though because she had a lot of ambition 1.00

02:22:30.060 And then she had to like hide behind a curtain, you know, when the men were talking because she wasn't allowed to be in the room. 1.00

02:22:36.100 So she put up with a lot.

02:22:38.360 I'm just scrolling down.

02:22:40.360 I'm scrolling way down because I know Cleopatra didn't get a high score.

02:22:44.220 And that's on me. 0.83

02:22:47.200 She, in my opinion, she was a full 40 in brilliance. 0.90

02:22:53.500 That woman knew what she was doing. 0.84

02:22:56.660 She knew exactly how to play them in the exact way.

02:22:59.480 It's just, you know, her downfall was Antony. 1.00

02:23:02.380 She got caught up in his ass. 1.00

02:23:04.320 If she would have just avoided men and just continued to use them the way she was using them, she would have thrived a lot longer. 1.00

02:23:11.100 But she got caught up in Antony and that was her downfall.

02:23:14.060 Her.

02:23:14.500 And she was also dealt like a really rough hand.

02:23:16.940 Like Egypt in that late Ptolemy era was like a mess. 0.83

02:23:21.100 And like, I don't know how much better anyone could have done than her in battling that. 0.99

02:23:26.080 She has a 28, just so you know.

02:23:27.780 so which is again like i i make these scores based on what my mood is that day if i scored

02:23:34.360 cleopatra today after talking to you i'm like i feel like i would have given her more points

02:23:37.220 but um that's just where she landed but anyway nefertiti is definitely in the higher

02:23:41.800 higher end of things and i think she deserves i just think that she had more influence on things

02:23:47.860 not necessarily in a negative way but i think she had more influence on things than people

02:23:52.100 will ever give her credit for. And I think that that influence for her was just support.

02:23:59.660 It was all based around support. I think she just really wanted to see Akhenaten thrive. 0.54

02:24:06.060 And I think in my theory of her being Smakare, I think she wanted to see Tut thrive. And I think 0.52

02:24:12.960 that's why things started shifting back to what they were in that time period, just to set him

02:24:18.120 up as well as she possibly could and i think that's valuable to talk about too like the value

02:24:23.080 of being a supportive person versus being the one who's out there trying to change the world or

02:24:29.000 whatever like there's value in being that influence on somebody else like that's not

02:24:34.860 just like you were saying you know like there's a woman behind the scenes like that's valuable

02:24:38.460 you know it is and you know some of them like you know i i think henry the seventh mom she really

02:24:47.720 wanted to be the ruler of England, but she was conniving in what she did, I believe. That's my

02:24:53.680 theory on her. I think that's everybody's theory on her. Margaret Beaufort, yeah.

02:24:57.380 She had her, yes, she had her goals. She wanted her son in power, therefore giving her power. 0.86

02:25:06.420 I think she went about it in not the most motherly way. It was just all about her. I honestly think

02:25:13.580 that a lot of the women that have been an influence on on the men over the years it wasn't necessarily

02:25:20.560 that case a lot of them did but I think a lot of them it was just it was support it was just

02:25:26.280 just diehard support but it was viewed as something different because it was a woman that was doing it

02:25:32.300 exactly exactly so I get we're just at the point again of like everything is the same as it's always

02:25:39.180 been in that sense. Yeah, exactly. And I just don't understand why our society, why the world's

02:25:47.460 society refuses to crawl out of the muck of that, because it's clearly not working well, you know,

02:25:56.520 it's not working. So why won't we fix it? It's really ridiculous. So if people want to follow

02:26:05.720 you on social media where if you want to share that what um are your accounts um my twitter

02:26:13.140 handle is gb dolphin d-o-l-f-a-n and the reason that is because i'm a huge miami dolphins football

02:26:22.200 fan and back in the day uh the diehard fans were called doll fans and so when um when i signed up

02:26:31.580 for twitter in what was it like 2009 i want to say i'm like what kind of what kind of handle i'm

02:26:38.560 going to come up with so the gb obviously is for my name and the dolphin is because i'm a huge

02:26:44.420 miami dolphins fan so so it's funny because like the very first thing when i practically that i

02:26:50.040 asked you when we came on this conversation was i was like what what is your name what do you want

02:26:54.740 to refer to i'm talking to gina and i'm like gina and i'm like is her last name dolphin i didn't know

02:26:59.380 gina dolphin no nope that's just my impression i just think like yeah yeah i know and i um there's

02:27:11.140 a a woman that i met she was writing for a television show that i watched at the time

02:27:16.000 that i signed up for twitter and i saw that she was one of the writers so i reached out to her

02:27:19.580 and i was like you know i love the show blah blah blah and a couple years after that we actually

02:27:23.560 ended up meeting um in la because i have family in la so i went to visit my family i'm like well

02:27:28.860 while I'm in LA, maybe we can get together for dinner. So she saw me from across the hall and

02:27:35.220 she wasn't sure what to yell out. She wasn't sure if she should yell out my name or if she should

02:27:39.820 yell out my Twitter handle because we didn't really know each other at that time. Right now

02:27:43.560 we are like diehard friends. We would do anything for each other now, but at the time she wasn't

02:27:49.480 sure how to refer to me. So she, she wasn't sure what she should call out. I just happened to turn

02:27:54.920 and see her so she didn't have to call my name out but people always run into that because they

02:27:58.920 don't have my full name on there so people are like okay so what do i call her now exactly so

02:28:04.440 no it's just funny to note because i'm like it is what is your name i have people ask me you know

02:28:11.140 people that i get to know a bit better you know where i start talking to them outside of twitter

02:28:15.820 they're like okay so what is your actual name because my handle does not tell you that so it's

02:28:21.720 GB Dolphin.

02:28:23.120 See, no one will ever forget that now.

02:28:26.660 It's a good story.

02:28:30.080 I mean, thank you.

02:28:31.260 I can't thank you enough for this.

02:28:33.220 Oh, I had a blast.

02:28:34.980 I have such a hard time finding someone to talk to about my passion

02:28:38.820 because people just don't dig into the histories.

02:28:42.000 I told an aunt of mine that I was going to do this podcast.

02:28:45.700 She's like, oh, really?

02:28:46.360 What's it about?

02:28:46.940 And I said, we'll be talking about Queen Nefertiti.

02:28:50.040 Oh, and she walked away. 0.95

02:28:51.320 I'm like, damn, no one studies, in my family at least, no one studies history the way I do. 0.97

02:28:58.800 So I can never find anyone that really wants to sit and talk. 0.97

02:29:01.700 And like I said, I'll sit and drone on and you just, you see their eyes glass over and they're like, okay.

02:29:06.280 And they walk away because of no interest whatsoever.

02:29:10.660 Honestly, that is why I started this podcast.

02:29:13.060 Because every time I learn about someone new from history that's really exciting, I just want to like tell someone who's going to care.

02:29:19.780 Exactly.

02:29:20.260 is often not in my actual life. I have run into that so many times, so many times. I mean,

02:29:30.460 the friend I was telling you about that I met, she was the writer. She is into classical music

02:29:35.060 as well. So I finally had someone to talk to about my classical music obsession. So I've got that.

02:29:41.320 So it's like, you know, every so often I'll run into someone where I can really talk to them

02:29:45.140 about the things that I really enjoy and you can find football fans anywhere so I'm never lacking

02:29:51.140 in someone to talk to I mean I can talk to my kids about football so you know it's funny because in

02:29:56.600 my house we I'm a Dolphins fan my oldest son is an Eagles fan and my youngest son hates sports

02:30:03.620 period so you've got you've got varying things when it comes to basketball and all that we kind

02:30:11.560 of like the same things but when it comes to football it's die hard i'm dolphins he's eagles

02:30:16.000 there's no between there none so so yeah it's i love when i find someone that i can talk to you

02:30:24.720 about anything that i've learned about history because i've dabbled in other cultures as well

02:30:29.240 i don't know as much about them as i do about um egypt but you know i can talk to you all day

02:30:34.780 about rome i can talk to you for quite a bit of the day about greece i can talk to you about some

02:30:40.340 of the Mayans and Incas I can talk to you about I know I'm dangerous because I know a little about

02:30:46.080 a lot but I love to talk about it I love to learn no and you like absolutely have an open invitation

02:30:52.580 to come back on this podcast I just need to figure out what's the next like topic that I think we

02:30:56.060 could really align to have you come back I I would be willing to discuss anything that I know

02:31:02.840 something about perfect thank you so so much for talking to me today Gina this was like such a

02:31:09.680 treat oh thank you for inviting me i i got so excited when you asked me to be on this podcast

02:31:15.820 i'm like wait really wow i can't respond yes fast enough on this i was like i don't know i've just

02:31:22.920 been doing more like interviews and stuff lately in the podcast and i'm like how has it taken me

02:31:26.280 this long to ask gina to be in the podcast this is like the most no-planer i am always willing to

02:31:33.600 sit and talk about things that i have learned because i just i i find it fascinating and i

02:31:38.860 find lessons in it you know i'm i'm not close-minded to things so um you know i i some sometimes i'll

02:31:46.620 walk away from my research and be like oh you know i should probably adjust my thinking on some of

02:31:50.860 the things for my current life because you know seeing this it you know reading some of the things

02:31:56.940 i've read it kind of opens my mind to other things and so i'm like you know i i grew up you know i'm

02:32:02.280 a preacher's kid so i grew up in a very very structured you do this you don't do this this

02:32:08.140 this is how you're supposed to view life. And when I got older, I realized there's so much

02:32:11.760 more to the world than just me and that way of thinking. And over the years, I've just decided

02:32:16.760 to be more open-minded about it and more accepting of the differences in people and things and

02:32:24.340 thoughts and feelings and whatnot. And I feel like I still have a long way to go, but I feel like

02:32:30.560 I'm happier within myself being more accepting. So if I can learn something from something that

02:32:36.920 I've read that happened in the past I'm gonna learn it I feel really I think similar like the

02:32:43.760 way that I see it is the more that I've been reading about other cultures like having just

02:32:48.220 learned mostly about western history and then like that was where I first started reading it for

02:32:52.080 myself like for fun but like in the last couple years especially I've been reading more about 0.60

02:32:56.560 other countries and other cultures I'm like oh my god holy shit like this was like while whatever 0.92

02:33:00.820 Henry VIII was doing this in England it's like this is what was happening in Mexico or like this 0.95

02:33:04.140 what's happening in Angola. It's just like, it's really opened my eyes to see like the bigger

02:33:08.320 picture of things. The world is a lot bigger than we've been taught it was. Absolutely. And there's

02:33:14.340 no lack of things to learn about. I keep throwing down new rabbit holes that I didn't even know

02:33:21.060 were there. There's not enough time in the day to learn all the things that I would love to learn.

02:33:27.240 I've actually started gathering information to start learning more about my Cherokee ancestry

02:33:32.920 because you know when it comes to indigenous histories obviously that's not something that's

02:33:38.860 it's going to be taught in in american schools and there's just so much to it because so many

02:33:44.680 different tribes although they had similarities they had all vast differences between them as

02:33:49.840 well so um i've decided to start trying to learn more about that ancestry of mine and and just some

02:33:57.160 just a little bit that I've read so far it's like oh wow you know you know there's there's so many

02:34:03.660 different ways of just viewing the nature around me you know and accepting you know things that

02:34:10.940 happen I'm not saying just roll over and just take everything that comes your way but try to

02:34:16.320 understand why some things are happening you know and so it's just it's it's it's it's a lot but it

02:34:23.260 if you if you're willing to open your mind to it man yeah the levels that you can get to in

02:34:29.060 your understanding of people it's it's amazing well thank you again so much for joining me

02:34:35.920 thank you for inviting me i had a blast

02:34:39.880 and so just to wrap things up as we usually do just a reminder next week i will be

02:34:48.560 doing the next person in the, there's something about Mary Queen of Scots series. So get ready

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Vulgar History - March 22, 2023

The Gorgeous Legacy of Egyptian Queen Nefertiti

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