biography show 06 [56:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We’re back! Finally! Sorry for the delays folks, with the trip to France and I’ve moved house again and… it’s been crazy but we’re back on track and the shows are going to come thick and fast from now on, we promise!

Today we tackle two subjects - Egyptian Pharoah Akhenaten (aka Amenhotep IV) and Moses. Originally we were going to do Moses but as he is (according to the majority of secular scholars) a mythological figure and not historical, I didn’t want to get into the same trouble we did when we talked about Helen of Troy.

And then I remembered Akhenaten. Like Moses, Akhenaten was the founder of a monotheistic religion. In fact, he is considered the first person to conceive of monotheism or, at least, to put it into practice on a wide scale. He pre-dated Moses (or at least when Moses would have lived had he actually existed) by 300 - 900 years, depending on where you posit the Moses stories. And, unlike Moses, we have proof Akhenaten lived. However, we only discovered his story in the 19th century, as the record of his reign and the reign of his successors, his wife Nefertiti and his son/step-son Tutenkhamen, were eradicted from the official records, possibly because of his attempts to usher in monotheism into Egypt.

Here are some links to information from the show:
Akhenaten
More on Akhenaten
Aten
Nefertiti
Evidence for Moses
Historicity for Moses
Great Hymn to the Aten
Monotheism

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As David is now retired from teaching, I would love to be able to pay him a modest salary for his invaluable contribution to these shows. As those of you who have listened to our Napoleon podcast know, David is a wonderful teacher of history and he puts a huge amount of time and energy into preparing these shows. If you feel inclined to support this, please consider paying a voluntary subscription fee for the Biography podcast by clicking on one of the below buttons. You have a choice of subscribing for $1.00 per month or you can make a lump-sum payment of either $20 or $50.

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If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also like the our other podcast Napoleon 101.

The theme music for this show is:

Black Violin
“Brandenburg” (mp3)
from “Black Violin”
(Di Versatile, Inc)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
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This entry was posted on Friday, August 22nd, 2008 at 7:25 pm and is filed under Ancient History, General, Podcast, Women. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.