Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Pharaoh Akhenaten, the ruler who brought revolutionary change to ancient Egypt. During his reign, Akhenaten embarked on a profoundly radical project: he set out to transform his people’s deepest religious beliefs, moving from a polytheistic tradition to the elevation of a single solar god, Aten. The changes in art and architecture that followed have led some to call him ‘history’s first individual’. Despite his successors’ attempts to obliterate him from the historical record, Akhenaten - and his wife Nefertiti - have been an endless source of fascination and speculation.
Contributors
Richard Parkinson, Egyptologist at the British Museum
Elizabeth Frood, Lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Oxford
Kate Spence, Lecturer in the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt at the University of Cambridge
