Howard Carter and the Tomb of Tutankhamen II

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Ancient Egyptians marked their history by the dynasties of their Pharaohs. Modern historians for simplicity have divided this saga into Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms interspersed with occasional periods of political and social chaos. The great pyramids at Giza were built in the Old Kingdom, political consolidation came during the Middle and Egypt reached out to establish an Empire in the New Kingdom south into Africa and north to Palestine and Syria. During this last period, perhaps because of the exposure to other cultures afforded by military expansion, one of the Pharaohs, Akhenaton who ruled Egypt about 1350 years before Christ developed a new religion. He and his wife Nefertiti rejected the multiple Egyptian gods and enshrined a new belief based on a single deity, the sun-god, Aton. To make a clear break with the past Akhenaton moved the government to a newly constructed capital north along the Nile from the ancient city of Thebes and called it El-Amarna.