22_A Royal Couple - Myth and Reality

The social arrangements operating in the Near Eastern cultural spheres were differently applied to commoners and to royalty. This lecture examines the cultural influence and marital arrangements of royalty and looks at how they differed from those of the nobility and the common people. Our concentration will be on a royal couple that has become the focus of myth and legend. Akhenaten and Nefertiti, rulers of Egypt in the late 14lh century B.C., have entered history as both religious revolutionaries and advocates of a new aesthetic sensibility. We will examine their lives through a study of texts and artifacts uncovered in the ruins of their city, Akhetaten, the “City of the Horizon of the Aten.”