Inside BAR

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The heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten lived a hundred years before Moses and practiced a form of monotheism. Ever since Freud’s Moses and Monotheism scholars and laypeople alike have wondered whether Akhenaten really was a monotheist and, if so, whether he had any influence on Moses. Armed with new evidence from thousands of blocks that once formed the decorated walls of Akhenaten’s Theban palaces—blocks that comprise the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle—Canadian Donald B. Redford scrutinizes the questions in “The Monotheism of the Heretic Pharaoh,” and describes how scholars are putting together this fascinating puzzle.

A historian and archaeologist, Redford is professor of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Toronto. His writings include Akhenaten: The Heretic King (Princeton University Press, 1984), a documentary film on the Akhenaten Temple Project (which he directs) called “Akhenaten: The Lost Pharaoh,” and the libretto for the opera Ra. In addition to the Akhenaten Temple Project at Thebes, Redford directs the East Karnak Excavations and serves as epigrapher for the Tell el-Maskhuta archaeological expedition.

The spellbinding beauty of Akhenaten’s wife Nefertity was celebrated on temple and palace walls and in life-like sculpture; the most famous of the latter graces the cover of this issue. Akhenaten gave his wife many loving ephithets, including “heiress, great of favor, possessed of charm, exuding happiness.” In the sidebar “Nefertity—Exquisite Beauty of the Sun-Disc,” Redford unveils the detailed portrait of Nefertity that the excavations at Thebes have painted and compares the queen’s beauty with the ungainly depictions Akhenaten commissioned of himself.

The intriguing tale of how the Nefertity head came to rest in a Berlin museum is told in “Tell el-Amarna Conference Grueling But Stimulating.” BAR editor Hershel Shanks reports on the three-day conference held recently at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, commemorating the centennial of the discovery of the el-Amarna tablets. These 350 texts, found at the place chosen by Akhenaten as his new capital when he left Thebes, reveal much of what we know of the history of Egypt and Canaan on the eve of Israel’s emergence. Important papers noted include Michael Astour’s presentation, which severed the often alleged connection between the Hapiru mentioned in the el-Amarna tablets and the Hebrew word for “Hebrews,” ‘ibrim.

Controversial understandings about Jerusalem’s ancient walls occupy the attention of two articles in this issue. Dead stones come to life as we consider—who built these walls? and when? and why?

A clear joint between two distinct kinds of masonry in the eastern retaining wall of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount is the focus of “King Solomon’s Wall Still Supports the Temple Mount,” by French scholar Ernest-Marie Laperrousaz. Laperrousaz marshals archaeological and historical arguments to prove that some of the lowest courses in the Temple Mount’s eastern wall contain the actual stones placed there by Solomon’s workmen; the wall supported the temple platform along the steep slopes of the Kidron Valley.

Laperrousaz first excavated in Israel in the spring of 1954, when he joined the team searching the Qumran Caves where the famed Dead Sea Scrolls had been discovered. He also took part in the premiere excavation season at Masada. An historian and archaeologist, Professor Laperrousaz teaches at the Sorbonne and at the University of South Paris, Orsay.

Another ancient wall in Jerusalem—a stretch of ashlars 2,500 feet long—has been the focus of debate among scholars ever since 1838, when explorer Edward Robinson identified it as Josephus’s Third Wall, which protected the vulnerable northern side of the city. In “The Jerusalem Wall That Shouldn’t Be There,” Hershel Shanks chronicles the colorful debate that has engrossed three generations of ranking Jerusalem archaeologists and scholars. Was historian Flavius Josephus right? Did King Herod’s grandson indeed build the Third Wall in the first century A.D.? Was the wall built by attacking Romans, or by Jerusalem’s Jewish defenders?

The final report of Dame Kathleen Kenyon’s excavations in Jerusalem, including the Third Wall, has been published, and BAR reviews the 528-page volume in Books in Brief.

The heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten lived a hundred years before Moses and practiced a form of monotheism. Ever since Freud’s Moses and Monotheism scholars and laypeople alike have wondered whether Akhenaten really was a monotheist and, if so, whether he had any influence on Moses. Armed with new evidence from thousands of blocks that once formed the decorated walls of Akhenaten’s Theban palaces—blocks that comprise the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle—Canadian Donald B. Redford scrutinizes the questions in “The Monotheism of the Heretic Pharaoh,” and describes how scholars are putting together this fascinating puzzle. A historian and archaeologist, Redford is professor […]