SOUR MILK

 

I wish more people in 1892 had heeded the observation of steel mill owner John Metzlaff. He summed up that entire summer of acrimony and fear mongering over whether English should be the only language used in Wisconsin schools, as  “ridicules”.   As impossible as it might have been to believe at the time, this ultra-conservative capitalist asserted that in “10 or 20 years, almost nobody in Milwaukee would even be speaking German”.  And they weren't.

Wisconsin Republican Secretary of State Jerry Rusk (above) agreed, calling the political campaigning that year a “blundering business”. But the idea that the crises then gripping the state was not really a crises, does not seem to have occurred to many others, which is fairly depressing. Because it is so familiar.

William Dempster Hoard (above)  saw the world as his Methodist minister father had seen it, as the minister “Demp” himself might have become, had he not as a child, argued with his religious instructors over church doctrine.  As Robert Nesbit put it, "Even as a young man Dempster already “knew what he knew, and was not to be deflected,.” 

Instead, Hoard built a small newspaper empire in rural Wisconsin, promoting his ideas about politics and agriculture with that religious fervor he might have better directed toward religion.  In the pages of “Heord's Dairyman” (above)  he invented the modern dairy farm, from the alfalfa forage to silos for storage to breeding that produced bountiful milk and sweet cheese. He counseled his farmer congregation to “Speak to a cow as you would to a lady.” 

Then, at 56, in his 1888 campaign for governor. the Republican “Cow Candidate” preached to the voters his second great secular passion – education. “The child ...has a right to demand of the State”, he said, to be “provided with the ability to read and write the language of this country....I would recommend to require that reading and writing in English be daily taught” As if public schools were going to be taught in any other language. But, such political theology led to Hoard's victory in 1888, winning with a 21,000 vote majority.

But Wisconsin was no longer the homogenized Anglo-America it had been in Hoard's youth, which contained, he a admitted, “no foreign element but the Irish”. By 1890 over 70% of the million and a-half residents of Wisconsin were either foreign born or first generation Americans. Four out of ten Wisconsinites spoke German in their homes and in their Lutheran and Catholic churches and parochial schools. And they were already having an impact on state politics. 

Since 1874 it had been legal for Milwaukee factory workers to enjoy a beer with their Sunday meal. But that attitude tasted sour to the temperance leaning Methodists and Episcopalians across the rolling farm districts which were Governor Hoard's base. It wasn't that the Anglo-Americans descendants were any more bigoted than the the newly arrived German- Swedish-Polish-Irish Americans. But it is human nature to mistrust strangers.

Early in 1890, as Governor Hoard's re-election campaign was just gearing up, he was visited by five Lutheran ministers. The men of the cloth warned "Demp" not to enforce the objectionable portions of Bennett's Law, or he would be a one term governor.  According to his own account, Governor Hoard chose to lecture the petitioners. “If you plant your church across the pathway to human enlightenment,” he warned, “you will lose the respect of the young men in your church.” The offended Lutherans, who believed they WERE on the path to enlightenment, stormed out the Governor's office, determined to do battle. This is what happens when ministers think they are politicians and visa versa.

It was named Bennetts law, after Assemblyman Michael Bennett from the farming village of Dodgeville (above).  But Governor Hoard had written it, and inspired it, and forced it through the legislature with a minimum of debate on 18 April 1889. 

The bill required daily school attendance for all children between seven and fourteen, and it required that all instruction be in English. To meet the first requirement, the law mandated all schools, public and parochial, report attendance records in the public press. And to insure this, the law levied fines on  school officials and parents who failed to ensure their children met both requirements - daily attendance and proficiency in English.

Lutherian clergy saw Bennett's Law as over reaching by the government, and an usurpation of parental rights. And, they pointed out, of the 346 Lutheran and Catholic schools in Wisconsin , just 139 did not teach in English. And in those school that taught in German, most of the students also attended public schools, where English language was already standard.  The alliance of Democrats and Church groups was strengthened when the Republican claim of 40,000 to 50,000 children in the state not attending any school at all was shown to be mere hyperbole. However, the proof did not prevent the bogus number from being repeated as fact in Republican circles. Sound Familiar?

In his stump speech that year, William Hoard proclaimed, “The parents, the pastor, and the church have entered into a conspiracy to darken the understanding of the children, who are denied by cupidity and bigotry the privilege of even the free schools of the state.” He pleaded, "I want the little German boy and girl...to have the same chance in life as my children. Without a knowledge of the English language they can not have this chance.”

A German language newspaper responded, “It is not sufficient for them that we should become Americanized...but they want us to become de-Germanized. And they think that can be accomplished first by destroying German schools.” U. S. Senator, Democrat William Vilas, pandered by asking, “What is the difference if you say 'two and two make four' or 'zwie und zwei machen vier?” 

And then on 1 April, 1890, the Republican incumbent mayor of Milwaukee was handily defeated by a Democratic newcomer, newspaper man and humorist George Peck.   A month later 100 Republican bigwigs met in Madison to supposedly endorse Bennett's Law, and the best Hoard's people could get from them was a "no comment".

At their state convention in August, the Democrats sounded like winners. They nominated Peck to run for Governor, declaring Bennett's law “unwise, unconstitutional, UN-American, and undemocratic.” The Republicans met the same month (and in the same city) and re-nominated Hoard, while promising to modify the law. 

They also raised a red flag over their Milwaukee headquarters bearing the image of a one room schoolhouse. The words on the flag read, “Stand by it”.

Hyperbole became the favored language of public discourse. The Chicago Journal called Hoard a “giant armed for the war against...pestilent foreign-ism.” Hoard warned that those who stood in his way were “like cows in front of a locomotive”.  The Republican Stevens Point Journal suggested that Governor Hoard would rather die than abandon Bennetts Law. 

Democrats called Episcopalian clergymen, liars. A Catholic Bishop claimed from the pulpit that Bennetts law had been secretly written by the anti-religious Freemasons. And a Freemason newspaper seemed to confirm this when it trumpeted, “give us ten years...(and) The Bennett Law will be the keystone of a higher civilization.”

It was, in fact, not. On Tuesday, 4 November, 1890 Hoard's cows came home to roost. His 1888  21,000 vote majority became a 30,000 vote minority, as he lost 43% to 52% to Peck. The Democrats won every seat in the executive branch, and control of both houses of the state legislature by a 2-1 advantage. Wisconsin's federal congressional representation went from 7 Republicans and 2 Democrats, to 8 Democrats and 1 lone Republican. That year Wisconsin voted for a Democratic President for the first time since 1852. And every Republican blamed William Dumpster Hoard (above, left) and his damn cows (above, right).

On 3 February. 1891 the new Democratic Wisconsin legislature repealed Bennett's law.  It was replaced a few months later with an almost identical law, but without the English only requirement. But, as John Metzlaff had predicted. just seven years later the Democrats in Wisconsin passed a law requiring English only be used in even parochial schools, and this time there were no mass protests. 

It seemed as if the citizens of Wisconsin did not so much object to the language requirement, as they did not trust preachers like William Demptser Hoard, to make that decision for them. “Demp” might be able to energize his base, but his inability to respect his opponents lead the Republican party to an electoral disaster. 

“Demp” would have done well to remember his own advice, from the pages of “Hoard's Dairyman”. “Happiness”” he observed, “doesn't depend on what we have, but it does depend on how we feel toward what we have.”

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QUEEN OF DENIAL Chapter Four

  

I know that the Pharaoh of Egypt, Akhenaten, AKA Amenhotep IV (above), died around 1336 B.C.E., at about 50 years of age, in the 17^th year of his reign, possibly of a heart attack. It is hard to speak with certainty after 4, 000 years, and until 2010 the only evidence we had were faint hints carved on the walls of ancient monuments and tombs. 

But using DNA, his mummy (above)  has been identified with a “distinctive, egg-shaped skull, slight spinal scoliosis, impacted wisdom teeth... (and a) cleft palate”.  Combined, these physical characteristics hint at Homocystinuria, an inherited disorder which also often produces glaucoma, which blinds its sufferers. This is what comes from mating with your siblings, as the gene causing this disorder is recessive and develops only when you inherit two copies. But intermarriage was something the Ancient Egyptian nobility often did, keeping the crown and their property, among other things,  in the family. 

If Akhenaten's son had been his co-ruler, then the boy's mother would have been the regent, ruling the nation until the new Pharaoh grew.  But his son (by a “lesser” wife) was not the co-ruler,  Nefertiti was. So on the death of the King, the Queen became the Pharaoh, playing her new role under the name Smenkhkare and/or Neferneferuaten.  She was even depicted in the very un-Queenly activity of wielding a killing mallet (above), dispatching prisoners under the rays of Aten, as her husband had been. This had happened before, when the queen Hatsheput had put on a fake beard and governed for 22 years.  But Hatsheput's Egypt had been unified, while Nefertiti's was a land divided by religion.

Three of her daughters were dead, killed by a plague which  had ravaged Egypt for three years. The followers of Amun Ra saw this as divine punishment for the Aten heresy.  But Nefertiti had been devoted to her husband, and was determined to protect his legacy, their family and their faith.  Her problem was she had few allies inside Egypt.  So she appealed to the only other power strong enough to resist the nobility and the priests, Egypt's mortal enemies; the Hittites.

The only copy we have of the this extraordinary appeal appears in the history compiled by the Hittite King Mursili II. He says the Egyptian Queen dispatched an ambassador to his father, King Suppiluliuma I, with the following plea. “My husband is dead and I have no son. People say that you have many grown sons. If you send me one of your sons he will become my husband for it is repugnant to me to take one of my subjects as a husband.”  The letter did not suggest the Hittite Prince would, in time, become a Pharaoh, but the offer was unique. It would have been as if, an American President had offered to appoint a Russian as Vice President.  And that could never happen, could it?   The ruling Hittite Council were  suspicious and sent their Chamberlain,  Hattu-Zittish , to see of it was a trap.

Neffertiti's response to this envoy was almost frantic. “Why do you say 'They are trying to deceive me?' If I had a son, should I write to a foreign country in a manner humiliating to me and to my country? You do not believe me and you even say so to me!...I have written to no other country, I have written to you. They say that you have many sons. Give me one of your sons and he will be my husband and lord of the land of Egypt.” There it was, the offer to make a Hittite prince the King of Egypt. And that clinched the deal. Mursili II records, “Because my father was generous, he granted the lady's request and decided to send his son.” What a nice guy.

However, the transaction was never consummated. Shortly after arriving on Egyptian soil the Hittite Prince, Zannanza, was murdered.  Suppililiuma I demanded an explanation. “What have you done with my son?...the blood spilled between us is not right.” But the new Egyptian King gave no explanation. It appears a counter revolution had occurred in Egypt.

During the counter revolution, Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile, Lady of Grace, She Who Comes With Beauty, Great King's Wife, His Beloved, Lady of All Women, Mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt, Pharaoh of Egypt, simply disappeared. Her tomb was never occupied. Her mummy, if she ever had one, has never been found. Her name was scratched off almost all of the temples and her legend was systematically smashed. It appears they even broke into the workshop of Thutmose the Royal Sculptor, to smash and destroy all images of this woman. After even the bricks from the walls of Aketaten were scavenged, the broken images of Nefertiti were left behind, to be swallowed by the desert sands.

Her death was just the beginning. Nefertiti's record as a ruler was wiped clean, almost impossible to reconstruct. Some Egyptologists are still arguing about whether she had died years before her husband.  But she did not. The effort to abolish her memory seems too complete to have been merely punishment for a despot. Even a Stalin is remembered with reverence by some. But Queen Nefertiti, Pharaoh Neferneferuaten, seems to have committed a crime far worse than mere tyranny. She was a traitor, to the faith of her people, to the land of her people, to her role which was to produce sons for her King and nothing more.

The casket of Akhenaten, the Pharaoh who betrayed the faith, was defaced (above). But it was also persevered, probably by his son, the boy King Tutankhamen .Some of the grave goods prepared for Nefertit's tomb were re-gifted and found in Tutankhamen tomb instead. But the woman Akhenaten loved more than any other, received no casket. She received no monument.  Her memory was scratched off, discarded, condemning her to three thousand years of silent death.

And then, out of the darkness of seemingly endless time came a wonk, a German nerd, a Teutonic bookworm, to rescue Nefertiti from obscurity. And for this he was branded a thief.

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QUEEN OF DENIAL Chapter Three

 

I would like to met Thutmose, the sculptor. Without him we would never have known what a lovely woman queen Neefertiti was.  His true genius as an artist would be forgotten for 4,000 years, but like Michelangelo, even during his own lifetime he was known as a great artist, entrusted with the public image of the two most important politicians in his world, the Pharaoh Akhenaten and his Great Royal Wife. But more than that, like Leonardo da Vinci he was also an intimate witness to a major revolution in technology that literally built the world we live in.

With few hardwood trees, humans in the Nile Delta first built their homes with mud - malleable mud - sometimes formed into bricks, dried solid by the sun. But each adobe brick swelled and contracted separately with the daily temperature swings, and thus larger structures tended to separate and crack. Stone, the other building material available in Egypt, would last forever, but was hard to work with without metals, and if the joint where one stone met another was not a perfect, the entire structure was unstable. And the fit was never perfect. The solution was a combination of the two materials; a malleable stone. In the building trade this is called mortar.

In the Old Kingdom, a thousand years before the birth of Nefertiti, mortar was not used to bind stones together, but merely provided a level surface for their meeting. The fingerprints of ancient Egyptians were recorded as they pushed mortar and mud into nooks and crannies, leveling the joints between the great sandstone blocks of the Pyramids of Giza. But over the next centuries mortar became the subject of a great deal of study, which is when the ancient Egyptians discovered Gypsum.

It was lying about all over Egypt. Its what you get when you dry up an ocean, and other then the bleaching skeletons of ancient whales, large deposits of gypsum are the strongest evidence that the Sahara desert was once an ocean basin. To a modern chemist it is calcium sulfate, and is the primary ingredient in dry wall. Deposits of gypsum so aided the creation of the city of Paris, that the formula used there gave rise to the ubiquitous phrase “Plaster of Paris”, and it can even be used as a fertilizer.

The ancient Egyptians were unaware of most of this, but they did know the material was soft, gritty and eager to dissolve in water. And when blended in water with limestone or chalk (calcium carbonate), it produced the sought after malleable stone. During the middle of the 18th dynasty (1400 – 1300 B.C.E.) the use of gypsum mortars became standard throughout Egypt. Now houses and smaller temples could be built of standardized mud blocks, joined by and coated with a binding agent of similar properties, so the entire structure expanded and contracted as one. It made the construction of the new city of Aketaten possible. And with a few modifications to the formula, it made Thutmose a better artist.

Perhaps someday a new study of Egyptology will open a tomb and find the name Thutmose on a painted mural, with his mummy resting securely beneath. But I doubt it. I fear it far more likely that we will only know him by the few examples of his works that survived in his workshop on the southeast corner of a slum lined street in the southern section of Aketaten. What if the only evidence we had of Leonardo Di Vinci was the Mona Lisa and his crumbling masterpiece, “The Last Supper”? What would we think of him if we did not have his notebooks on anatomy, or his drawings of a flying machine? That is where we are in our appreciation of the world's first identifiable great artistic genius, Thutmose.

He could not begin  with a plaster mask, poured directly on the subject's face. That was an indignity suffered by Hollywood actors today, but was not possible here. Instead  Thutmose probably made cast of a common woman who resembled the Queen.  Once the plaster cast had been created, it was used as a guide for carving limestone busts. Nefertiti's bust was 19 inches tall and weighed 44 pounds, or probably almost half of what the Queen's head weighed in life. Several busts of members of the court have survived, and provide an opportunity for living humans to look half way back to the invention of agriculture, directly into the real face of their ancestors. What returns your gaze is a human, very much like people you know.

The limestone busts were a major technical achievement, but it was now that Thutmose the artist stepped up, as he “worked from life”, applying plaster to the bust, to perfectly match the person sitting before him. In the case of Queen Nefertiti, Thutmose captured “laugh lines” around the corners of her mouth and cheeks, a bump on her nose, bags under her eyes and wrinkles beginning on her neck. He even flattened her cheek bones a little, indicating perhaps a slight change in weight between the casting, and the carving of the stone. This was a great beauty in her middle age, the mother of six girls, with gravity taking its toll, as it does to all of us. And when the plaster additions satisfied the artist, Thutmose then added yet another layer of stucco, smoothing the lines, straightening the nose, perhaps to please his model. She was, after all, the Queen, and vanity is a very human trait, and unlimited vanity a royal one.

And then he painted the face to life, using black quartz held in place with beeswax for the iris of her one eye. For the blue of her jewels he used ground glass with copper oxide. For the yellow bands in her crown he used arsenic sulfide (the mineral orpiment), and for the green crown of Egypt, powdered glass and cooper and iron oxide. The black eyeliner was coal and beeswax, with red chalk for the lips. Her rich skin tone was recreated by adding red chalk to lime spar, also known as our old friend mortar.

The assumption is that the bust which survives today in a Berlin museum, was created as a guide for apprentice artists to produce the many copies that would have sat in the offices of bureaucrats and in temples from the Nile Delta to the southern reaches of Kush, beyond the cataracts of the Nile. This was not the image of a queen on a coin, but the real face of a real woman, who you would recognize if you saw her on the street or sat next to you in the theatre. And this is the first time in human history that such a face was created and has survived for 4,300 years, half way back to the birth of agriculture.

Gaze into her face. This was the woman whom the Pharaoh declared to be his co-ruler in the 12th year of his reign, equal in power with the king himself. No King that we know of had ever named his wife as co-ruler. Now her word was law, just as his was. A hundred years previously the widow Hatsheput had successfully ruled for 22 years as Pharaoh, establishing the wealth that ensured the survival of the 18th dynasty. But she had first been regent for her young nephew, before taking power herself. Nefertiti had no such justification. Why would Akhenaten promote her to power? He must have trusted her with his life, and more, with his revolution.

By 1338 B.C.E, it must have been clear to Akhentaten that his revolution had failed. The new faith had not spread beyond his new capital. Worse, his orders were being ignored, within and without the empire. His border with the Hittites, who were centered in modern day Turkey, was crumbling. What could have cause him to share his power at such a crucial moment? There are hints and rumors that the King, the Pharaoh, the beloved of the sun god Aten, had gone blind.

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QUEEN OF DENIAL Chapter Two

 

I know just what the Pharaoh was looking for – a spot where the sandstone cliffs closed in to within half a mile of the river, and where the once-in-a-century flash floods had sliced a V-shaped notch in the canyon rim, carving a dry canyon or wadi opening toward the river. 

Perhaps the King already had such a location in mind, or perhaps Bek, his Chief of Works, knew just the spot where every morning the sun-god Aten would first dramatically peek into the life giving valley of the Nile. The spot they chose was 100 miles south of the Old Kingdom capital of Memphis, and 150 miles north of the New Kingdom capital of Thebes. Here, almost equal distance between the two historical power centers of Egypt, Amenhotep IV decided to begin his revolution.

The Pharaoh was able to build his new city of Aketaten almost at will because of a recent technological import, the shaduf (above). Wikipedia explains this was “an upright (tripod) frame on which is suspended a long pole... At the long end of this pole hangs a bucket, skin bag, or bitumen-coated reed basket. The short end carries a weight...When correctly balanced... some effort is used to pull an empty bucket down to the water, but only the same effort is needed to lift a full bucket...a shaduf can raise over 2,500 liters (of water) per day.” With this relative new tool, irrigation ditches and fields to grow enough coarse wheat, beans and lentils to feed a city could be established anywhere along the Nile.

But the King could have no secrets from his Grand Vizier, who was also the High Priest of Amun-Ra. And it was that priest,  Huy, through his bureaucrats up and down the river, who assisted in planning and assembling for this assault upon the god Amun Ra. Only the power of the army would have kept Huy from striking back in defense of his god and his own power. Still, throughout 1347 and 1346 B.C.E. , as preparations continued, Thebes must have been a very tense place.

On  13 October of 1345 B.C.E., the fifth year of the Pharaoh’s reign, at the beginning of the cool winter months, they dedicated the start of construction of Aketaten, the "Horizon of the Aten". 

To the east of the 8 mile long construction site a walled village had been prepared for the artisans, foremen and skilled workers - some 64 simple mud brick row houses in a neat rectangle, with a guard house at the only exit. With 5 – 10 men per house, this would have contained over 600 workers. In addition each region would have paid part of their yearly taxes with unskilled workers, who would sleep and eat in tents or in the open.

First to be built was the Chapel of the Great Temple to Aten - the rest of the temple would come in time.  At the same time the royal palace and estates were started, barracks for soldiers and military headquarters, all to the north of the new temple.  

A ditch separated this section from the central city, with large houses for court officials and priests of Aten, each with their own grain storehouses, and, of course, more temples to Aten.  Here, as well, were homes for the clerks and head servants, and the workshop of the highest ranking member of the division of Works who moved to Aketaten, such as Bek's assistant, Thutmose, the sculpture.  

As you moved southward through the city along the “Royal Road”, the homes got smaller, all white washed mud brick and built quickly. The western edge of the city was the High Priest Street, ending in the large temple granaries among the slums and workers' apartments of the southern section.

Carved into the crowding cliffs were to be the tombs of the priests and functionaries who had converted to the new faith.  

And up the canyon leading toward that V-shaped notch in the cliff, in what became the royal wadi, was to be carved the magnificent tomb of Nefertiti and her King, Amenhotep IV.  It was at the dedication and ground breaking ceremony that the King took the next step in his revolution.  

He publicly changed his name.  The Pharaoh decreed that henceforth he would be known as Akhenaten, “The Spirit of Aten”.  It was a declaration of war between the power of the King and his god Aten, and the power of Huy and his god Amun Ra.

“His Majesty mounted a great chariot of electrum, like the Aten when He rises on the horizon and fills the land with His love, and took a goodly road to Aketaten, the place of origin (where Aten's light first fell on the Nile each morning), which (the Aten) had created for Himself that he might be happy therein. It was His son Akhenaten (the Pharaoh), who founded it for Him...Heaven was joyful, the earth was glad (and) every heart was filled with delight when they beheld him.”

His new city had no walls, as if the King were defying Huy to move against him. But Huy could afford to be patient. The strength of Amun Ra (above) did not spring merely from the wealth of its most powerful acolytes such as Huy, but also from its appeal to the masses. They trusted the god “who hears the prayer, who comes at the cry of the poor and distressed..”  Even when he didn't.  Most Egyptians confessed their sins to the merciful and forgiving Lord of Thebes, Amun Ra. “Though it may be that the servant is normal in doing wrong, yet the Lord is normal in being merciful. The Lord of Thebes does not spend an entire day angry...As the Ka (soul) endures, thou will be merciful” And Huy knew the power of this simple idea, that the world was not created merely to please the kings and queens, but that they were created to serve the world. Amun Ra was the faith of the people. Aten was the faith of the King. And they both were moves toward monotheism.

While his new capital was being prepared, Akhenaten, who had been Amenhotep IV, returned to Thebes and step by step pushed his revolution. All donations to Amun Ra were temporarily diverted to the priesthood of Aten, to support construction of Aketaten . And over time that would become permanent. In 1343 B.C.E. the Pharaoh left Thebes for the last time, taking his dear wife, Nefertiti, his harem, his advisers and most of the government to his new city. None were allowed follow him to Aketaten, unless they had publicly renounced Amun Ra and the other old religions, and sacrificed to Aten. This meant that none could appeal their case directly to the king unless they had first converted. That a small statue of Osiris found within the site of Aketaten, shows that for many, this conversion was a matter of convenience only.

Next, the Pharaoh decreed that all other faiths were apostate, and illegal. He ordered the closure of all temples to Osiris, Isis, Ptah, Mut and Amun Ra. Further  he order the desecration of the images of all other Egyptian gods.  The carved name of the gods, their “ren”, was to be scratched out of the blessings and oaths inscribed in all temples and tombs. It was an act of desecration under the old religion, for without a ren the gods could not assist the deceased to rise from the dead. In effect, it damned the Pharoah's own father, and all fathers and mothers of all of Egypt to the eternal cold night. 

Some  destruction was carried out in Thebes, but the absence of resistance to this royal decree seems to indicate it was carried out in few other places in Egypt. And, since Akhenaten had sworn to never leave Aketaten (above) again, it was unlikely he would ever know of this defiance. The Pharaoh continued to issue edicts. And increasingly they were ignored. Either he was willing to be lied to, or he was unaware his self imposed isolation was depriving him of control of everything beyond the the walls of his new palace. Or he had lost his mind.

Nine years after he had ascended the twin thrones of Egypt, in 1341 B.C.E., the King's mother, Queen Tiji, arrived in Aketaten unannounced, and without conversion to Aten. She was delivering a message to the King, and he would have to listen to her. The relationship between divine kings and their mothers is always difficult for the King. It may be easy to convince strangers that you are a god, but your mother remembers how you came into the world, and it was not aboard a chariot of electrum. It was Tiji who convinced her son to cool down his revolution. But whether she told him his decrees were being ignored, or warned him the army had reached the breaking point of support is unclear. But we know that after her visit the revolution abruptly came to a halt. There would be no more changes in Egypt. And we know that Tiji did not stay in Aketaten very long.

The king did not renounce his new faith. Nor did he leave Aketaten. But he restricted himself to rides on the Royal Road that went no where except to his daily absolution in the Great Temple of Aten,. His life became centered on his beloved main wife-sister, now called Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti, “The Aten is radiant of radiance because the beautiful one has come.” And I think it was now she sat as a model for the sculptor Thutmose, as he created one of the most famous icons of art in the history of the world.

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