So, now we've talked a little bit about inertia and entropy as forces that are at work on the motion of culture. In some ways, they form a pair. Inertia is really a tendency, but we can think of as a force in the case of habitual inertia which resists change. Entropy, in turn, tends to undermine continuity that is achieved through inertia. In this lecture, I want to to more about inertia, but I also want to begin to talk about other forces, or rather, other classes of force. In my own research, I have identified a third class of forces, the reflective forces, or what I have termed, metaculture. Okay, I know, that sounds pretty daunting. Metaculture, what can that possibly mean? Let me illustrate it through an example, an example that takes us way back in time. Back to ancient Egypt, back to about 1,300 BC, more than 3,000 years ago. But actually, before we jump into the time machine, let me tell you about how I know about this story. We're fortunate here at Penn to have a wonderful museum of archaeology and anthropology where my office is located. The museum houses an amazing collection of materials from all over the world, but a great one from ancient Egypt. I get to walk through the museum and look at the exhibits almost every day. I never fail to learn something new. In addition, we have some of the world's leading scholars of ancient Egypt, including my office neighbors, Dr David Silverman and Dr Josef Wegner. I've learned a lot from both of them, and also from Joe's wife, another great Egyptologist, Dr Jennifer Hauser Wegner who has the office across the hall. They are the curators of the Amarna exhibit at the Penn Museum, and some of the photos I'll show you are from that exhibit. I took them with my own camera. So now we're ready. Let's jump into the time machine, buckle our seatbelts, and go back to the age of the pharaohs. This is a story of a great ruler, Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, who later changed his name to Akhenaten. He's pictured here in the background, and in the genealogy in this slide which is from the exhibit in our museum on Amarna. Amarna is the name of the city built under Akhenaten's rule. He was the ruler of Egypt for about 17 years, we think from maybe 1353 to 1336 BC. Akhenaten was a culture changer. In his role as pharaoh, he was not content to let the forces of inertia and entropy work on Egyptian culture. He wanted to change that culture much the way leaders of modern-day business corporations aspire to change the culture of their firms. He affected change by actively spreading and propagating a new culture. Not only did he want to spread the new culture, he wanted to get rid of some of the aspects of the old culture. Perhaps, most notably, he wanted to change religion. Egypt at the time of Akhenaten, or rather at the time of Amenhotep IV, began his reign during an age of polytheism. That means that people worshipped many different gods, such as the god Bes, or Bisu, protector of households. Here is a photo of a statue of Bes. The statue is not one that's in our museum. Instead, it's actually in Egypt. Akhenaten wanted to do away with the worship of many different gods like Bes, and replaced it with monotheism, the worship of one single god. His attempts to purvey the new culture are a good example of the operation of the force I'm calling reflective culture or metaculture. Now it seems clear that the reason Akhenaten's idea spread and took hold is that he had the power as pharaoh to issue commands and to propagate new ideas about culture. That's an important fact. But my interest here is not in that fact. I'm interested, rather, in the relationship between the new ideas and the old culture that was already in motion. That is, I'm interested in the ability of the new ideas to change culture, to act as a force on culture. The new ideas are part of culture. They are reflective culture or, I'm calling, metaculture. So they have to move through space and time just like any other culture. But they are also peculiar in that they are about culture. In particular, they are about the existing inertial culture of ancient Egypt, the worship of multiple gods. And they have an effect on the existing culture. The idea is try to get people, try to get people to change their existing beliefs and practices and adopt new ones. The new religion Akhenaten introduced focused on the Sun, or the solar disk, Aten, the source and giver of all life. Here is a representation of Akhenaten and family from our museum. They are worshipping Aten, depicted as the solar disk. You can see the rays coming down. We'll talk more about the role of reflective culture, or metaculture, in the very next lecture.
