Product Code Database
Amarna (; ) is an extensive ancient archaeological site containing the ruins of Akhetaten, the capital city during the late Eighteenth Dynasty. The city was established in 1346 BC, built at the direction of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, and abandoned shortly after his death in 1332 BC.
The site is on the east bank of the Nile River, in what today is the Egyptian province of Minya. It is about south of the city of al-Minya, south of the Egyptian capital, Cairo, and north of Luxor (site of the previous capital, Thebes). The city of Deir Mawas lies directly to its west. On the east side of Amarna there are several modern villages, the chief of which are l-Till in the north and el-Hagg Qandil in the south.
Activity in the region flourished from the Amarna Period until the later Roman era.
English Egyptologist Sir John Gardner Wilkinson visited Amarna twice in the 1820s and identified it as Alabastron, following the sometimes contradictory descriptions of Roman-era authors Pliny ( On Stones) and Ptolemy ( Geography), although he was not sure about the identification and suggested Nekhen as an alternative location.
It may be that the Royal Wadi's resemblance to the hieroglyph for horizon showed that this was the place to found the city.
The city was built as the new capital of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, dedicated to his Atenism of worship to the Aten. Construction started in or around Year 5 of his reign (1346 BC) and was probably completed by Year 9 (1341 BC), although it became the capital city two years earlier. To speed up construction of the city most of the buildings were constructed out of mudbrick, and white washed. The most important buildings were faced with local stone.Grundon (2007), p. 89
It is the only ancient Egyptian city which preserves great details of its internal plan in large part because it was abandoned almost completely shortly after the royal government of Tutankhamun quit the city in favor of Thebes (modern Luxor). The city seems to have remained active for a decade or so after his death, and a shrine to Horemheb indicates that it was at least partially occupied at the beginning of his reign, if only as a source for building material elsewhere. Once it was abandoned, it remained uninhabited until Roman settlement began along the edge of the Nile. However, due to the unique circumstances of its creation and abandonment, it is questionable how representative of ancient Egyptian cities it actually is. Amarna was hastily constructed and covered an area of approximately of territory on the east bank of the Nile River; on the west bank, land was set aside to provide crops for the city's population. The entire city is encircled with a total of 14 boundary (labeled A thru V with discontinuities left for those thought to be missing, Stele B was defaced by locals in 1885) detailing Akhenaten's conditions for the establishment of this new capital city of Egypt.
The earliest dated stele from Akhenaten's new city is known to be Boundary stele K which is dated to Year 5, IV Peret (or month 8), day 13 of Akhenaten's reign.Aldred (1988), p. 47 (Most of the original 14 boundary stelae have been badly eroded.) It preserves an account of Akhenaten's foundation of this city. The document records the pharaoh's wish to have several temples of the Aten to be erected here, for several royal tombs to be created in the eastern hills of Amarna for himself, his chief wife Nefertiti, and his eldest daughter Meritaten as well as his explicit command that when he was dead, he would be brought back to Amarna for burial.Aldred (1988), pp. 47–50 Boundary stela K introduces a description of the events that were being celebrated at Amarna:
This text then goes on to state that Akhenaten made a great oblation to the god Aten "and this is the theme of which is illustrated in the lunettes of the stelae where he stands with his queen and eldest daughter before an altar heaped with offerings under the Aten, while it shines upon him rejuvenating his body with its rays."
The North City was an administrative area. It contains the ruins of royal palaces, especially the Northern Palace and other administrative buildings and occupies an area between the Nile and the cliffs that terminate the plains to the north of the city itself.
This area was probably the first area to be completed, and had at least two phases of construction.
Further to the south of the city was Kom el-Nana, an enclosure, usually referred to as a sun-shade, and was probably built as a sun-temple., and then the Maru-Aten, which was a palace or sun-temple originally thought to have been constructed for Akhenaten's queen Kiya, but on her death her name and images were altered to those of Meritaten, his daughter.Eyma (2003), p. 53
Away from the city Akhenaten's Royal necropolis was started in a narrow valley to the east of the city, hidden in the cliffs. Only one tomb was completed, and was used by an unnamed Royal Wife, and Akhenaten's tomb was hastily used to hold him and likely Meketaten, his second daughter.
In the cliffs to the north and south of the Royal Wadi, the nobles of the city constructed their Tombs.
To make the move from Thebes to Amarna, Akhenaten needed the support of the military. Ay, one of Akhenaten's principal advisors, exercised great influence in this area because his father Yuya had been an important military leader. Additionally, everyone in the military had grown up together, they had been a part of the richest and most successful period in Egypt's history under Amenhotep III, so loyalty among the ranks was strong and unwavering. Perhaps most importantly, "it was a military whose massed ranks the king took every opportunity to celebrate in temple reliefs, first at Thebes and later at Amarna."
... at Akhetaten itself, recent excavation by Kemp (2008: 41–46) has shown the presence of objects that depict gods, goddesses and symbols that belong to the traditional field of personal belief. So many examples of Bes, the grotesque dwarf figure who warded off evil spirits, have been found, as well as of the goddess-monster, Taweret, part crocodile, part hippopotamus, who was associated with childbirth. Also in the royal workmen's village at Akhetaten, stelae dedicated to Isis and Shed have been discovered (Watterson 1984: 158 & 208).
While the worship of Aten was later referred to as the Amarna heresy and suppressed, this art had a more lasting legacy.
After this European exploration continued in 1824 when Sir John Gardiner Wilkinson explored and mapped the city remains. The copyist Robert Hay and his surveyor G. Laver visited the locality and uncovered several of the Southern Tombs from sand drifts, recording the reliefs in 1833. The copies made by Hay and Laver languish largely unpublished in the British Library, where an ongoing project to identify their locations is underway.
The expedition led by Richard Lepsius visited the site in 1843 and 1845, and recorded the visible monuments and topography of Amarna in two separate visits over a total of twelve days, using drawings and paper squeezes. The results were ultimately published in Denkmäler aus Ägypten und Äthiopien between 1849 and 1913, including an improved map of the city. Despite being somewhat limited in accuracy, the engraved Denkmäler plates formed the basis for scholastic knowledge and interpretation of many of the scenes and inscriptions in the private tombs and some of the Boundary Stelae for the rest of the century. The records made by these early explorers teams are of immense importance since many of these remains were later destroyed or otherwise lost.
In the early years of the 20th century (1907 to 1914) the Deutsche Orientgesellschaft expedition, led by Ludwig Borchardt, excavated extensively throughout the North and South suburbs of the city. The famous bust of Nefertiti bust, now in Berlin's Neues Museum, was discovered amongst other sculptural artefacts in the workshop of the sculptor Thutmose. The outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 terminated the German excavations.
From 1921 to 1936 an Egypt Exploration Society expedition returned to excavation at Amarna under the direction of T.E. Peet, Sir Leonard Woolley, Henri Frankfort, Stephen Glanville,Grundon(2007), p. 71 and John Pendlebury. Mary Chubb served as the digs administrator. The renewed investigations were focused on religious and royal structures.
During the 1960s the Egyptian Antiquities Organization (now the Supreme Council of Antiquities) undertook a number of excavations at Amarna.
From 2005 to 2013, the Amarna Project excavated at a cemetery of private individuals, close to the southern tombs of the Nobles.
Nefertiti by Michelle Moran is a historical fiction work that guides the reader from the perspective of Queen Nefertiti and her younger sister Mutnedjmet. The story follows the timeline from her time in Thebes to Amarna and after Akhenaten's death. Nefertiti was the Chief wife in Akhenaten's court or haram. Though she is well known by name, as many historical female role models, her story is often overlooked for masculine rulers. Michelle Moran webs her story of the queen and her sister with political secrets, loss of innocence, and female strength in a patriarchal society.
|
|
