Amarna

Located on the east bank of the Nile, the ruins of the city are laid out roughly north to south along a "Royal Road", now referred to as "Sikhet es-Sultan".[15][16] The Royal residences are generally to the north, in what is known as the North City, with a central administration and religious area and the south of the city is made up of residential suburbs.

Akhenaten seal ring in blue faience. Walters Art Museum

If one approached the city of Amarna from the north by river the first buildings past the northern boundary stele would be the North Riverside Palace. This building ran all the way up to the waterfront and was likely the main residence of the royal family.[17] Located within the North City area is the Northern Palace, the main residence of the royal family.[18] Between this and the central city, the Northern Suburb was initially a prosperous area with large houses, but the house size decreased and became poorer the further from the road they were.[16]

Most of the important ceremonial and administrative buildings were located in the central city. Here the Great Temple of the Aten and the Small Aten Temple were used for religious functions and between these the Great Royal Palace and Royal Residence were the ceremonial residence of the king and royal family, and were linked by a bridge or ramp.[19] Located behind the Royal Residence was the Bureau of Correspondence of Pharaoh, where the Amarna Letters were found.[20]

This area was probably the first area to be completed, and had at least two phases of construction.[15]

To the south of the city was the area now referred to as the Southern Suburbs. It contained the estates of many of the city's powerful nobles, including Nakhtpaaten (Chief Minister), Ranefer, Panehesy (High Priest of the Aten), and Ramose (Master of Horses). This area also held the studio of the sculptor Thutmose, where the famous bust of Nefertiti was found in 1912.[21]

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.,[22] 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.[23]

See also Workmen's Village, Amarna

Surrounding the city and marking its extent, the Boundary Stelae (each a rectangle of carved rock on the cliffs on both sides of the Nile) describing the founding of the city are a primary source of information about it.[24]

Tutankamun Amarna portrait. Altes Museum, Berlin

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.[25]

In the cliffs to the north and south of the Royal Wadi, the nobles of the city constructed their Tombs.

While the reforms of Akhenaten are generally believed to have been oriented towards a sort of monotheism, or perhaps more accurately, monolatrism, archaeological evidence shows other deities were also revered, even at the centre of the Aten cult – if not officially, then at least by the people who lived and worked there.

... 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).[28]

Children with pens and papyrus scrolls. Relief from Amarna

The first western mention of the city was made in 1714 by Claude Sicard, a French Jesuit priest who was travelling through the Nile Valley, and described the boundary stela from Amarna. As with much of Egypt, it was visited by Napoleon's corps de savants in 1798–1799, who prepared the first detailed map of Amarna, which was subsequently published in Description de l'Égypte between 1821 and 1830.[29]

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.[30]

The Prussian 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.[29] 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.

One of the Amarna letters

In 1887, a local woman digging for sebakh uncovered a cache of over 300 cuneiform tablets (now commonly known as the Amarna Letters).[31] These tablets recorded select diplomatic correspondence of the Pharaoh and were predominantly written in Akkadian, the lingua franca commonly used during the Late Bronze Age of the Ancient Near East for such communication. This discovery led to the recognition of the importance of the site, and led to a further increase in exploration.[32]

Between 1891 and 1892 Alessandro Barsanti discovered and cleared the king's tomb (although it was probably known to the local population from about 1880).[33] Around the same time Sir Flinders Petrie worked for one season at Amarna, working independently of the Egypt Exploration Fund. He excavated primarily in the Central City, investigating the Great Temple of the Aten, the Great Official Palace, the King's House, the Bureau of Correspondence of Pharaoh, and several private houses. Although frequently amounting to little more than a sondage, Petrie's excavations revealed additional cuneiform tablets, the remains of several glass factories, and a great quantity of discarded faience, glass, and ceramic in sifting the palace rubbish heaps (including Mycenaean sherds).[32] By publishing his results and reconstructions rapidly, Petrie was able to stimulate further interest in the site's potential.

The copyist and artist Norman de Garis Davies published drawn and photographic descriptions of private tombs and boundary stelae from Amarna from 1903 to 1908. These books were republished by the EES in 2006.

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, now in Berlin's Ägyptisches 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,[34] 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 Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities) undertook a number of excavations at Amarna.

Exploration of the city continues to the present, currently under the direction of Barry Kemp (Emeritus Professor in Egyptology, University of Cambridge, England) (until 2006, under the auspices of the Egypt Exploration Society and now with the "Amarna Project".).[11][35] In 1980 a separate expedition led by Geoffrey Martin described and copied the reliefs from the Royal Tomb, later publishing its findings together with objects thought to have come from the tomb. This work was published in 2 volumes by the EES.

From 2005 to 2013, the Amarna Project excavated at a cemetery of private individuals, close to the southern tombs of the Nobles.[36]

The Painted Queen[37] written by the famous Elizabeth Peters a.k.a Barbara Mertz is the most recent installment to the Amelia Peabody novels after the author's passing in 2013. Elizabeth Peters was a school trained archaeologist, but was persuaded by her male colleagues that a woman was not to be an archaeologist, so "she created characters based on those misogynistic Egyptologists..."[38] as stated by Sarah Parcak, a female archaeologist that specializes in remote sensing. The adventure stars a female archaeologist Amelia Peabody and the mystery of the missing Bust of Nefertiti. The Painted Queen takes place in the 1912, several years after the actual excavations at Amarna, when excavations in Egypt are solely European, local hires, or looters. Like all good mystery novels, there is humor, twists, and turns, and a predictable ending of a solved case.

Nefertiti by Michelle Moran[39] is a historical fiction work that guides the reader from the perspective of Queen Nefertiti and her younger sister Mutnodjmet. 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.

The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Amarna and its People by Barry Kemp,[17] discusses everything from the conception of Amarna to the abandonment of the city. Within the book are images that display art, architecture, and the city as it was (reconstructed) and now. It also has a short chapter written by Kemp in the book Cities That Shaped the Ancient World.[40]

In the past years National Geographic and archaeological articles have published articles on Amarna, Akhenaten, Tutankhamun, or Nefertiti. Most of the article can be found in both the paperback or on the National Geographic website[41] (currently the most recent article was published January 2021).

Akhnaten, act II, scene 3 ("The City") by Philip Glass describes the mandate from Akhenaten to build Akhetaten. In the English lines, it is consistently referred to as the "City of the Horizon".