Chapter 2

Egyptology 101

Overview

This chapter aims to provide the reader with a brief insight into the Amarna period and the people who lived during this time.

Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Tutankhamen, Ancient Egypt played host to many well known characters, but in some cases it is the not so well known to the general public that can be far more interesting. One of these generally less well known characters is the Pharaoh Akhenaten – The Heretic King, who ruled Egypt from 1349BC to 1333BC and it is his ‘Capital City’ that is the focus of this project.

Akhenaten – The Heretic King

Akhenaten came from a long line of very powerful kings who ruled Egypt in the 18^th Dynasty. He was the son of Amenophis III, the Pharaoh responsible for building the Colossi of Memnon, parts of Luxor Temple and the Temple of Soleb in the Sudan. His original name was Amenophis IV, which he changed to Akhenaten in honour of his chosen religion. When Akhenaten came to power he decided to move away from the worship of many gods and replace them all with the one sun-god, the Aten. This was a major blow to the other cults and created a large amount of resentment. Until then each city, town, village and home had their own deity who protected them from harm, banishing these other deities in favour of one god caused havoc amongst the people.

Figure 1 : Statue of Akhenaten	Figure 2 : The famous bust of Queen Nefertiti.
Figure 3 : A Wall freeze depicting Akhenaten and his family under the Aten.

The Aten is represented in hieroglyphic texts as a disk with many rays descending from it, with each ending in a small hand, sometimes shown grasping an Ankh (a type of cross symbolising life).

As was typical of Pharaohs, Akhenaten had a few wives, but it was Nefertiti who was chief Queen, and together they were depicted bathing in the Aten’s’ rays in most of the artwork of the time. This artwork was also a major deviation from tradition, as Akhenaten chose to be depicted, alongside his family, in a way that was more of a caricature. This is now thought to have been a way of emphasizing his separation from general humankind.

Akhenaten died in his seventeenth year of reign, and for a few more years, until Tutankhamen (formerly Tut-Ankh-Aten) came to the throne, the city struggled on. By now the Aten cult had made too many enemies, in particular the powerful priests of the god Amen, and as the city was dependent upon funding from the courts it was not long before the people left.

Akhetaten – Tel-el-Amarna

Figure 4 : Sunset over the temple at Amarna (Photo. © Gwil Owen)

Amarna is situated approximately 200km south of Cairo, roughly halfway between Cairo and Luxor and was built around 1350 BC. The site is said to have been chosen by Akhenaten because the sun actually rises between the only gap in the hillside, which therefore closely paralleled the depiction of the sun god in Egyptian art. The Pharaoh called his new city Akhet-Aten, which translated means ‘The horizon of the Aten’. The city was constructed quite quickly and had a population of approximately 30,000 people.

The new temples that were built to the sun-god Aten were a radical change to the traditional Egyptian temple. The temples up to this point had been enclosed with large low lit pillared rooms, and an inner sanctum where a golden idol of the host god would be locked away, only to be seen by the highest ranking priests. Akhenaten decided to build his temples in order that the people could worship the Aten in the open air.

The city had a lifespan of around twenty years before being completely abandoned and dismantled by the priests of other Egyptian cults in order to build other temples and monuments, and most importantly, as an act of retribution.

Also of note – the body of Akhenaten has never been found.