Meet King Tut’s Father, Egypt’s First Revolutionary

Akhenaten upended the religion, art, and politics of ancient Egypt, and then his legacy was buried. Now he endures as a symbol of change.

By Peter Hessler
Photograph by Rena Effendi

Sometimes the most powerful commentary on a king is made by those who are silent. One morning in Amarna, a village in Upper Egypt about 200 miles south of Cairo, a set of delicate, sparrowlike bones were arranged atop a wooden table. “The clavicle is here, and the upper arm, the ribs, the lower legs,” said Ashley Shidner, an American bioarchaeologist. “This one is about a year and a half to two years old.”

The skeleton belonged to a child who lived at Amarna more than 3,300 years ago, when the site was Egypt’s capital. The city was founded by Akhenaten, a king who, along with his wife Nefertiti and his son, Tutankhamun, has captured the modern imagination as much as any other figure from ancient Egypt. This anonymous skeleton, in contrast, had been excavated from an unmarked grave. But the bones showed evidence of malnutrition, which Shidner and others have observed in the remains of dozens of Amarna children.

“The growth delay starts around seven and a half months,” Shidner said. “That’s when you start transition feeding from breast milk to solid food.” At Amarna this transition seems to have been delayed for many children. “Possibly the mother is making the decision that there’s not enough food.”

Until recently Akhenaten’s subjects seemed to be the only people who hadn’t weighed in on his legacy. Others have had plenty to say about the king, who ruled from around 1353 B.C. until 1336 B.C. and tried to transform Egyptian religion, art, and governance. Akhenaten’s successors were mostly scathing about his reign. Even Tutankhamun—whose brief reign has been a subject of fascination since his tomb was discovered in 1922—issued a decree criticizing conditions under his father: “The land was in distress; the gods had abandoned this land.” During the next dynasty, Akhenaten was referred to as “the criminal” and “the rebel,” and pharaohs destroyed his statues and images, trying to remove him from history entirely.

Spear injuries show worker life in ancient Egypt

By Traci Watson, Special for USA TODAY

An ancient wall carving spells out the bloody punishment for stealing animal hides: 100 lashes and five wounds. Egyptologists have long wondered whether that was a literal description.

Now skeletons showing evidence of that sentence have been found in a humble cemetery in the ancient Egyptian capital of Amarna.

Five middle-aged men buried in Amarna's cemetery for commoners seem to have been stabbed in the shoulder blade by a spear, scientists report in the International Journal of Paleopathology.

The misdeeds and names of the five men are unknown. But the researchers do know that many people with such injuries can quickly get back go work – a benefit to bosses in a city employing legions of laborers in stone-finishing workshops and quarries.

The lives of the everyday folk at Amarna "were filled with hardships that included heavy labor and often dietary insufficiency," study author Gretchen Dabbs of Southern Illinois University says via email from Amarna, where she's examining more skeletons. "We know that life in this place was physically taxing. This is another example of that."

It took especially taxing toil to build Amarna, a desert capital constructed some 3,300 years ago and dedicated to the sun god Aten. A grand city of stone palaces and temples, Amarna rose hurriedly from the desert at the command of the "Heretic King" Akhenaten.

The layout of Al-Amarna ancient city revealed

A Belgium archaeological mission reveals the layout of the ancient Egyptian city of Al-Amarna, the capital of the monotheistic king Akhenaten

by Nevine El-Aref , Sunday 8 Mar 2015

A Belgium archaeological mission working at Tel Al-Amarna area in Al-Minya governorate, 300 km south of Cairo, revealed through satellite imagery how the ancient Egyptians built such a historically controversial and mysterious city.

Tel Al-Amarna  was the short-lived capital built by the henotheistic 18th dynasty Pharaoh Akhenaten after he abandoned the traditional Egyptian polytheism and introduced the worship of one deity, the power of the sun God- Aten.

The city was deserted shortly after Akhenaten's death in 1332 BCE.

Tel Al-Amarna is historically interesting as it remains the largest readily accessible site dating from ancient Egypt. It is thus simultaneously the key to a chapter in the history of religious experience and to a fuller understanding of what it was like to be an ancient Egyptian. 

Though long periods of excavation work have previously unearthed remains of temples, chapels and tombs, no one had uncovered the details of the city until this week when the Belgium archaeological mission revealed its layout.

Minister of antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty described the discovery as " great" and asserted that it will not only reveal how the ancient Egyptians built their monotheistic capital but it will also help in discovering more edifices of the city.

He explained that the satellite images show that the northern side of the city was an industrial province which extended 12 kilometres and also included a large collection of mines.

Harco Willems, head of the Belgium mission, told Ahram Online that their work succeeded in determining the location of several ancient corridors and roads of the ancient city which were too hard to discover through normal material used in excavation because the surface of the land is very solid.

Ramps and transportation paths from the mines to the city's main road were also discovered as well as others leading to the Nile Valley.

Willems said that a harbour was found close to the river. The harbour was constructed to transport Talatat blocks to the eastern side of Al-Amarna to be used in the construction of temples and other edifices.

Eldamaty told Ahram Online that more studies are now taking place in order to understand these images in more detail which could lead to further major discoveries in the future.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/124733/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/The-layout-of-AlAmarna-ancient-city-revealed.aspx

Museum Pieces - Diorite bust of Horemheb

Photocredit: Nicholson Museum

Diorite bust of Horemheb

Collection: Nicholson Museum: Stone Artefacts, Ancient Egyptian
Object Category: Sculpture - Bust
Name/Title: Fragmentary statue of the pharaoh Horemheb as a kneeling scribe
Media: Stone - diorite
Measurements: 45.5 h/l x 40.0 w x 26.0 d cm, 147 kg
Acquisition Credit Line: Donated by Sir Charles Nicholson 1860
Museum Number: NMR. 1138

Production:

Place: Ptah Temple, Memphis, Egypt
Date: 1330-1320 BC

Description:

The figure wears a very fine garment with pleated sleeves and collar at base of the throat. Almost certainly Horemheb from his pre royal career.

History Notes:

Description and Function (Author: Dr Sophie Winlaw)

There are no inscriptions on the surviving section of this statue (including the narrow back pillar - an area which is usually inscribed with the subject's name). However, the identity of this individual can be determined through an examination of his facial features, the distinctive style of sculpture, the clothing and the wig. The long unstructured wavy wig is commonly worn by scribes who are usually represented in statuary as seated figures with crossed legs and in many cases papyrus scrolls on their laps (the fold of skin of our piece below the breast is suggestive of either a seated or squatting figure).

Scribes form a well respected professional class who are literate - unlike the majority of ancient Egyptians - so for this man to be represented as a scribe it reflects his high social status. This is also reflected by the style of wig and the garment he wears - types which were worn by high officials of the late 18th and early 19th dynasties (1550-1213 BC). Scribes are also protected by the god Thoth - the ibis headed god of writing and knowledge.

Many of the scribal statues depict the subject as being bare-chested but in this case he wears a distinctive type of robe which is draped loosely over his upper arms. The facial features are very distinctive, especially the shape of the eyes and the fullness around the jaw line and cheeks (representative of the Amarna Period). This statue has been carved, smoothed and polished with great precision and there would have been few officials who could have afforded a statue of this quality.

Archaeologists Uncover Lost Population of Ancient Amarna

Burial remains shed new light on the "missing 6,000" of ancient Egypt's Amarna period.

It remained a mystery for decades.

Since archaeologist F.Ll. Griffith's excavations in the 1920's at the ancient site of the pharaoh Akhenaten's short-lived new capital city of Akhetaten (modern Amarna), archaeologists have been puzzled about the whereabouts of the remains of the city's commoner population – the people who toiled to build and maintain Akhenaten’s sacred edifices and infrastructure -- and more specifically, the estimated 6,000 people who died during the short 15-year period of the city’s construction and development.

“A will-of-the-wisp, the dream of a rich unplundered cemetery of the middle classes at El-Amarneh, full of choice vases and amulets, beckons to each successive explorer,” wrote Griffith in the report for his 1923 excavation season.*

Many of the elaborate unfinished rock-cut tombs of Akhenaten’s elite courtiers and high officials had already been found. They grace the cliff faces of the northern end of the Amarna city plain and the face of a low escarpment at the southern end of the ancient city. They can be plainly seen today by modern visitors.

But the burials of the deceased of the estimated 30,000 commoners and laborers remained elusive – until 2001, when archaeologist Barry Kemp of the University of Cambridge began to see the first signs. Kemp has directed excavations and surveys at Amarna for the Egypt Exploration Society since 1977.

Museum Pieces - Nefertiti offering flowers to Aten

Caption: Nefertiti, ca. 1352-1336 B.C.E. Limestone, painted, 9 1/4 x 15 3/16 in. (23.5 x 38.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 71.89. Creative Commons-BY

Occasionally we can identify one of the members of the Amarna royal family by a unique characteristic. The woman on this column drum has a tall, flat-topped crown worn exclusively by Nefertiti. This same headdress appears on the famous bust of the queen that is in the Berlin Museum.

Limestone sunk relief which, to judge from the convex curve of the decorated surface, once formed part of a column. To the left is Nefertiti, facing right, wearing the crown peculiar to her and Queen Tiy. She offers a formal bouquet to the Aten, three of whose rays reach to receive it. In front of her stands Akhenaton wearing a Blue Crown with streamers. Only the rear third of his body is preserved. Nefertiti is preserved from the waist up. 

Inscription: one line above the offering scene: “given life forever eternally”. Above “given life” are the bottom portions of two cartouches. 

Condition: Lower left corner broken off and replaced. Chips out of Nefertiti's crown, her right arm and elbow, her left hand and wrist, and the base of her neck. Traces of blue paint in hieroglyphs, flowers, and both crowns. Traces of red paint in both bodies, hands of the Aten and the base of the bouquet.

Medium: Limestone, painted
Possible Place Made: El Amarna, Egypt
Dates: ca. 1352-1336 B.C.E.
Dynasty: late XVIII Dynasty
Period: New Kingdom, Amarna Period
Dimensions: 9 1/4 x 15 3/16 in. (23.5 x 38.5 cm)  (show scale)
Collections:Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art
Museum Location: This item is on view in Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity, Amarna Period, Martha A. and Robert S. Rubin Gallery, 3rd Floor
Accession Number: 71.89
Credit Line: Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund
Rights Statement: Creative Commons-BY

Source: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/3805/Nefertiti#

Akhenaten: mad, bad, or brilliant?

He fathered Tutankhamun, married Nefertiti, and was one of the most original thinkers of his era. Then why is the pharoah Akhenaten often dismissed as a madman?

By Alastair Sooke 09 Jan 2014

Almost 200 miles south of Cairo, in the heart of Middle Egypt, the archaeological site of Amarna occupies a great bay of desert beside the River Nile. To the uninformed eye, this semicircle of barren land, bound by the east bank of the river and enormous limestone cliffs, looks like nothing much: a vast, stricken dust bowl, approximately seven miles long and three miles wide, scattered with sandy hillocks. But 33 centuries ago, this spot was home to tens of thousands of ancient Egyptians, brought there by the will of a single man: the pharaoh Akhenaten.

Rebel, tyrant, and prophet of arguably the world’s earliest monotheistic religion, Akhenaten has been called history’s first individual. His impact upon ancient Egyptian customs and beliefs stretching back for centuries was so alarming that, in the generations following his death in 1336 BC, he was branded a heretic. Official king lists omitted his name.

For my money, this makes him the most fascinating and controversial figure in Egyptian history. And that’s before you consider his marriage to Nefertiti, known as the Mona Lisa of antiquity thanks to her austerely beautiful painted limestone bust discovered in a sculptor’s workshop at Amarna and now in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, or the likelihood that he fathered Tutankhamun, the most famous pharaoh of them all. If I were in charge of the British Museum, I would commission an exhibition about Akhenaten in a trice.

Akhenaten was not supposed to become pharaoh. The son of Amenhotep III, who dominated the first half of the 14th century BC, ruling over a court of unprecedented luxury and magnificence that placed great emphasis on solar theology, Prince Amenhotep, as he was then called, was younger brother to the crown Prince Thutmose. Following Thutmose’s unexpected death, though, he became the heir apparent – and when his father died in 1353 BC, he took the throne as Amenhotep IV.

Museum Pieces - Shabti of Akhenaten

Almost nothing remains of the burial equipment of Akhenaten. However, many Shabtis near his tomb were found. The Shabti shows Akhenaten, who can be identified by its characteristic features. Inscriptions were probably on the lower part of the Shabti, now missing. The King is wearing the nemes headscarf with Uraeus and the King beard. 

Shabtis were intended to perform work that the deceased was called upon to do in the afterlife. More than two hundred shabti fragments inscribed for Akhenaten are known, and their existence suggests that belief in the afterlife and certain aspects of traditional funerary practices survived during the Amarna period. However, Akhenaten's shabtis are inscribed only with the king's names and titles, not the standard shabti text.

Quartzite, fine-grained, white

H 12.78 cm, W 8.1 cm, D 5.7 cm 

Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Egyptian - Oriental Collection

Inv AE_INV_10166

Sources: http://www.khm.at/en/visit/collections/egyptian-and-near-eastern-collection/selected-masterpieces/?cHash=dfb045333efd096a1ea1afd262c4a608

http://bilddatenbank.khm.at/viewArtefact?id=316945

Museum Pieces - Figure of Monkey Seated on Ovoid Base

Photocredit: Brooklyn Museum

Figure of Monkey Seated on Ovoid Base

Throughout Egyptian history, monkeys were enjoyed for their playful, whimsical behavior. This blue faience example holds a ball or piece of fruit; in antiquity, it wore a metal earring, indicating that it represented a household pet. Because they had to be imported over great distances at considerable expense, the possession of monkeys indicated the owner's wealth and social status.

Medium: Faience, glazed
Reportedly From: El Amarna, Egypt
Dates: ca. 1352-1336 B.C.E.
Dynasty: late XVIII Dynasty
Period: New Kingdom
Dimensions: 2 1/8 x 1 1/8 x 1 9/16 in. (5.4 x 2.8 x 4 cm)  (show scale)
Museum Location: This item is on view in Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity, Amarna Period, Martha A. and Robert S. Rubin Gallery, 3rd Floor
Accession Number: 48.181
Credit Line: Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund
Rights Statement: Creative Commons-BY
Caption: Figure of Monkey Seated on Ovoid Base, ca. 1352-1336 B.C.E. Faience, glazed, 2 1/8 x 1 1/8 x 1 9/16 in. (5.4 x 2.8 x 4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 48.181. Creative Commons-BY
Catalogue Description: Blue glazed figure of monkey seated on ovoid base. Body in the round, head at right angles to shoulders, ears pierced, hands extended grasping unidentified object supported by one foot and resting on base. Condition: Intact. Glaze slightly worn on front of body.

Source: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/3524/Figure_of_Monkey_Seated_on_Ovoid_Base

The queen and the sculptor

Egyptologist thinks he has found tomb of artist who created famed bust of Nefertiti

By Corydon Ireland, Harvard Staff Writer

For those of us aging fast, it is nice to know that one the most beautiful faces in the world is more than 3,300 years old.

That face is on the bust of Queen Nefertiti, the wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten, whose reign in Egypt spanned 1353–1336 BCE. This famous artifact, 44 pounds and life-size, has a layer of painted gypsum stucco over a full-featured limestone core. It was discovered a century ago in the ruins of an ancient artist’s studio in Amarna, south of Cairo. First made public in 1924, it fast became an icon of feminine beauty.

A slender, smooth neck gives way to skin the color of golden sand. Then come full, red lips; a dramatic, sloping nose; almond eyes; and arching, dark eyebrows. Above the face is a colorful, back-sweeping, cylindrical crown. It’s a lot for the eye to take in, especially since the work was likely just an artist’s model, and never intended for display.

Found scattered through the same studio were 22 plaster casts of faces. Some depict older women with every wrinkle and sag, an artistic anomaly in a culture that stylized women as slender and beautiful. (Nefertiti’s image beneath the stucco, recent CT scans show, was more realistic: a woman with lesser cheekbones, wrinkled cheeks, and a bump on the nose.)

But the world sees just the surface. The face “is part of our culture,” said French Egyptologist Alain Zivie in a Harvard lecture last Thursday, “like a picture of Che Guevara or Einstein or the Mona Lisa in Paris.”

Akhenaten: Egyptian Pharaoh, Nefertiti's Husband, Tut's Father

By Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor   |   August 30, 2013

Akhenaten was a pharaoh of Egypt who reigned over the country for about 17 years between roughly 1353 B.C. and 1335 B.C.

A religious reformer he made the Aten, the sun disc, the center of Egypt’s religious life and carried out an iconoclasm that saw the names of Amun, a pre-eminent Egyptian god, and his consort Mut, be erased from monuments and documents throughout Egypt’s empire. 

When he ascended the throne his name was Amenhotep IV, but in his sixth year of rule he changed it to “Akhenaten” a name that the late Egyptologist Dominic Montserrat translated roughly as the “Benevolent one of (or for) the Aten.”

In honor of the Aten, he constructed an entirely new capital at an uninhabited place, which we now call Amarna, out in the desert. Its location was chosen so that its sunrise conveyed a symbolic meaning. “East of Amarna the sun rises in a break in the surrounding cliffs. In this landscape the sunrise could be literally ‘read’ as if it were the hieroglyph spelling Akhet-aten or ‘Horizon of the Aten’ — the name of the new city,” wrote Montserrat in his book "Akhenaten: History, Fantasy and Ancient Egypt" (Routledge, 2000).

He notes that this capital would quickly grow to become about 4.6 square miles (roughly 12 square kilometers) in size. After his death, the pharaoh’s religious reforms quickly collapsed, his new capital became abandoned and his successors denounced him.

Akhenaten, either before or shortly after he became pharaoh, would marry Nefertiti, who in some works of art is shown standing equal next to her husband. Some have even speculated that she may have become a co-, or even sole, ruler of Egypt. 

Lost Tombs - In search of history's greatest rulers

By JARRETT A. LOBELL and ERIC A. POWELL
Tuesday, July 16, 2013

The improbable discovery last year of Richard III’s skeleton under a parking lot in Leicester, England, is a reminder that while some burials of great historical figures are lost to posterity, careful archaeological sleuthing could still bring them to light. The debate over where to rebury the notorious English king illustrates how important finding the physical remains of these lost rulers can be. And study of Richard III’s remains promises to add to our understanding of both the man himself and the time he lived in. Finding a ruler’s lost tomb may be the most romantic discovery possible in archaeology, but it can also be an opportunity to create a richer picture of ancient life.

Here are the stories behind the lost final resting places of seven great royal figures, which, if found, could give us exciting insights into our collective past.

Nefertiti, Great Royal Wife and Queen of Egypt

Ruled ca. 1348-1330 B.C.

In the 1880s, residents living near the ancient Egyptian city of Amarna discovered a large multichambered rock-cut tomb. It was one of many such tombs at Amarna, but its impressive size distinguished it from the others. Unfortunately, the tomb, called Amarna 26, has been badly damaged by looters, weather, and time, and many of the most significant artifacts were removed at some point, either in antiquity or more recently. Relatively little of the tomb’s fragile decoration is intact. Nevertheless, enough inscribed artifacts do survive—including more than 200 shabti figurines, an alabaster chest, and two large granite sarcophagi—that archaeologists are reasonably certain the tomb, also called the Royal Tomb, belonged to the 18th Dynasty pharaoh Akhenaten and his daughter Meketaten.

Mysterious Toe Rings Found on Ancient Egyptian Skeletons

by Owen Jarus, LiveScience ContributorDate: 05 July 2013

Archaeologists have discovered two ancient Egyptian skeletons, dating back more than 3,300 years, which were each buried with a toe ring made of copper alloy, the first time such rings have been found in ancient Egypt.

The toe rings were likely worn while the individuals were still alive, and the discovery leaves open the question of whether they were worn for fashion or magical reasons.

Supporting the magical interpretation, one of the rings was found on the right toe of a male, age 35-40, whose foot had suffered a fracture along with a broken femur above it.

Unique rings in a unique ancient city

Both skeletons were found in a cemetery just south of the ancient city of Akhetaten, whose name means "Horizon of the Aten." Now called Amarna, the city of Akhetaten was a short-lived Egyptian capital built by Akhenaten a pharaoh who tried to focus Egypt's religion around the worship of the sun disc, the "Aten." He was also likely the father of Tutankhamun.

After Akhenaten's death, this attempt to change Egyptian religion unraveled, as his successors denounced him and the city became abandoned. Even so, Anna Stevens, the assistant director of the Amarna Project, said the newly discovered rings are unlikely to be related to the religious changes Akhenaten introduced.

From rumour to bulldozer

Will Egypt’s illustrious heritage fall into oblivion under the toll of urban and agricultural encroachment? Nevine El-Aref finds that serious problems are facing some of the nation’s famous archaeological sites, while others may be storms in so many teacups


More than two years after the January 2011 Revolution, urban and agricultural encroachment continues to threaten Egypt’s archaeological sites.

The lack of security that overwhelmed the country during and after the revolution has certainly taken its toll. The sanctity of spiritual and archaeological environments have been desecrated, with plundering and destruction by vandals, thieves and neighbouring residents being carried out virtually unchecked.

Well-organised and well-armed gangs of thieves are reportedly plundering archaeological sites, while illegal construction encroaches on and sometimes even covers them.

The rich Islamic site of Istabl Antar in Egypt’s first Islamic capital has been isolated, as have Al-Muizz Street in historic Cairo; the ancient Egyptian necropolis of Dahshour; the Giza Plateau; the New Kingdom site of Matariya; the area of Al-Bordan on the Alexandria-Marsa Matrouh highway and the Hagg Kandil site at Amarna in Minya in Upper Egypt, to mention just a few.

Some building encroachments were removed safely and without damage, but for others help came too late and some areas of historical importance, where genuine objects and important remains are still hidden in the sand, were ruined or looted.

Ancient Egyptian Cemetery Holds Proof of Hard Labor

Heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten's capital was no paradise for many adults and children.


Traci Watson
for National Geographic News
Published March 13, 2013


Carvings on the walls of the ancient Egyptian city of Amarna depict a world of plenty. Oxen are fattened in a cattle yard. Storehouses bulge with grain and fish. Musicians serenade the pharaoh as he feasts on meat at a banquet.

But new research hints that life in Amarna was a combination of grinding toil and want—at least for the ordinary people who would have hauled the city's water, unloaded the boats on the Nile, and built Amarna's grand stone temples, which were erected in a rush on the orders of a ruler named Akhenaten, sometimes called the "Heretic Pharaoh."

Researchers examining skeletons in the commoners' cemetery in Amarna have discovered that many of the city's children were malnourished and stunted. Adults show signs of backbreaking work, including high levels of injuries associated with accidents.

"We have evidence of the most stressed and disease-ridden of the ancient skeletons of Egypt that have been reported to date," said University of Arkansas bioarchaeologist Jerome Rose (a National Geographic Committe for Research and Exploration grantee), one of the team of experts examining the dead. "Amarna is the capital city of the Egyptian empire. There should be plenty of food . . . Something seems to be amiss."

Authorities foil encroachment on Egypt's Tel Al-Amarna archaeological site

Although Egypt's antiquities law prohibits encroachments on country's archaeological sites, violations appear to remain commonplace

by Nevine El-Aref , Tuesday 5 Mar 2013


Egypt’s archaeological sites have continued to suffer from both urban and agricultural encroachment.

After Old Cairo’s Ezbet Kheiralla and Giza’s Dahshur, the turn appears to have come for the ancient site of Tel Al-Amarna in the Upper Egyptian city of Minya. The site was Egypt's capital during the reign of monotheistic pharaoh Akhenaton.

According to Mohamed El-Bialy, chairman of the antiquities ministry’s ancient Egyptian antiquities sector, residents of neighbouring village Al-Hagg Qandil recently began cultivating the area around a collection of 18th-dynasty noblemen’s tombs.

When Minya’s archaeological inspectorate learned of the activity, it sent a report to both local police and the antiquities ministry.

The ministry ordered a halt to the encroachment and stepped up security in the area, while tourism and antiquities police were deployed nearby.

Speaking to Ahram Online, El-Bialy pointed out that the Al-Hagg Qandil site had represented an important part of the capital during Akhenaton’s reign.

The site includes a collection of noblemen’s tombs, including that of Iay, one of Akhenaton’s high priests. Iay was also the godfather of the boy king Tutankhamen, after whose untimely death Iay seized the throne.

According to El-Bialy, the area also contains the tomb of Mahou, Akhenaton’s chief of police, along with remains of the Aten temple and the celebrated ‘borders relief,’ which depicts ancient Egypt’s geographical borders with neighbouring empires.

Police and the antiquities ministry appear to have succeeded in stopping the agricultural encroachment on Tel Al-Amarna at an early stage.

In Dahshur, meanwhile, in the urban Giza governorate, new concrete buildings still stand in front of the pyramid of Amenhotep II. Dahshur residents halted construction of the structures after the antiquities ministry offered to provide them with land far from the archaeological site on which to build a cemetery.

Given the current lack of financial resources, however, the removal of such buildings remains difficult.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/66211/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Authorities-foil-encroachment-on-Egypts-Tel-AlAmar.aspx

Dynasties Of Egypt Part IV: New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period

The New Kingdom, sometimes referred to as the Egyptian Empire, is the period in ancient Egyptian history between the 16th century BC and the 11th century BC, covering the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Dynasties of Egypt. 

The New Kingdom (1570–1070 BC) followed the Second Intermediate Period and was succeeded by the Third Intermediate Period. It was Egypt’s most prosperous time and marked the zenith of its power.

Possibly as a result of the foreign rule of the Hyksos during the Second Intermediate Period, the New Kingdom saw Egypt attempt to create a buffer between the Levant and Egypt, and attained its greatest territorial extent. It expanded far south into Nubia and held wide territories in the Near East. Egyptian armies fought Hittite armies for control of modern-day Syria.

The Eighteenth Dynasty contained some of Egypt's most famous pharaohs including Ahmose I, Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Amunhotep III, Akhenaten and Tutankhamun.

The founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Ahmose I (reign 1550-1525 BC) had a turbulent childhood. At the age of seven, his father Seqenenre Tao II was killed, probably while putting down members of the Asiatic tribe known as Hyskos, who were rebelling against the Thebean Royal House in Lower Egypt. At the age of ten, he saw his brother Kamose die of unknown causes after reigning for only three years. 

Re-Examining Nefertiti's Likeness and Life

By Matthias Schulz

German excavators discovered the famous bust of Nefertiti in Egypt 100 years ago. As an anniversary exhibition kicks off in Berlin, new findings are altering old ideas about Germany's controversial acquisition of the bust and the story of the legendary beauty herself.

In wartime, the course of the world is often accelerated in odd ways. To the sounds of sword thrusts and the thunder of cannons, entire empires have been dispersed, and fates brought together and accumulated. As if in stop motion, heroes have been born and destroyed once again.

But there was a time when things were completely different. The revolution of the Pharaoh and sun guru Akhenaton, who devised a light theology with his wife Nefertiti and, in 1350 B.C., declared the solar disk "Aton" to be the only god, was followed by a period of sluggish peace, filled with flute music and endless caresses. The whole thing was so odd that Egyptologist Jan Assmann refers to it as the "entry of the improbable into history."

The peculiar rulers of what was then the richest nation on earth lived in the newly founded Nile capital Akhetaton ("Horizon of Aton"). Servants carried them on a throne made of electrum. Pharaoh Akhenaton liked to be portrayed as having a fat stomach, while Nefertiti wore transparent robes that hardly covered her pubic mound.

Then came damnation. Angry successors destroyed the images of the heretics, their names were obliterated and almost all traces were removed.

The Story of Nefertiti

As queen of Egypt married to the iconoclastic pharaoh Akhenaton, Nefertiti helped in the temporary transformation of the cultures traditional religion into a monotheistic cult of sun worship. She also had an important role in ruling the empire and inspired standards of female beauty.

Akhenaton, Nefertiti and children

Early Life

Nefertiti was born in the royal city of Thebes on the Nile River in Upper Egypt; her name means "the beautiful one has come." Her origins and much about her life are unclear. Her supposed mother or stepmother, Tiy, was also described as her "nurse" and "governess." Her putative father was Ay, at first a scribe and keeper of the king's records. Eventually, Ay was to become grand vizier, or chief minister, as well as commander of the king's chariotry.

Perhaps her father's ascendancy made it possible for Nefertiti to secure an entrée to the court and to become friendly with the king's oldest son, the younger Amenhotep, a year her senior. Amenhotep happened to have her father, Ay, as tutor. Nefertiti had a younger sister, Mudnodjme, whom some scholars posit became the chief wife of King Horemheb, a view contested by others.

Given her father's presumed ambitions and the young prince's affection for her, at age eleven Nefertiti already appeared to have been groomed to be queen. It is agreed that she spent much of the her childhood in the royal palace at Thebes, a magnificent city beautified by Ay, this time in his capacity as chief architect to King Amenhotep III, the prince's father.

After the young King Amenhotep IV ascended the throne at about age sixteen upon his father's death, he married Nefertiti, then fifteen. She thus became Queen Nefertiti, empress of the two Egypts, Upper and Lower. During the Eighteenth Dynasty, royal couples were considered the intermediaries between the people and their gods; Amenhotep and Nefertiti, according to custom, were thus ascribed near-divine attributes.

The new king, however, broke rank with his predecessors. He evinced little interest in hunting, the affairs of state, or warfare. Rather, his focus was primarily theological. In fact, the sovereign became a religious reformer and was eventually considered a heretic. In contrast to his ancestors, Amenhotep IV replaced Amun-Re, the supreme god of all Egyptian gods, with a new paramount, powerful, and eventually sole god, Aton, whose manifestation was the sun-disk, the physical embodiment of the planet. Until then, Aton had been only a minor Theban god. Symbolically, in Year 5 of his reign, Amenhotep changed his name to Akhenaton. Because of mounting opposition to his iconoclasm and to his closure of the temples of the other gods, Akhenaton decided to build a new capital, Akhetaton (the modern Tell el-Amârna, on the Nile in Middle Egypt some 250 miles north of Thebes). The royal family and a good part of the court then moved there.

Religion in the Lives of the Ancient Egyptians

by Emily Teeter & Douglas J. Brewer

Because the role of religion in Euro-American culture differs so greatly from that in ancient Egypt, it is difficult to fully appreciate its significance in everyday Egyptian life. In Egypt, religion and life were so interwoven that it would have been impossible to be agnostic. Astronomy, medicine, geography, agriculture, art, and civil law--virtually every aspect of Egyptian culture and civilization--were manifestations of religious beliefs.

Most aspects of Egyptian religion can be traced to the people's observation of the environment. Fundamental was the love of sunlight, the solar cycle and the comfort brought by the regular rhythms of nature, and the agricultural cycle surrounding the rise and fall of the Nile. Egyptian theology attempted, above all else, to explain these cosmic phenomena, incomprehensible to humans, by means of a series of understandable metaphors based upon natural cycles and understandable experiences. Hence, the movement of the sun across the sky was represented by images of the sun in his celestial boat crossing the vault of heaven or of the sun flying over the sky in the form of a scarab beetle. Similarly, the concept of death was transformed from the cessation of life into a mirror image of life wherein the deceased had the same material requirements and desires.

Origins and nature of the gods

It is almost impossible to enumerate the gods of the Egyptians, for individual deities could temporarily merge with each other to form syncretistic gods (Amun-Re, Re-Harakhty, Ptah-Sokar, etc.) who combined elements of the individual gods. A single god might also splinter into a multiplicity of forms (Amun-em-Opet, Amun-Ka-Mutef, Amun of Ipet-swt), each of whom had an independent cult and role. Unlike the gods of the Graeco-Roman world, most Egyptian gods had no definite attributes. For example, Amun, one of the most prominent deities of the New Kingdom and Late Period, is vaguely referred to in secondary literature as the "state god" because his powers were so widespread and encompassing as to be indefinable.

To a great extent, gods were patterned after humans--they were born, some died (and were reborn), and they fought amongst themselves. Yet as much as the gods' behavior resembled human behavior, they were immortal and always superior to humans.