Following Odysseus Not the end of the world Amarna city of light ...

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5 8line that must have been close to theriver. A cluster towards the middle,called in modern times the CentralCity, was clearly his centre of government.It included the ‘House ofthe Aten’, the main temple to thesun god. A mud-brick wall encloseda flat expanse of desert measuring800 by 300 metres (around 40football pitches). Almost lost in thisspace were two stone-built templesthat were, appropriately enough fora cult of the visible sun, series ofopen courts entered through traditional-lookingpylon gateways. Thecourts were filled with rectangularstone offering tables that togethernumbered around 900. They wereinsufficient, however, to satisfy theking’s desire to display the scale ofhis piety, so a field of 920 extra oneswere built from mud bricks in a cornerof the great enclosure.The offering tables were not symbols.Contemporary pictures of thetemple show them piled with foodofferings and incense. The groundoutside housed a huge food depotwhere bread and meat, in particular,were prepared. Workingout how the system functionedis a research exercise in itself.The idea behind it, that largetemples were major providersof food and other commoditiesto the community, was not new.Akhenaten seems, in a spirit ofliteralism, to have wanted tomake the scale of his piety andthe people’s dependence on theAten fully visible. It was the ultimatestep in accounting transparency,in which everything was laidout in rows. For there can be littledoubt that, after display beneaththe sun, the destination of the foodwas Akhenaten’s court and at least aportion of the city’s inhabitants.Akhenaten took his court andan important part of the administrationwith him to Amarna.Senior officials relied on junior officials,and all of them had extensivehouseholds. Among them werepeople who manufactured thingsfor the court, including fine sculpture.In the end, probably as manyas 30,000 people moved there.They did not find a ready-madecity to inhabit, only a flattish, opendesert surface not marked out withroads. But very quickly, the arrivingcommunities organised themselvesand built neighbourhoods that werelike villages, centred on the largerhouses of the officials. If the resultresembles the plan of a squattercity, irregular but not haphazard, itmatched the expectations of the richand powerful officials who ran thecountry. The life of the city spanned65. Painted terracottapot, New Kingdom,18th Dynasty, 1351-1334. © State Museumof Berlin. Photograph:Sandra Steiss.6. Head of an Amarnaprincess. Yellow-brownquartzite. H. 7.5in.© Egyptian Museum,Cairo.7. A section of the‘Princesses Panel’wall painting foundinside the King’sHouse at Amarna.H. 38cm. W. 65cm.© AshmoleanMuseum, Oxford.7the period between Akhenaten’sfifth regnal year and his 17th andlast, and a few years beyond that, atotal of around 15 to 17 years.The successor kings, beginningwith Tutankhamun, rejectedAkhenaten’s ideas, withdrew thecourt to the old centres of powerand had the stone buildings demolishedso that their stones could bereused as building material. Themyriad houses were abandoned.Amarna was never lost, however.It remained visible – first asa ruin, then as a spread of sandcoveredmounds – until archaeologistsbegan to excavate it at the endof the 19th century. Some of its decoratedrock tombs remained openand became home to a Christian12
Egyptian archaeology10monastic community in the earlycenturies AD. The scenes on theirwalls, and the content of hugeboundary tablets that Akhenatenhad had carved into the perimetercliffs, alerted European visitors tothe character of Akhenaten’s reignfrom early in the 19th century.Excavation of the city began witha single six-month season, spanning1891 and 1892, carried out by theBritish archaeologist WM FlindersPetrie, assisted by Howard Carter,then on his first assignment inEgypt. His one season was enoughto satisfy his curiosity, and he neversought to return. Some 15 yearslater, in 1907, the Egyptian governmentgranted a permit to workat Amarna to Ludwig Borchardt8. and 9. side and frontviews of a workingmodel for Nefertiti’shead. New Kingdom,18th Dynasty, 1351-1334. © State Museumof Berlin. Photograph:Sandra Steiss.10. Model of the mainpart of the ‘House ofAten’, the Long Templeat the front of theenclosure at Amarna.© Model and photoby Eastwood Cook;concept by MallinsonArchitects.11. Map of Amarna© Barry Kemp.9of Berlin. Although working inthe name of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft (German OrientalSociety), he was funded directlyby one wealthy Berlin textile merchantand philanthropist, JamesSimon. Borchardt set out on along-term, methodical excavationof much of the city. Through thishe hoped to achieve two things.One was a detailed exploration ofits architecture (reflecting his ownearly training as an architect); theother was the discovery of objectsand works of art that would gracethe rapidly growing collections ofthe Berlin Museum, by this time acultural showpiece for Germany’sambitions.In both he was quickly successful.In three seasons, between 1911and the spring of 1914, he and hissmall team excavated and mademeticulous plans of a huge partof the main residential sector ofthe city. The culmination came on6 December, 1912. In a small roomin the house of a sculptor, probablynamed Thutmose, lay an extraordinarycollection of sculptor’s modelsand related material, among them abrightly painted limestone head andshoulders of a woman, instantlyidentifiable by her distinctive crownas Queen Nefertiti, Akhenaten’s wife.The head, with the rest of theThutmose material, passed throughthe Cairo Museum divisions systemand, following export to Berlin,became the property of JamesSimon. He subsequently presentedit all to the Berlin Museum. There itremains, the head of Nefertiti almostas much a symbol of Berlin as it is ofthe Egyptian tourist industry.To mark the centenary of its discovery,there is an exhibition inthe impressive setting of the NeuesMuseum, the part of the museumensemble in Berlin which is hometo the Egyptian collection and isitself only recently restored from theruin that was left at the end of theSecond World War.The outcome of the First WorldWar, and the increasing feeling inEgypt that the head of Nefertitishould be returned, meant theend of Borchardt’s expedition. Inits place, from 1921 to 1936, theLondon-based Egypt ExplorationSociety fielded an annual expeditionkeycultivated landexcavated cityunexcavated city11NKmodern villageboundary stelaquarriesNorth Cityrock-cut tombNorth Riverside PalaceNorth PalaceDesert AltarsVNorth TombsNorth SuburbGreat Aten TempleGreat PalaceSmall Aten TempleCentral CityUriver Nile'River Temple'Main City SouthMain City NorthWorkmen's Villagehouse of Thutmoseto the Royal TombStone VillageSouth SuburbKom el-NanaEl-MangaraMaru-AtenSouth Tombs
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