Returning to Amarna for the second of a two-day visit felt like seeing an old friend. I had spent the first day exploring the northern half of the site (see AE 154) with nothing more than a copy of Anna Stevens’ recently published Amarna: a guide to the ancient city of Akhetaten and my Egyptian driver George at the wheel of his car. Among other things, I had visited the sites of two royal palaces, entered half a dozen non-royal elite tombs, seen a Boundary Stela, spent time in the Royal Tomb of Akhenaten, and all without encountering another visitor. Although Amarna can be visited in a single day, when planning this trip I decided to take things slowly and explore the site at a relaxed pace, giving me the opportunity to seek out the more obscure tomb scenes that the guidebook describes so well. It would give me time, too, to spend an hour in the small archaeological museum at nearby Mallawi, plus another hour in the Amarna Visitor Centre, located in the northern half of the site. Both are well worth adding to your itinerary.
Central City
Once I had purchased my admission ticket (LE200), George drove us directly to the Central City – the hub of ancient Akhetaten. This once-bustling urban centre lies south of the modern-day town of el-Till, and it was from here that Akhenaten and his court ruled Egypt during the Amarna Period. In the Central City were royal residences and palaces used for ceremonial events and celebrations, administrative buildings for negotiating international trade and diplomacy, and enormous places of worship to maintain the new monotheistic religion which largely defines the era: the cult of the Aten. Very little now remains of this part of Akhetaten, as the majority of the stone was removed and reused when the country returned to the old religion under new rulers. However, there are enough outcrops of ancient mud-brick dotted among the modern stone blocks of an informative reconstruction programme to give the visitor a strong sense of what was once there. Seeing the stylised scenes and maps of palaces and temples in some of the Amarna elite tombs, and the recent addition of some very good information panels across the whole of the site, further add to the understanding of life in the ancient city of Akhenaten and Nefertiti.
House of the Rising Sun
Approaching from the north, the first thing you encounter in the Central City is the monumental Great Aten Temple, the ritual centrepiece of the city known in ancient times as the ‘House of the Aten’, and mentioned on the Boundary Stela as the very first building that Akhenaten would build in his new city. In general, the temples at Amarna were similar in design to those seen in Thebes and elsewhere, with a series of pylons and courts leading to an inner sanctuary. They differed, however, by not having much in the way of roofing, so that the altars and offering tables could be exposed daily to the sun god. Additionally, statues of the old gods were replaced by statues of the Amarna royal family, often depicted holding portable offering tables or small 3D representations of the Aten cartouches.
