Amarna (Part I)

This article is from Ancient Egypt issue 154

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I first visited Tell el-Amarna, referred to more simply as Amarna, as part of a guided tour and felt that I had not spent nearly enough time at the site to do it justice. A couple of years later, I bought a book that inspired me to plan an independent return visit to Amarna, part of an extended trip I made to Middle Egypt last year. Amarna: a guide to the ancient city of Akhetaten was first published by the American University in Cairo Press in 2021 and marketed as a ‘fully illustrated guidebook’ to the archaeological settlement site of Akhetaten, the short-lived city first established by Akhenaten and Nefertiti c.1347 BC and largely abandoned about 15 years later. Written by members of the Amarna Project and edited by Dr Anna Stevens, the book is based on a series of earlier .pdf guides originally compiled by Professor Barry Kemp. These guides are available to download free from the Amarna Project website. Professor Kemp directed fieldwork at Amarna from 1977 until his death in 2024.

Amarna is in the Minya Governorate in Middle Egypt, approximately 310 kilometres (190 miles) south of Cairo, and 400 kilometres (250 miles) north of Luxor. Visiting Middle Egypt is much easier than it used to be, and you can independently visit by car, bus, train, or boat, as well as on a guided package tour. I travelled by car from Cairo – a journey of about five hours – and based myself at the Savoy Hotel in the centre of Minya city for a week to visit a variety of sites in the area. I had pre-booked Minya native George Yany to drive me around Middle Egypt while I was there, since a car is useful for visiting many of the archaeological sites in the region, and essential for the vast settlement site of Amarna. Together, we had planned two full days at Amarna, and I intended to use the AUC book as my guide. I found the information and plans of the individual tombs (described in easy-to-read detail) vital to my understanding and enjoyment of the site.

Akhetaten (‘Horizon of the Aten’) was built on the eastern bank of the Nile and lies about 60 kilometres (40 miles) south of the city of Minya. By car, you can take either a longer route on the Cairo–Aswan Eastern Desert Road, or drive on the more rustic and rural agricultural roads which follow the Nile. The journey time (just over an hour from Minya) is about the same either way, despite the difference in mileage, because of the many speed bumps present on the dusty agricultural roads. Both routes eventually merge south of the village of Deir el-Bersha, across the Nile from the city of Mallawi, where a small museum of local finds is located. There is a security checkpoint to enter the very northern end of the archaeological site.

North City

From the checkpoint, the road leads south with a high escarpment of parched limestone rocks immediately to the left and, to the right, lush farmland broken up by palm trees, and dusty tracks leading down the Nile. Stone was quarried from these cliffs in the form of easy-to-handle talatat blocks to build the temples of Akhetaten. This area of the site is known today as the North City, and probably housed workers from one of the two royal palaces located there. Very little evidence of their dwellings remains other than the occasional clump of mud-brick wall emerging from the dry and dusty landscape. A long stretch of mud-brick wall is thought to have been part of a checkpoint for goods such as oil and wines imported into the ancient city at this point.

Nefertiti Lived Here