Amarna (Akhetaten): Akhenaten's Lost Capital City

Amarna, known in ancient times as Akhetaten, “Horizon of the Aten”, was the capital city founded by the pharaoh Akhenaten in about 1346 BC on an empty stretch of the Nile’s east bank in Middle Egypt. Built in a few years for the worship of the sun disc alone, it was abandoned soon after the king’s death. Because it was never built over, Amarna offers one of the clearest views of how an ancient Egyptian city was laid out and how its people lived.

Why a new capital?

In the early years of his reign Akhenaten, still called Amenhotep IV, promoted the Aten at Thebes, the home of the powerful god Amun. Around his fifth regnal year he took a radical step: he would build a new city on land that “belonged to no god”, dedicated entirely to the Aten. The background to this religious change is described in Akhenaten and the Amarna Revolution.

The chosen site was a broad desert bay about 12 km long, closed in by cliffs on the east and the river on the west. The sun rising over the cliffs may have suggested the hieroglyph for “horizon”, which gave the city its name.

Founding and boundary stelae

The king marked the limits of Akhetaten with large inscribed boundary stelae cut into the cliffs on both sides of the river. Around 16 are known. Their texts record his visit to the site, his vow never to move its borders and his wish to be buried there with Queen Nefertiti and their daughter Meritaten.

Building proceeded quickly. To save time, temple walls were made of small standard blocks called talatat, about 52 cm long, that one worker could carry. Most houses, and even the palaces, were built largely of mud brick, with stone reserved for temples, door frames and columns. This speed explains both the city’s rapid rise and how easily it was later dismantled. By roughly the eighth or ninth year of the reign, the court and government seem to have moved in.

Layout of the city

Akhetaten stretched along the river rather than around a single centre. A long road, now called the Royal Road, linked its main districts.

• Central City – the core of government and worship, with the Great Aten Temple, a vast open-air sanctuary filled with offering tables, the Small Aten Temple, the Great Palace and the King’s House. Nearby were offices such as the “Place of the Letters of Pharaoh”.
• North and South Suburbs – mixed neighbourhoods of large villas belonging to officials and smaller houses of ordinary residents, with workshops scattered among them.
• Palaces to the north – the North Palace, decorated with painted scenes of birds and marshland, and the North Riverside Palace, probably the main royal residence.
• Workmen’s Village – a walled settlement in the desert for the people who cut the tombs.
• Tombs – rock tombs of officials in the northern and southern cliffs, and the Royal Tomb in a remote wadi to the east.

Unlike most Egyptian temples, the Aten temples had no roof over their central areas, so that offerings lay open to the sun. Rows of hundreds of altars filled their courts.

People and daily life

Population estimates for Amarna vary from about 20,000 to 50,000. Excavated houses show a city without a strict grid, where wealthy villas with gardens, granaries and shrines stood beside crowded small dwellings.

Recent study of the South Tombs Cemetery, where ordinary people were buried, has given a sobering picture. Analyses of hundreds of skeletons since 2005 found many young adults and children, signs of heavy physical labour and poor nutrition. Building a capital at speed seems to have come at a high human cost.

The rock tombs of officials preserve images of royal life and, in the tomb of the courtier Ay, the longest surviving version of the Great Hymn to the Aten, a poem praising the sun as creator of all life.

Abandonment

Akhenaten died in about 1336 BC. Within a few years, under the young king Tutankhaten, the court restored the old gods and left the city. The king changed his name to Tutankhamun, and the royal residence moved to Memphis and Thebes.

Akhetaten’s population drifted away, leaving behind much of what they could not carry. Under Horemheb and the early Ramesside kings its temples were dismantled. Thousands of talatat blocks were shipped across the river and reused at Hermopolis, while the names of the Amarna rulers were excluded from official king lists.

Rediscovery and excavation

In 1887 local people digging at the site found clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform. These proved to be the Amarna Letters, diplomatic correspondence between Egypt and the rulers of Babylon, Mitanni, the Hittites and Canaanite city-states.

Flinders Petrie excavated in 1891–92, recovering painted pavements and glass workshops. A German expedition under Ludwig Borchardt surveyed the site from 1907, excavated there from 1911 to 1914 and in 1912 found the bust of Nefertiti in the workshop of the sculptor Thutmose. The Egypt Exploration Society excavated through the 1920s and 1930s, notably under John Pendlebury. Since 1977 the Amarna Project led by Barry Kemp has carried out detailed survey and excavation.

Art and religion in the city

Amarna gave its name to a distinctive artistic style. Royal figures were shown with long faces, narrow shoulders, full hips and elongated limbs, and scenes were filled with movement and intimate family moments. Sculptors’ workshops excavated in the city, including that of Thutmose, contained plaster casts of faces, unfinished heads and trial pieces, giving a rare view of how royal portraits were made.

Religion shaped daily life as well as art. The Aten was shown not as a human or animal figure but as a disc whose rays ended in hands. Officials placed stelae showing the royal family in household shrines, honouring the king and queen as the link between the god and the people. Excavations show, however, that many residents kept small amulets and figurines of traditional household gods, such as Bes and Taweret, suggesting that the new faith did not fully replace older beliefs.

Myths and facts

Myth: Amarna was a perfectly planned city. Only the official buildings of the Central City followed an orderly plan. The residential quarters grew more organically, with houses clustered around those of wealthier neighbours.

Myth: The name Tell el-Amarna is ancient. It is modern. It comes from the Beni Amran, a group who settled in the area in the eighteenth century, and the word “tell”, meaning a settlement mound, is misleading because the city never formed one.

Timeline

• c. 1353 BC: Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) becomes king and begins promoting the Aten.
• c. 1346 BC: First boundary stelae mark out Akhetaten.
• c. 1344 BC: The court is living in the new city.
• c. 1336 BC: Death of Akhenaten.
• c. 1330 BC: Under Tutankhamun the court leaves; the city is largely abandoned.
• 1887: Discovery of the Amarna Letters.
• 1912, 6 December: The bust of Nefertiti is found.
• 1977: Barry Kemp begins long-term excavation for the Egypt Exploration Society.

Why it matters

Amarna was the physical heart of one of history’s most unusual religious experiments. Because it was occupied for only about two decades and then left, it preserves a rare, single-period picture of an Egyptian capital, from royal palaces to workers’ graves, and its archive and artworks transformed modern understanding of the Late Bronze Age.