Bryan, who was not involved in the dig, visited on a day when archaeologists found a small clay ceiling stamped with hieroglyphs that said ‘The aten is found living on truth.’ "That’s an epithet of Akhenaten,” Bryan notes. The buildings also bear his soon-to-be heretic son’s name, says Betsy Bryan, a professor of Egyptian art and archaeology at Johns Hopkins University. Scarabs, bricks, vessels, and more bear Amenhotep III’s royal seal. A vessel containing two gallons of boiled meat was inscribed with the year 37-the time of Amenhotep III and Akhenaten’s speculated father-son reign. Though the size of the city has yet to be determined, its date is clear thanks to hieroglyphics on a variety of items. mortuary temple, and to the south is Medinet Habu, a mortuary temple built almost two centuries later for Ramses III. To the north is Amenhotep III’s 14th-century B.C. The excavation site straddles old and new in an area renowned for its archaeological riches. Why and how did the pharaoh’s controversial transformation take place, and what was everyday life like under the great Amenhotep III? The newly found city could provide clues. Only the rediscovery of Amarna in the 18th century revived the legacy of the renegade leader, which has fuelled archaeological speculation for hundreds of years. Starting with his son, the boy king Tutankhamun, Akhenaten's capital, his art, his religion, and even his name was dismissed and systematically wiped from history. But after his death, most traces of the ruler were obliterated. Akhenaten moved his royal seat from Thebes north to a completely new city he called Akhetaten (modern site name: Amarna) and oversaw an artistic revolution that briefly transformed Egyptian art from stiff and uniform to animated and detailed. He even changed his name from Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten, which means “devoted to Aten.” During his 17-year reign, he upended Egyptian culture, abandoning all of the traditional Egyptian pantheon but one, the sun god Aten. In Amenhotep III’s final years, he is thought to have briefly reigned alongside his son, Akhenaten.īut a few years after his father’s death, Akhenaten, who ruled from around 1353–1336, broke with everything the late ruler stood for. and presided over an era of extraordinary wealth, power and luxury. The site dates from the era of 18th-dynasty pharaoh Amenhotep III, who ruled between around 13 B.C. “It’s very much a snapshot in time-an Egyptian version of Pompeii.” “There’s no doubt about it it really is a phenomenal find,” says Salima Ikram, an archaeologist who leads the American University in Cairo’s Egyptology unit. The level of preservation found so far, however, has impressed researchers. Because the city was initially discovered just in September of last year, archaeologists have only scratched the surface of the sprawling site, and understanding where this discovery ranks in Egyptological importance is hard to say at this time.
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