Kom el-Nana

This local name is given to an enclosure south of the Main City and to the east of the modern village of el-Hagg Qandil, originally built by Akhenaten as a sun temple. Between 1988 and 2000 the Egypt Exploration Society excavated key areas as part of an attempt (so far successful) to prevent the site falling under cultivation. Most of the excavations have been filled in.

Plan of Kom el-Nana.

A single large brick enclosure (228 x 213 m), its walls reinforced with thick external buttresses, had been divided into two unequal parts by an east–west dividing wall and had been entered by pylon-flanked gateways probably on all four sides. The northern portion had contained a set of parallel brick chambers provided with ovens. Excavated evidence (including pottery bread moulds) suggests a combined brewery and bakery. Beside it a depression in the desert probably marks the presence of a well. Traces were also found of a gypsum foundation for a stone building (the North Shrine).

The Amarna Period remains in this part had, however, been overbuilt by an early Christian monastery of the 5th and 6th centuries AD that had, in part, re-used the earlier walls, so disguising or destroying the nature of the original buildings. A portion of the monastery, including both the church and domestic/industrial quarters, has been excavated. The southern portion had remained largely outside the monastery perimeter, and the Amarna Period buildings had survived better, although still significantly denuded and also affected by the later digging out of bricks. A series of buildings had lain on a south-north axis, as follows:

  • A major pylon in the enclosure wall, the wide gateway space floored with stone.
  • The South Pavilion, a narrow rectangular building with stepped entrances on south, west and east. A central columned building opened on to sunken gardens on the east and west sides, the gardens laid out for plants set in a cubit-sized grid.
  • The Central Platform, a square podium supporting a series of rooms, some of them columned, the largest being a wide columned hall provided with a stepped dais on all three sides. The possibility should entertained that one or all of them communicated to the outside by means of Windows of Appearance. The platform had been reached by ramps on the north and south, and perhaps by another pair attached to the ends of the east side.
  • The South Shrine, its position and outline plan given by a gypsum foundation platform on which remained many marks from the lowest course of blocks. It seems to have consisted of a series of chambers on the east and a portico of columns on the west.
Left: View towards the west of the South Pavilion at the end of the excavation. Right: Fragments of painted gypsum pavement from the South Pavilion, found loose in the fill of the sunken gardens.
Left to right: Bakery/brewery chambers in the course of excavation in 1994; Ovens at the rear of one of the bakery/brewery chambers; Sunken garden divided into cubit-sized plots in the South Pavilion; Sunken garden, the plots still filled with dark alluvial soil.
Left: The west (front) part of the Central Platform at the end of excavation. Centre: Gypsum foundation layer at the South Shrine, viewed towards the west. Right: Part of the gypsum foundation layer, showing block impressions.
Clockwise from top left: limestone block with head of a princess; large sandstone jamb carved with hieroglyphs; sandstone architrave block carved with poorly executed cartouches of Akhenaten; part of a papyrus-bundle column made from limestone blocks; painted limestone cornice.

Also in the southern portion was a group of houses in the south-east corner, arranged in two sets facing each other across a court; a set of cubit-sized garden plots was laid out at ground level in the north-east corner. The whole complex has a broad resemblance to Maru-Aten. Careful study of the relief fragments recovered during excavation by Jacquelyn Williamson has demonstrated that at least part of it bore the name ‘Sunshade of Ra’ (i.e. Sun Temple) and that it had belonged to Queen Nefertiti.

Left: A group of houses in the south-east corner of Kom el-Nana, viewed to the south. Centre: Set of garden plots in the north-east corner of the south enclosure. Right: Detail of the garden plots with ancient soil removed.

Barry Kemp

Further reading

The expedition began a rescue excavation at Kom el-Nana in 1988 which was continued for several more years. Unpublished preliminary reports on the 1989 and 1990 seasons are available here.

See also:

Faiers, J., (with contributions from S. Clarkson, B. Kemp, G. Pyke and R. Reece) 2005. Late Roman Pottery at Amarna and Related Studies. Seventy-second Excavation Memoir. London: Egypt Exploration Society.

Kemp, B. J., 1995. The Kom el-Nana enclosure at Amarna. Egyptian Archaeology 6, 8–9.

Kemp, B.J., ed., 1995. Amarna Reports VI. London, Egypt Exploration Society, 433–8, 453.

Pyke, G. 2017. Monastic footprints at Amarna: Trails of the unexpected. [A blogpost written to mark the 40th anniversary of work at Amarna]

Smith, W., 2003. Archaeobotanical investigations of agriculture at Late Antique Kom el-Nana (Tell el-Amarna). Seventieth Excavation Memoir. London: Egypt Exploration Society.

Williamson, J., 2008. The Sunshade of Nefertiti. Egyptian Archaeology 33, 5–7.

Williamson, J., 2016. Nefertiti’s Sun Temple; A New Cult Complex at Tell el-Amarna. 2 vols. Leiden, etc.: Brill.

Williamson, J. 2017. The disappearing Sun Temple of Queen Nefertiti. [A blogpost written to mark the 40th anniversary of work at Amarna]