History and Nature

Tell el-Amarna (often abbreviated to Amarna) is a modern name that applies to an extensive archaeological site that is primarily the remains of an ephemeral capital city built and abandoned within about fifteen years during the late Eighteenth Dynasty (in the New Kingdom), between about 1347 and 1332 BCE.

It lies on the desert close to the east bank of the Nile in the province of el-Minia, roughly halfway between Cairo and Luxor (and thus in ancient times between Memphis and Thebes). It was the heart of a sacred tract of ground dedicated to the cult of the sun (the Aten) which Akhenaten promoted to the exclusion of other deities. Because much of it lies easily accessible beneath a thin cover and sand and rubble, and because of the excellent preservative properties of the dry desert soil, Amarna is a fundamental source of reference for the architecture and layout of cities in ancient Egypt and a source of evidence for aspects of the life of the times.

The outlines of the city were mapped in the nineteenth century. The first archaeological excavation took place in 1892. Thereafter, with intermittent gaps, excavation proceeded until 1936, by which time most of the royal buildings and about half of the residential area had been cleared. The current work of excavation, survey and preservation, under the auspices of the Egypt Exploration Society, began in 1977.