One of the chief question to be addressed is how the flow of meat was maintained: was it centrally distributed through the Aten temples (which were provided with abundant offering-tables) or were individual families left to raise or purchase livestock with their own resources?
Since 1979, when excavations began in the Workmen’s Village, bone has been recovered by the sieving of all deposits excavated and kept for study. Multiple zooarchaeologists have studied it in turn, including Howard Hecker, Rosemary Luff, Phillipa Payne, Tony Legge, Chris Stimpson and Salima Ikram. Most attention has been paid to the domestic mammals, principally cattle, pig, sheep and goats, from housing areas (namely, the Workmen’s Village, Main City and Stone Village), and cattle bone associated with the House of Panehesy by the Great Aten Temple. Chris Stimpson is currently undertaking a study of the bird bone. Rosemary Luff also developed a detailed study of the fish remains, especially those from the Nile catfish. This work compared data from the Amarna Period, from the Late Roman Period, and from a regular series of catches done at the time of the research. The changing character of the catches over this extended period of time is intriguing and still open to further research, as a potential indicator of long-term changes in the fish stocks of the Nile.
Not all animal bones are food waste. In the last centuries of ancient Egyptian civilisation numerous cemeteries large and small were maintained for animals held to be sacred. Amarna seems so far to have produced two, both of them for dogs and both badly disturbed. One was in the area of grid 10, south of the Great Palace. The other was amongst the ruins of the storehouses attached to the King’s House in the Central City. These also have been the object of study by Phillipa Payne.
Barry Kemp
Further reading
The following are among the principal studies of animal remains from the site, but see also the Environmental History section on our Publication List.
Hecker, H. M. 1984. Preliminary report on the faunal remains from the Workmen’s Village. In B.J. Kemp, ed., Amarna Reports I, London: Egypt Exploration Society, 154–64.
Ikram, S. 2025. The zooarchaeological evidence. In Hodgkinson, A.K., Working in the Suburbs: The Archaeological Remains from Amarna Site M50.14–16. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 277–83.
Kemp, B.J., 1994. Food for an Egyptian city. In R.M. Luff and P. Rowley-Conwy, ed., Whither environmental archaeology? Oxbow Monograph 38. Oxford: Oxbow, 133-53.
Legge, A., 2010. The mammal bones from Grid 12. In B. Kemp and A. Stevens, Busy Lives at Amarna: Excavations in the Main City (Grid 12 and the House of Ranefer, N49.18). Volume I: The Excavations, Architecture and Environmental Remains. EES Excavation Memoir 90, London: Egypt Exploration Society and Amarna Trust, 445–52.
Legge, A.J., 2010. The hyaena in Dynastic Egypt; Fancy food or fantasy food? International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 20/3, 1–9.
Legge, A.J., 2010. The persecution of pigs at Amarna. Horizon 7, 6–7.
Luff, R.M., 1994. Butchery at the Workmen’s Village (WV), Tell el-Amarna, Egypt. In R.M. Luff and P. Rowley-Conwy, ed., Whither environmental archaeology? Oxbow Monograph 38. Oxford: Oxbow, 158–70.
Luff, R.M., 2007. Monastic diet in Late Antique Egypt: zooarchaeological finds from Kom el-Nana and Tell el-Amarna, Middle Egypt. Environmental Archaeology 12 (2), 161–74.
Luff, R. and G. Bailey, 2000. The aquatic basis of ancient civilisations: the case of Synodontis schall in the Nile Valley. In G. Bailey, R. Charles and N. Winder, ed., Human Ecodynamics: proceedings of the Association for Environmental Archaeology conference 1998 held at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.Oxford: Oxbow, 100–13.
Luff, R.M. and G. Bailey, 2000. Analysis of size changes and incremental growth structures in African catfish Synodontis schall (Schall) from Tell el-Amarna, Middle Egypt. Journal of Archaeological Science 27, 821–35.
Luff, R.M. and D. Brothwell, 2007. On the possible ritual marking of a young XVIIIth Dynasty pig skull from Tell el-Amarna, Middle Egypt. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 17, 524–30.
Payne, P., 2006. Recovering animal bone at the house of the high priest Panehsy. In B. Kemp, The 2005/6 season at Tell el-Amarna, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 92, 45–52.
Payne, P., 2007. Re-excavation at the Amarna house of Panehsy. Egyptian Archaeology 30, 18–20.
Stimpson, C.M. and B.J. Kemp. 2023. Pigeons and papyrus at Amarna: The birds of the Green Room revisited. Antiquity 97, 104–19.