Heritage management

Amarna is a complex heritage site in terms of its conservation and management needs, and those of its diverse stakeholders. The Amarna Project has long assisted with initiatives to protect the site and make it accessible to the public, in particular through large-scale conservation projects at the temples and palaces. In recent years we have spent time developing our public engagement programmes, partly in collaboration with the Amarna Visitor Center. We have also launched work to gradually construct, as funding allows, protective boundary walls at highly threatened areas of the site, in partnership with the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (MoTA).

In 2020, we finalised an extensive Site Management Plan for Amarna in collaboration with the MoTA:

  • Tully, G., A. Stevens, H. Kellawy, K. Spence, H. Kemp and F. Awad, 2020. Tell el-Amarna Site Management Plan 2020.

The SMP is available for download in English or Arabic here.

More information on our heritage management work can be found at the links below and under ‘Heritage management’ on our Publication list.

The Project has benefited from a number of grants and collaborative partnerships in recent years that have allowed us to better integrate heritage management and public archaeology into our fieldwork and research programmes:

2017–2021: funding from an Institutional Links grant, ID 261861975, under the Newton-Mosharafa Fund partnership (PIs K. Spence, Y. El-Shazly) supported collaborative work with the MoTA and University of Cambridge on a heritage project that produced several substantial outputs: 

2020–2021: funding from the American Research Center in Egypt’s Antiquities Endowment Fund for the project Protecting the Amarna Desert Altars (PI A. Stevens) supported a successful pilot project to construct boundary walls to help prevent illegal encroachment of agriculture at the Desert Altars and parts of the North City.

2022–2024: grants from the Friends of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology and the Esmée Fairburn Foundation supported collaborative work between the Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology (UCL), MoTA and Amarna Project on the project Tutankhamun the Boy (PI C. Wilson). The project included: 

  • Professional development opportunities in public archaeology and object-based learning for MoTA staff from Amarna
  • Workshops for 7–11 year-olds at the Amarna Visitor Centre exploring the history of ancient Egypt, Amarna, the life of Tutankhamun and childhood in ancient Egypt
  • The creation of 10 3D models for use in public workshops at the Amarna Visitor Center
  • Temporary displays about Tutankhamun’s childhood, and that of other children in Ancient Egypt at the Petrie Museum, co-curated by children from George Mitchell School (UK) and Amarna
  • Creation of new learning resources in English and Arabic for Key Stage Two children (7-11 years) exploring Tutankhamun’s childhood, and that of other children in Ancient Egypt

2022–2025: a grant from the Archaeological Institute of American (PI G.R. Dabbs) is supporting public engagement centred around the study of Amarna’s cemeteries. The work includes the creation of a set of worksheets as a first step in developing a folio of activity guides themed around Amarna and its archaeology for use in outreach at the Visitor Center. The first guides will address bioarchaeology and what we can learn from ancient cemeteries. It is intended to gradually extend the folio to other important themes, as funding allows.

2023–2026: funding from the American Research Center in Egypt’s Antiquities Endowment Fund for the project Akhenaten’s city: Protecting Amarna’s urban heritage (PI A. Stevens) is supporting work to: 

  • Survey and digitally scan houses that were excavated in the early 1900s and are gradually being lost to erosion and other factors
  • Undertake conservation at the house of the vizier Nakht
  • Continue the initiative to construct protective boundary walls
  • Expand our programme of public workshops and other on-site activities, and further develop the folio of activity guides to include sheets themed around houses and domestic life