Preservation

The surviving buildings at Amarna are predominantly made from sun-dried mud bricks. They include the palaces and the enclosure walls and pylons of the two main temples. After the city was abandoned the walls either fell down in sections or began to crumble away. In both cases the rubble formed embankments at the base of the walls and so helped to protect them. Eventually, with the addition of fresh sand blown in by the wind, the site as a whole stabilised, the positions of walls and buildings marked by slight swellings in a relatively smooth though undulating surface. Excavation removes the protective embankments and so exposes what is left at the bottom of the walls to fresh erosion.

Sanctuary of the Small Aten Temple, partly reconstructed.

The natural forces that bring about erosion are wind and rain. Every year strong winds blow from the north in the winter and from the south in the summer, in both cases driving dust and sand across the desert surface. Where they hit ancient walls they erode the face, often to the greatest extent close to the ground, so undermining the wall. Although rainfall is low, when it does occur it penetrates the surface of mud bricks and loosens the bonding of the particles. When the bricks dry out, the damp layer becomes dust, which rapidly blows away. Often the mud was originally mixed with pebbles rather than with straw. The pebbles fall out as the dust blows away. Eventually only the pebbles remain to mark the line of the wall.

The best way to preserve excavated structures is to rebury them in sand. Some buildings are so large that this is not feasible, and in any case some of them are of major public interest. Since 1988 the expedition has included within its annual programme of work repairs at three major monuments: the Small Aten Temple, North Palace and Great Aten Temple. From the 1980s through to the early 2000s, the consolidation work focussed on the Small Aten Temple and then the North Palace, projects which are summarised below. In 2012, a consolidation project began at the Great Aten Temple, reported on here. In 2025, a smaller-scale conservation project was also launched at the house of the vizier Nakht, updates on which can be found here.

After a series of experiments carried out in the late 1980s by structural engineer Richard Hughes it was decided not to use chemical treatments at the North Palace and Small Aten Temple. Cost was one reason but another is the ability of the mud of the bricks to act as a filter and to separate the chemical from the solvent. The result is the formation of a hard crust, which in time separates from the more loosely consolidated core of the brick and falls away, so hastening erosion. Instead, the work concentrated on the making of new mud bricks to a relatively resistant formula and to use them to cap walls where a loose upper surface has developed, to patch the sides of walls especially where weathering is undermining them, and to lay fresh, bonded lines of bricks to mark the outlines of ancient walls where little or nothing of the original survives. In general our policy is to leave as much as possible of the original brickwork visible.

For the first ten years the work was supervised by architect Michael Mallinson. Architect Suresh Dhargalkar later took over. They worked alongside construction specialists from the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt. The builders and workmen who carried out the repairs were local men who developed years of experience over the course of these projects.

North Palace

The North Palace was completely cleared of its debris by the Egypt Exploration Society in two seasons, of 1923 and 1924. A detailed photographic record is in the Society’s archives. The building was then left exposed and unfenced. By the 1970s the walls had eroded considerably, losing much of their original surfaces and part of their volume (perhaps up to a half in places). Local farmers drove their animals diagonally across it on their way to and from their fields. In 1983 the Egyptian Antiquities Department (as it then was) cleaned the accumulated sand and dust from the rear (eastern) part of the palace and added it to the embankment of spoil which is heaped against the outer wall and helps to protect the palace from wind erosion. At the same time the entire enclosure was protected by a barbed-wire fence with a small gateway in the southern side. Since then the palace interior has been closed to visitors who view it from the top of the embankment on the east, outside the fence. This is necessary in order to protect the still fragile brickwork.

Deterioration of the brickwork nonetheless continued, perhaps accelerated by an increase in humidity brought about by an extension of irrigated agriculture on to the desert behind the palace. It had reached alarming proportions by 1997 when the expedition began a programme of consolidation and repairs, which extended in some places to clarifying the plan for visitors by marking the positions of missing elements.

The walls of the North Palace are built from mud bricks some of which are of poor quality, although in other places the bricks have hardened through a build-up of calcium carbonate. Erosion has been intensified by the ancient practice of strengthening the walls by inserting lengths of timber amongst the courses of bricks. The wood was subsequently eaten by termites, leaving a line of weakness which weathering opens up, leading to the collapse of overlying top-heavy sections of brickwork.

Left to right: A wall separating two chambers in the garden court. The brickwork has been cleaned prior to repairs. The erosion of the surface has occurred since the wall was exposed in 1923; Another wall in the garden court. The long horizontal groove is where the ancient builders inserted a length of wood to reduce the danger of the wall cracking. The wood was eventually eaten by termites. Bricks from above this space are falling away; Remains of a staircase in the north court; Section across a wall showing where, on either side, timber beams had originally been inserted in place of a course of bricks.

The expedition’s approach to conservation was to:

  • replace badly eroded bricks where they formed the face of the wall especially towards the base where erosion creates a danger of collapse
  • cap the tops of walls with new bricks where the existing top was soft
  • recreate in a few new courses walls and brick columns which were either entirely missing or represented by only a low mound of decomposed bricks

The replacement bricks were newly made at the site, on a patch of flat desert outside the enclosure wall. The new bricks were made from locally available materials using a formula which is the result both of analysis of the old bricks and of testing alternative formulae. The ingredients are:

  • local soil from the fields mixed with plant material
  • small stones
  • fire ash
  • animal dung
  • slaked (burnt) lime

Two important stages in manufacture were:

  • dissolving the slaked lime in water and soaking the soil in it in order to impregnate the mud mixture with the lime, to add to the hardness and, in effect, to simulate the build-up of calcium carbonate which occurs naturally in the course of time
  • making the bricks from a relatively dry mud mix which can be compressed through manual hammering in very strongly made moulds.

The resulting bricks are quite hard and dense and relatively free from the organic content which attracts termite attack.

Left to right: Mixing the lime in which the mud mix is soaked prior to using it for making the bricks; The making of new mud bricks; Each of the brick moulds has a wooden lid which is pressed on to the newly made brick as the mould itself is pulled up to free it; One of the walls in the garden court. The horizontal groove where timber had been inserted has been filled with mud, and the surface coated with a wood-coloured compound.

Stonework

In places the builders of the North Palace used limestone blocks, all of which were removed after the end of the Amarna Period, although their positions often remained marked in an underlying layer of gypsum concrete. One of these places lies in the front part of the central columned hall. The shape of the foundation layer points to a broad staircase leading to an external platform originally made from limestone blocks. The gypsum underlay has survived well and still bears clear imprints of the lowest layer of blocks. A detailed plan of this has been made and it is now protected beneath a thick layer of clean sand. Over the top of the sand-bed the shape of the staircase and external platform has been reproduced in new limestone blocks. These have been cut to approximately the dimensions of the original blocks (which were one cubit in length, that is, 52 cm).

Stone was also used for door thresholds. We have replaced several of these with new stonework.

The rear part of the palace originally possessed many columns set on stone column bases. Several of them survive. The positions of the missing ones are visible from traces left in the mud-brick floors, often as patches of gypsum plaster. For the garden court at the north end of the site, in 2000 the missing column bases were replaced with new ones. These were made from a mixture of white cement and white sand poured into a special mould and strengthened internally with iron rods. In 2004 the positions of the missing columns in the central hall were marked not by replacement column bases but by plain circular white-concrete pads laid flush with the floor itself. The mud-brick floor had eroded for much of its depth. To protect what was left and also to bring the floor back to its original level, a layer of mud-brick dust was spread over it.

Left to right: The central columned hall with the positions of the missing column bases represented by circular pads made from white stone chippings and white cement. The stonework in the background marks the outline of a staircase or ramp which led up to a platform; Aerial photograph of the centre-rear part of the North Palace taken prior to the start of the repairs; The garden court with the central columned hall beyond, at the end of the 2004 season. View to the south; Aerial photograph of the rear (eastern) part of the North Palace.

Small Aten Temple

The Small Aten Temple was excavated and planned in 1931 by the EES expedition directed by John Pendlebury. The temple consists of a large rectangular enclosure surrounded by a thick mud-brick wall strengthened with external buttresses. It was divided into three parts by cross-walls. The outer enclosure wall and the two internal cross-walls were pierced with gateways, the principal ones being on the main central east-west axis of the temple. Each of these central gateways was flanked with pylon towers, also built from mud-bricks.

The third court at the rear of the temple contained the Sanctuary, which had been built from stone laid over the characteristic gypsum-concrete foundation layer which preserved impressions from the lowest course of blocks. The Sanctuary had been fronted by a large stone pylon and colossal columns.

Pendlebury had used the open spaces as suitable ground for heaping the spoil from the excavation. Before the reconstruction work began in 1987, therefore, it was not possible to gain a clear picture of the layout of the temple, and its emphasis upon large open spaces. In the early seasons of the current work much effort was expended upon removing these dumps (sieving them for archaeological material at the same time). The largest dump, which separated the stone Sanctuary from the rest of the temple, was removed with the aid of a mechanical conveyor belt (provided by the good offices of Alf Baxendale and donated by British Coal). It is now possible to view the temple as a coherent single building.

The mud-brickwork of the temple has been treated in a similar fashion to that at the North Palace (and was begun earlier, in 1988). The scheme of consolidation, capping and replacement of missing parts was applied to the enclosure wall, the pylon towers and parts of the interior dividing walls, and to the so-called ‘priest’s house’ which stands in front of the southern tower of the third pylon. The outline of a large mud-brick altar or offering-platform in the outer court was remade in new bricks, and a token number of small brick offering-tables were rebuilt beside it.

The mud bricks made in the early years of the work represented experiments, and some of them now need to be replaced by more weather-resistant bricks made to the updated formula.

Left: The Small Aten Temple viewed to the north-east. The wall in the foreground is the south enclosure wall which had been strengthened by external buttresses. The outline of the wall and of the buttresses has been completed in new bricks. Right: Aerial photograph of the Sanctuary of the Small Aten Temple at the completion of the laying out of the Sanctuary outline in new limestone blocks. The new stone flooring of the gateways between the pylons had not been completed when the photograph was taken.

Stonework

The Sanctuary of the Small Aten Temple was originally built from stone blocks and covered with carved and painted scenes. Most of the blocks appear to have been of limestone but some at least were of sandstone, as were the doorframes and gigantic columns which stood in front of the Sanctuary. The floor level of the Sanctuary had apparently been made up with stone rubble and gypsum to a depth of around one metre.

Since the outline plan of the Sanctuary is recorded in the fragments of the gypsum foundation layer it is possible to mark out on the ground the lines of the original walls. This has been done in new limestone blocks laid over a protective bed of sand. The main walls of the Sanctuary were about two metres thick. In the modern replacements only the edges of the wall have been recreated in stone. The intervening space has been filled with the pale chippings and dust from the original foundation platform. This same material also forms the current ground inside the Sanctuary.

In front of the Sanctuary, Pendlebury found many large pieces from sandstone columns. These have been set upright in the approximate positions of the original columns. Enough pieces remained to allow for a reconstruction of the whole shape. A segment of the column was reproduced in the UK in modelling clay by sculptor Simon Bradley. From this he made a series of rigid moulds. These were brought to Egypt and a series of casts made in glass-reinforced concrete at a factory in New Salhiya. The casts were erected by Simon Bradley around a central framework of welded ironwork in the 1994 season, using welding equipment and scaffolding loaned from Richard Keen of Keminco.

Left: Many pieces of the original sandstone columns remain on site. From their designs and dimensions a replica column has been set up to bring a sense of the original height of the buildings. The replica column is made from glass-fibre-reinforced concrete panels, cast from a clay mould of a segment of the column. Centre: The gateway in the first pylon after re-excavation in 1987. The original gypsum-concrete layer has been exposed. It is this which provides the authority for restoring the pavement in new limestone blocks. Note the central raised part, which must have supported stonework at a higher level, probably a stone platform. Right: Laying the stone floor in the gateway of the first pylon.

The broad doorways between the three brick pylons were originally floored with limestone blocks. The gypsum plaster foundations for these survive and have been planned in detail. They have been covered with sand to protect them, and a new single layer of limestone blocks has been laid over the top. These replacement floors create a clear horizontal ground line which helps visitors to appreciate the fact that the temple was built on rising ground. They also advertise the fact that there were originally monumental stone doorways between the brick pylon towers. In the case of the first pylon, which formed the front entrance to the temple, the original gypsum layer was itself on two levels, implying that a raised portion had stood in the middle. We interpret this as evidence that a platform or pedestal, perhaps reached by stairs, stood in the middle of the gateway. The shape of this central feature has been reproduced in a second layer of limestone blocks.

Left: Laying the stone floor in the gateway of the first pylon. The upper layer is probably the base of a low platform with its own ramps or stairways. The evidence for its existance was preserved in the underlying gypsum-concrete foundation layer, which was on two levels. Centre: Gateway in the third brick pylon which leads to the court containing the Sanctuary. The gateway was originally floored with limestone blocks on a bed of gypsum concrete. The present stonework is a modern replacement of the original blocks which were removed at the end of the Amarna Period. A shallow ramp originally lay in front of the stone floor. Right: View along the axis of the temple, from the stone pavement in the first pylon. The stone pavements in the gateways of the second and third pylons (in the middle distance) emphasise the rising ground level from west to east.

Barry Kemp