The Move to the New Capital
It probably took at least two years to build Akhetaton. It was during the sixth year of Akhenaton’s reign that he ordered all Egyptians and subject peoples—Nubians and Asiatics—to serve Aton alone. Statues of the old gods were ordered destroyed; their reliefs were to be erased, and their names blotted out. Two years later—Akhenaton’s eighth—the transfer of the capital from Thebes to Akhetaton was complete.
There are evidences of great haste in the construction of the buildings. Often naturalistic pictures of birds and vegetation painted on plaster walls and floors cover shoddy workmanship. Houses were built of mud brick, but palaces and temples were built of stone. An inscription attributed to the architect Bek at Aswan states that stone was quarried there “for the great and mighty monuments of the king in the house of Aton in Akhetaton.”