With the recognition of the nature and value of the Amarna texts, attention naturally turned to the place where they were discovered. In 1891 W. Flinders Petrie, who had already spent a decade in Egypt, began excavating the Amarna ruins. He cleared many of the official buildings in the center of the city, and several houses farther south. Near the village of El Till he discovered the painted pavements of Akhenaton’s palace, and remains of the ornamental decorations of the palace itself. To the east of the palace was the chamber in which the Foreign Office records were kept. This was where the first Amarna Tablets were discovered in 1887, and here Petrie uncovered twenty-two additional fragments which comprise the collection now in the Ashmolean Museum.
From 1907 until the outbreak of World War I, a German expedition under the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft began the systematic excavation of the Amarna ruins. After several trial digs they undertook the excavation of the southern end of the site (1911), progressing northward along the ancient thoroughfare known as High Priest Street. The most impressive discovery of these years was the studio which belonged to the sculptor Thutmose, which contained some of the finest specimens of ancient Egyptian art. The famed painted limestone bust of Nofretete was the work of Thutmose. The studio also contained excellent heads of Akhenaton, and of the young princesses who graced the royal household.
The sculptures and rock tombs, first described by Wilkinson and Lepsius, were subjected to vandalism by peasants who found that they could make money by chipping off sections of the inscriptions and selling them as antiquities. Fortunately this was halted by action of the Egyptian government, and a definitive study of the tombs was made by the Mission Archeologique Francaise and the Egypt Exploration Fund. The results were published in a definitive six volume work, The Rock Tombs of El Amarna by N. deGaris Davies from 1903 to 1908.
Since World War I, archeological work at Amarna has been the responsibility of the Egypt Exploration Society. T. Eric Peet and Leonard Woolley conducted a series of campaigns beginning in 1921 during which they continued the work of the Germans at the southern section of the town. They excavated the pleasure palace known as Meru Aton and much of the walled village inhabited by the ancient workmen who labored in the rock tombs east of the city. Tomb chapels were excavated north of the workmen’s village, and a sanctuary known as the River Temple was discovered in the village of El Hag Qandil.
During the 1923-24 campaign, F. G. Newton and F. Llewellyn Griffith continued work in the southern sector and began excavation of the North Palace, north of El Till. The following season, following Newton’s death, Thomas Whittemore completed work at the North Palace and adjacent structures. From 1926 to 1929 the work was directed by Henri Frankfort who continued excavating in the north and gave particular attention to work in the neighborhood of the Great Temple. John D. S. Pendlebury, who took over direction of the work in 1930, completed excavations in the north. In a series of campaigns between 1931 and 1937, Pendlebury directed work on the official quarters of the central city, including the palace and the Great Temple.
Archaeological work was concluded at Amarna in 1937. The site had great advantages, for it was the one city of Egypt which was never rebuilt. Most of our knowledge of ancient Egypt comes from discoveries in desert tombs, for ancient cities were usually replaced by modern cities on the same site. Akhetaton, however, was the sacred city of a Pharaoh whom later generations despised as a criminal; and after his death its significance was at an end. Just because it was not rebuilt centuries ago, today it yields an impressive picture of the times of Akhenaton.
Akhetaton, the city of Akhenaton.
II
THE RESTLESS PHARAOH
Although Pharaohs of the third millenium B.C. exploited Sinai copper mines, and Middle Kingdom rulers sent trading expeditions to Punt on the African coast, opposite Aden, Egypt alone was considered to be a civilized land and foreigners could be dismissed as uncouth barbarians. Egypt lived in splendid isolation, annoyed at times by Semites who had infiltrated the fertile Nile Valley since prehistoric times, but never seriously involved in life beyond her borders. Her land appeared to be particularly favored of the gods, and the Egyptian could not think of it otherwise.