Tell el-Amarna, capital of ancient Egypt | History and facts about the capital of the Pharaonic civilization in the era of King Akhenaten “in southern Egypt in Minya and what it contains of Pharaonic monuments and more about Ancient Egypt History.
Tell el-Amarna or Akhetaten in the Egyptian capital built by King Akhenaten, an archaeological city located on the eastern bank of the Nile in Upper Egypt, specifically in Minya, discovered the Egyptian antiquities in it.
Tell el-Amarna
Founding date: from 1346 BC to 1370 BC.
What is the Tel Amarna area?
Its founder is King Akhenaton, the most famous Egyptian Pharaohs kings, with his wife, Queen Nefertiti, and Queen Kiya, the most famous Pharaonic queen of Egypt “Female Pharaohs” from the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt in The New Kingdom period in ancient Egypt.
Where is Tel Amarna?
Its location: 45 km south of the Beni Hasan Tombs in Minya Governorate, Egypt.
What is the meaning of Tell el-Amarna?
- After that came a tribe called Tell el-Amarna who lived there and built it.
- The tribe abandoned after a long time to their places again, but the area bore the name of Tell el-Amarna in relation to that tribe.
What is Amarna famous for?
- After it was founded by Akhenaten, he changed the capital and the area turned into ruins After his death.
- A large group of Egyptian Tombs were discovered in Tell el-Amarna, the most famous of which is the Tomb of Ahmes and Tomb of Meryre.
- It was the first venue for the celebration and Festivals in Ancient Egypt.
- The goal of establishing that city is to create a city that unites The Egyptian Gods the worship of only God Aton.
- Mud and white bricks were relied upon, and only important buildings were made of local stone as in Architecture in ancient Egypt.
- After the death of Akhenaten, his son King Tutankhamun With his sister and wife Queen Ankhesenamun decided to leave for his hometown of Thebes “Luxor“, In Palace of Malkata, which was built by King Amenhotep III..
What are the tombs of Tel El-Amarna?
Beni Hasan Tombs
Royal Tombs at Tell El-Amarna
Royal Tomb of Akhenaten “Amenhotep Iv”
Tombs Of Tell El-Amarna
Tomb of Ahmes – Ta3
Tomb of Ay – Ta 25
Tomb of Meryre – Ta 4
Tombs of The Site of El-Bersheh
Detailed map of Tell el-Amarna
- Tell el-Amarna contains a group of tablets that show us the events that brought about the foundation to a period before its fall.
- At first Akhenaten needed a large group of armies “Military of ancient Egypt” in order to be able to move from Thebes to Tell el-Amarna..
- Akhenaten was the son of an important military leader and thus helped him in that mission.
- As for the religious aspect as in Ancient Egyptian religion, Akhenaten’s attempts to unify the religion, but the evidence indicates that the worship of other deities was respected.
- The arts in the area of Tel el-Amarna showed how much the arts were in a boom at that time as Ancient Egyptian Literature ,Sculpture in Ancient Egypt ,Music in Ancient Egypt.
- It is usual for the arts to depict the official life of the Egyptian army or the people in Ancient Egyptian Government, but the drawings in that area included things that had not been drawn before as in Social Structure in Ancient Egypt.
- The drawings included illustrating the emotion that existed between members of the royal family and the activities that were held with the children.
History & What is the significance of Tell el-Amarna?
- One of the first times that Tell el-Amarna was mentioned in the west in 1714 AD.
- Father Claude Sicard, the French priest, mentioned the commemorative plaques found in Tell el-Amarna..
- The first comprehensive map of Tell el-Amarna was made by Napoleon Bonaparte scholars Egyptology who visited the city from 1798 to 1799.
- In 1824,English Egyptology Sir John Gardner Wilkinson was able to discover the remains of the city.
- In the years 1843 and 1845, the monuments and terrain of the region were drawn up by a Russian expedition, which was led by Russian Egyptologist Dr. Karl Richard Lepsius.
- The King’s tomb was discovered in 1891 and 1892 by Italian Egyptologist Dr. Alessandro Barsanti.
Treasures of the Tell el-Amarna
Nefertiti Palace
- It was built for King Akhenaten, which was a residence in the beginning, but then it was converted to Nefertiti.
- The building area is 112 x 142 meters.
- West of the palace overlooking the Nile.
- There is an edifice for the palace that is divided into two parts.
- Pictures of animals, birds and fish are used to decorate floors and ceilings, which are chrome-plated.
Great Temple of the Aten in Tell el-Amarna.
- Great Temple of the Aten contains unroofed rooms, unlike the rest of the Egyptian Temples and Mortuary Temples.
- The wisdom of this is for the sun’s rays to enter the temple in order to glorify the power of the sun god Aten as in Astronomy in ancient Egypt.
Royal Tombs at Tell el-Amarna
- The tomb is dedicated to receiving members of the royal family of King Akhenaton, whether kings or princes as king Smenkhkare and Queen Meritaten.
- The tomb is located in a narrow side valley.
- The tomb contained an appendix, but it was incomplete, and the researchers explained that it may have belonged to Queen Nefertiti.
Tomb of Huy
- Inside the Tomb of Huy contains drawings depicting the great royal banquets that Akhenaten performed.
- There are also drawings showing Akhenaten sitting with his mother to eat.
- The cemetery contains an outer hall with one column and a statue.
Tomb of king Ay
- Tomb of king Ay was also built to receive members of the royal family.
- However, this cemetery differs in that it is difficult to access, unlike the southern cemeteries.
- There are paintings and drawings in the tomb showing footage of king Ay receiving a golden collar with his wife by Akhenaten.
Tomb of Meryre – Ta 4
- The Tomb of Meryre in Tell el-Amarna, who is the chief priest of the temple of the sun goddess “Aten”.
- King Akhenaten presented him with a gift in return for the achievements that the temple was doing.
- The wall of the tomb contains many drawings illustrating Akhenaten’s religious rituals.
What were the religious changes made by King Akhenaton, Akhenaten, Echnaton, Amenhotep IV?
The great work of his reign, which makes him unique among all the pharaohs in fact, is that he fought and was defeated for some time the religion of God Amun and the entire ancient Egyptian religion to establish a new cult, the cult of the solar disk Aten, whose rays end with human hands.
The king’s mother Queen Tiye, was still alive at the time in Tell el-Amarna, with whom he had been living for a few years, and married Nefertiti, to whom he had been attached all his life.
However, the bust of Nefertiti which is in the Berlin Museum is the Queen’s most renowned work of art but in the The Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square “Museums in Cairo” there is an unfinished limestone head of the Queen Nefertiti that may have surpassed it while being unfinished.
Among the other heads are rightly or wrongly attributed to the Queen Nefertiti, but none of them comes close to these two unique heads.
We just find the queen in the inscriptions resembling her husband, perhaps because of the simulation, the sculptors had the habitude of giving the wife the features of their husbands, and perhaps the work of scratching made much of her beauty disappear.
Resistance of the priests of Amun:
The priests of Amun and High Priest of Amun showed no objection or resistance to this royal attack, as we know.
Nevertheless, they had the means to defend themselves, because we know of them the chiefs of officers, clerks, and soldiers of the Temple of Amun in Tell el-Amarna, but this was not without consequences because in nearly forty years, throughout Egypt, they despised the professions related to arms.
Egyptians in general tend to have little to do with these professions. Egypt had brave men; in Upper Egypt, they stood against the Hyksos who ruled the country as far as Qus. Kings such as King Kamose of the Seventeenth Dynasty of Egypt in the Middle Kingdom period in ancient Egypt and the era of the Second Intermediate Period of Egypt, then King Ahmose I and king Amenhotep I who expelled the Hyksos and followed them until their total disappearance from history.
Then came King Thutmose III after them and then powerful kings in Ancient Egyptian Sport: King Amenhotep II and King Thutmose IV were able to retain the spirit of conquest among the Egyptians. This heritage was reviewed during the reign of Amenophis III, where he used foreign mercenary soldiers for his personal guard.
These mercenaries were found to be Nubians, Libyans, and Sudanese, who did not consider the feelings of the citizens.
We arrive at the sixth year, where he left the courtyard of the ancient capital to settle in the region that we now call Tal El-Amarna, which is located almost halfway between Heliopolis in the north and Thebes in the south.
The starting point and the end point for The Colossi of Memnon in Luxor, near the funerary Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III, gathered all the friends of the king, the elders of the men of the palace and the army, and King Akhenaton “Amenhotep IV” officially announced that this place will be the seat of the new capital.
The elders acceded as usual and the king raised his hands to heaven to his father, the God who witnessed his oath:
“Akhet-Aton (the Horizon of Aten) was built for Aten the one god, not far to the south and not drifting to the north, not completely to the east and not too close to the west, and I will not cross the drawn borders, neither to the south nor to the north, but to the east, where the sun rises in the place that surrounds it in the protection of the mountain … If the queen says to me, “There’s a better place for Aton than this, I won’t listen to her.”
Finally, no matter where the king and queen die, they are supposed to have been buried in Akhet Aton.
Another border stella TAL EL AMARNA III 28) reminds the population and the new names of the king and queen:
Horus, the powerful bull, the beloved of Aten, the two ladies: the great monarchy of Akhet Aton, and Golden Horus, most is the name of Anti, and the king: Nefer Kheperu Ra (Perfect are the apparitions of Ra) and Sa Ra (the only one with Ra) and the son of Ra: Akh En Aten (the useful one in Aten).
Princess of royal blood… The great royal wife, his beloved: Nefer Neferu Aton (the beautiful of the beauty of Aten) Nefertiti.
Next comes the large section:
“Really, just like my parents for talked about, I wanted to build Akhet Aton in this place. I didn’t want to do it in the south, in the north, in the west or in the east… The place that is located between the four stellas is Akhet Aton itself, which is for Aton my father, mountains, deserts, meadows and islands, upper and lower soils, farmland, water, villages, humans, animals and everything my father did to come forever.
King Akhenaton “Amenophis IV” soon began to build the new city.
The temple was surrounded by a large wall on an area of about 800 by 300 m destroyed and we have only vestiges of it, but it is enough to know that this building did not have a The Hypostyle Hall room or a closed room, but everything was outside, altar and offering tables. We must imagine that the king was followed by the queen and princesses, advancing towards the altar with his hands in the air in the direction of the sun as he begins with this famous song.
Was Akhenaten monotheistic?
All we can learn from this song, the beauty of which we cannot deny, despite the heresies and mistakes, is that King Akhenaton threw the ancient idols of Egypt behind his back, without excluding God Osiris and God Isis, the couple most attached to the Egyptian congregation of the gods, nor God Hathor the popular or God Thoth the availability of the Creator God Ptah and does not contain the master of the holy word.
Tell el-Amarna. He also arranged the ancient names of sun gods, crowns, pilgrims, and solar boats as if they were irrelevant accessories. There was only one God Aten.
Like the one representing birds and animals, jumping happily, in front of the sun disk. It is very remarkable to mention the Syrians and Nubians who enjoyed its benefits on an equal footing with the Egyptians, but after all, the greatest beneficiaries of this charity were the king and his beloved wife the Queen, because they were during creation.
How did Akhenaten change Egyptian art in Tell el-Amarna.?
The buildings of King Akhenaton were mainly made of brick, this material is everywhere as in Ancient Egyptian Metallurgy, from which they made walls and columns painted with white plaster or lime water on which they painted views of privacy, and the floors were decorated like the walls.
In a house in Tell el-Amarna., we found a painting of a large rectangular basin, birds, and fish in the tides of Nile River. Among the columns are shrubs and birds, and above there are other trees and jungles, near which calves happily jump in the middle of this happiness as in Agriculture in Ancient Egypt.
A beautiful decoration that is fun for the eyes, and the trees that are there have been painted freely and creative imagination, the Egyptians even at their best creative have not yet given their best.
Tell el-Amarna. This has not been proven, but I can see that there is a pictorial translation of some passages of the song. In the private palace, Petri discovered these paintings and literally ripped them off to exhibit at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England. There is nothing more disturbing, nothing more subtle than the sight of two young girls on two pillows near their parents exchanging innocent caresses.
Aton, with generous hands, did not give the royal couple a male heir as they had no doubt requested and wished, but gave them six young daughters; one of them, Meket Aton, who died young, took the king with his wife’s arm to the bed of the deceased child, and the two began to hit the head in a sign of mourning.
The royal family was in love and artists were not forbidden to represent this intimacy.
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