Akhenaten

Probably in his fourth regnal year, Akhenaten planned to move the capital city away from Thebes to a site in Middle Egypt now known as Amarna. This in itself was not unique: moving the capital city has many other precedents in Egyptian history. While Akhenaten's main motivation for this was probably theological, it is also worth remembering the traditional ambition of pharaohs to be remem­bered as great builders. This decision to move from Thebes was marked by an elaborate rock-cut inscription, decorated with images of the royal family, and dated to year 5, fourth month of/>mtf-season, day 13 (early in April, c. 1348 bce). Usually known as 'boundary stela K, it is almost at the southern extremity of the new city. The inscription includes a first-person speech by the pharaoh himself, giving some (now rather unclear) information about the political reasons for mov­ing the capital. This is often ascribed to the priesthood of Amun's opposing the king's religious reforms, but the evidence for this is thin, and there is the question of how effectively the priesthood could have challenged the king. Most priests of Amun were royal appointments: even the wealth invested in the Amun temples and nominally controlled by the priests may have remained at the royal disposal.⁸

Significant reasons for choosing this particular location were the configuration

Figure 2.2 Akhenaten and Nefertiti about to get into bed together. Drawn from talatat-

blocks 31/216 and 31/203 from Akhenaten's ninth pylon at east Karnak, reproduced in Trauneeker 1986, figure 11

Figure 2.3 Akhenaten and Tiye offering to Re-Harakhty, from the doorway to the court passage in the tomb of Kheruef at Thebes (IT 92). height c.

90 cm. Redrawn from Oriental Institute Chicago 1980, plate 9.

of the local landscape and the fact the area was previously uninhabited. East of Amarna the sun rises in a break in the surrounding cliffs. In this landscape the sunrise could be literally 'read' as if it were the hieroglyph spelling Akhet-aten or 'Horizon of the Aten' - the name of the new city.

Behold, 1 did not find it [i.e. Akhet-aten] provided with shrines or plas­tered with tombs or porticoes . . . [but asj Akhet-aten for the Aten, my father. Behold, it is a pharaoh (life! peace! health!) who found it, when it did not belong to any god, nor to a goddess; when it did not belong to any male ruler, nor any female ruler; when it did not belong to any people to do their business with it.'¹

This was to be the definitive Akhet-aten, though places of the same name could exist elsewhere. Linguistically and spatially Akhet-aten is conceived as the antithesis of Thebes, even though the bureaucratic and organisational aspects of Akhet-aten's architecture probably owed a good deal to Amunhotep Ill's Thebes.'" Akhet-aten's remoteness (Akhenaten himself calls it 'this distant place') may also have been important: it was far enough from Thebes to stop people returning for family-based religious observances there, such as making offerings at the tombs of deceased relatives. Creating a new sacral landscape at Akhet-aten must have been a shock to the Egyptians, who liked to have their holy spaces sanctified by a long history of religious use rather than created afresh." When­ever new cities were created in Egypt, such as Tanis or later Alexandria, their builders tended to import significant physical monuments, especially statuary, to impart a sense of lineage and continuity with the past. There is no definite evidence for man-made monuments being brought to Akhet-aten, though the importing of the divine bull of Heliopolis may be connccted with making the new place sacrcd, as I shall discuss later. Perhaps the absence of signifi­cant monuments of the past emphasises Akhenaten's desire for everything at Akhet-aten to be new and free of undesirable associations.

The symbolic parameters of Akhet-aten were eventually marked by the so- called boundary stelae, a series of rock inscriptions similar to the one carved in year 5 (see Plate 2.2). Maybe the boundary stelae at Akhet-aten were also supposed to define the inhabitants of the new city, providing them with a sense of local identity and an allegiance to this new sacred environment. Within Akhet-aten's borders, the king and royal family were to be buried together in a remote valley 10 km cast of the city, well away from the Thcban Valley of the Kings:

Let a tomb be made for me in the eas[ternj mountain [of Akhet-aten], and let my burial be made in it, in the millions of serf-festivals which the Aten, m[y fathjer, decreed for me. Let the burial of the King's Chief Wife Nefertiti be made in it, in the million[s] of yca[rs which the Aten, my father, decreed for hcr].^1J