One could easily drive past - or even walk through - Amarna and fail to notice anything but a few piles of rubble and desiccated mud brick walls. Under the guidance of Dr. Barry Kemp, however, the ancient city built from scratch by Akhenaten comes alive. We start the visit with some of the southern tombs, including that of Ay, the vizier who later accessed the throne for a short spell after the death of Tutankhamen. This unfinished tomb has one of the most complete versions of the great hymn to the Aten. The decoration on either side of the doorway is quite beautifully done, with exquisite detail on the clothes and hair of the occupants. Ay was not buried here, as he later had a royal tomb made for him in the Valley of the Kings. We enter two additional decorated tombs, one of which was actually use for the burial of its owner. I'm sorry, I'm terrible with remembering names and my notes are way over there on the desk while I'm comfortably sitting in bed. Those tombs will thus remain nameless for now, until I get around to it...
A bumpy ride sitting on wooden chairs on the back of a tractor trailer (literally) takes us near the wash where Dr. Kemp's research and excavation efforts have finally solved a century old enigma: Where were the workers and ordinary people of Amarna buried? Look up any treatise on Amarna and the subject of the "missing cemeteries" will inevitably crop up. Well, no more! Teams of excavators lead by Dr. Kemp have located hundreds if not thousands of individual burials in the sandy banks of a shallow canyon. A long walk across the desert takes us to two workers villages, the first mostly built with stone, the other with mud brick. The ground around both ancient settlements is littered with heaps of pottery sherds dating from the Amarna period. Some are quite large and show decoration. Dr. Barry says there are so many that they do not even bother collecting them anymore.
Later we go to the southern city, where the ruins of a rather large compound is revealed to be the house of the 'Sculptor and Chief of Works' Thotmose. For those not familiar with the man, he is the sculptor responsible for the famous painted Nefertiti bust that's now in the Berlin Museum. Judging by the other works found in his workshop by the German expedition led by Ludwig Borchardt a hundred years ago -- many of which outshine the Nefertiti bust in my eyes -- Thotmose is one of the best portrait sculptors that ever lived. The photo of me squatting behind that low mud brick wall shows the exact find spot where those treasures were unearthed. Needless to say I was all choked up when Dr. Kemp pointed it out to me.
We finish today's tour of Akhenaten's city with a visit of the small Aten Temple, before returning to the good ship Tut.
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