The 1920s and 1930s: Amarna before and after Tutankhamun
In 1920 the Egypt Exploration Society regained the concession to excavate Amarna. In the course of fifteen seasons under several directors, most parts of the site were examined in wide-ranging excavations in which more than one area would be examined in a single season.30 T. E. Peet (1882-1934) was the first director, assisted by the great archaeological populariser (Sir) Leonard Woolley (1880-1960). Peet and Woolley had three main aims: to find out to what extent Amarna had been occupied before Akhenaten, to consider what archaeology might suggest about the political upheavals of his reign, and to clear the town- site, the so-called South Suburb, 'so as to gather details of the architecture and arrangement of the houses, to learn more of the daily life, and to secure objects for museums'.31 The search for museum-quality objects led to less glamorous things being unrecorded, shown when the waste heaps from Peet's digs were excavatcd in the early 1980s. But Peet and Woolley's work was of good standard for the times, especially in its attention to stratigraphy - a lead not always taken up by those who followed them in the 1930s. They were also interested in presenting their results architecturally. Trained architects, such as Francis Newton and Seton Lloyd, were well represented on the dig, and the public buildings, palaces and houses of Amarna all received attention in the 1920s. Some unique building types were revealed. Amid the cultivation on the far south of the site was the so-called maru-Aten, a kind of temple for viewing the sun-disc, where paintings, water and foliage were juxtaposed to create an atmosphere of nature luxuriant but tamed; the so-called 'fan-screens', kiosks where members of the royal family notionally rejuvenated themselves by basking in the sun's rays; and what seemed to be a decorated aviary in the north palace near el-Till (see Figure 2.7).
Before the dig even began, the site was once again used in political struggles. In post-war Britain, regaining the concession to excavate from the Germans was yet another victory over them. Writing under the byline 'Wonder City of the Heretic Pharaoh' in The Illustrated London .News for 5 February 1921, the British archaeologist D. G. Hogarth observed that 'objects of art of such singularity and value' were vulnerable at Amarna, and work needed to resume without delay. 'In view of what has happened since 1914, and in particular of what has happened in Egypt, the resumption of German activities on the Nile cannot but be deferred for some time yet - even in the field of archaeological excavation.' 'The Egypt Exploration Society will of course behave thoroughly decently, he reassures readers: 'it proposes to respect all German property'.
The Illustrated London News was to play a central part in creating and popularising the Akhenaten myth in England in the 1920s and 1930s, and its legacy is still with us. Like quality television documentaries nowadays, it combined reliable information (usually from the excavators themselves) with plenty of exciting visuals. It had a reputation for covering scientific events, especially archaeological discoveries, but also covercd royal stories and political events from a personal angle - the latter certainly affecting its presentation of Amarna. The Egypt Exploration Society's excavations at Amarna received unprecedented coverage in its pages, especially when the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922 added an extra, and very saleable, angle. Now almost anything from Amarna could be presented as relevant to his boyhood. The famous stela of Tiye and Amunhotep III from Amarna, now in the British Museum, was reproduced in The Illustrated London .News of 6 September 1924 with the caption, 'Parents of Tutankhamen's Father-in-law: A New Discovery'. There were also double-page spreads combining texts and images, describing Amarna art and life. These had appealing bylines like 'A 3000-years-old Egyptian portrait gallery: easts of the living and the dead from the "house of the sculptor" at Tell el-Amarna' (19 March 1927) or 'The New Tell el Amarna discoveries: interesting additions to the famous "Amarna letters"; art relics; and records of University life, Akhenaten's police system with its Flying Squad. Archaeology "rebuilds" the Heretic Pharaoh's Capital - Akhenaten's city, the home of a Reformation' (15 September 1934). Nefertiti even appeared twice as The Illustrated London .News' cover girl. She is 'The Loveliest Woman of Antiquity? A Rival to Helen of Troy' (13 December 1924) and 'Ancient Egypt's Queen of Beauty' (6 May 1933): like a Hollywood star, her celebrity is such that her image needs no identification. Even though dead for over three thousand years, the Amarna royal family could still be the focus for a type of journalism increasingly reliant on photographs and fascination with celebrity.
Such coverage grew out of a reciprocal relationship between the Egypt Exploration Society and The Illustrated London .News. In return for granting exclusive rights to cover what it found at Amarna, the Egypt Exploration Society was able to advertise its exhibitions of finds and canvass for money. (See Figure 3.5.) The articles on Amarna in The Illustrated London .News often ended with plaintive pleas for financial support."1" Furthermore, because The Illustrated London .News was illustrated, the Egypt Exploration Society's activities at Amarna could be presented differently from earlier archaeological expeditions. Instead of reading descriptions, one could see photographs, scale models and drawings intended to bring Amarna to life. This concentration on life was further aided by Amarna's unique archaeology, with houses instead of tombs. The excavators of Amarna were able to show The Illustrated London .News' readers private homes and workplaces. The articles accompanying their photographs, all written by the archaeologists themselves, explicitly encouraged the reader/viewer to identify with the ancient inhabitants of Amarna, and the Egypt Exploration Society's activities were presented as an inverse to Carter's contemporaneous activities in Tutankhamun's tomb. Tutankhamun is associated with death, strangeness, royal wealth and religious ritual, Amarna (and by association Akhenaten himself) with daily life, knowableness and bourgeois comforts. An article in the large-circulation newspaper The Daily Chronicle (18 June 1923) made this clear. Praising the fact that the publicity surrounding Tutankhamun's tomb had raised money for the dig at Amarna to resume, it went on to say:
LOAN EXHIBITION
ANCIENT EGYPTIAN JEWELLERY ALSO ANTIQUITIES FROM
RECENT EXCAVATIONS
By the Egypt Exploration Society at TELL EL-AMARNA AND ARMANT
At the WELLCOME HISTORICAL MEDICAL MUSEUM
54, WIGMORE ST., W.I Sept 8th to Oct 3rd
ADMISSION FREE
Figure 3.5 Invitation to view an exhibition of Amarna objects in the Wellcome Museum, 1930, before the image from the back of Tutankhamun's throne had become cliched. Actual size.
This work promises far more interesting results than any so far yielded up at Luxor. Whatever may be thought of the artistic value of the discoveries in the tomb of Tutankhamen, there can be no doubt that the accumulation of such a vast hoard of property in a temple of the dead made a rather unpleasant appeal to the materialistic side of our nature. Investigators at Tell el-Amarna will not be digging among the houses of the dead, but will seek for knowledge among dwellings that were once inhabited by the living.