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
Plate 2.2 Boundary stela A at luna el-Gebel, defining the north-western boundary of Akhet-aten. The text is the so-called 'later proclamation' dated to year 6 of Akhenaten's reign. Height c. 3-4 m, overall width of the emplacement c. 6.25 m. In situ.
In year 6 the king returned to Akhet-aten, which by year 8 had become the main royal residence. However, palaces elsewhere in Egypt were still maintained and inhabited, and the court was probably not sequestered at Akhct-atcn, as is often said. Also in year 6, the king had assumed the name by which he is most usually known, Akhenaten. This new name is replete with theological nuances: a rough translation is 'Bencficent-onc-of {or for)-the-Aten', but there is much more to it. Egyptian theology was fascinated by the intricate interplay between names, words and images. The whole name acknowledges the visible nature of the new god Atcn in the sky, contrasting with the invisible nature of the god Amun, which means 'He-who-is-hidden'. Apart from honouring the sun-disc, the aten component contains a significant pun. At the time, aten was probably pronounced something like iati, which sounded like the Egyptian phrase for 'my father'. Akhenaten's theological texts often play with this assonancc, such as the later form of the name of the Aten (see Figure 2.1b). The word akh ('beneficent') also had a complex set of connotations, not only of religious duty in observing the anccstor- cult, but also of transfiguration, luminosity and a personal union with the sun-god that was re-enacted every dawn. The dead became ^-spirits after their bodies had been rendered perfect through mummification. They acted as intercessors between the living and the dead, and prayers were addressed to them in the form of statue busts kept in household shrines. Akhenaten's new name thus implies both his bodily integrity and his role as liminal intermediary between humanity and the gods.13 It was carefully devised to fit in theologically with the ritual performances of his own divinity Akhenaten went on to stage at the new city.
In about year 9, the formal names of the Atcn were revised again (see Figure 2.1b), altering the parts of the titulary mentioning the gods Re'-Harakhty and Shu. The names of the Aten are written inside the cartouchcs normally reserved for pharaohs and their consorts, illustrating how theological developments continued to push kingship and divinity closer and closer together. To make the god's kingly status explicit, the Aten-disc was shown wearing the protective cobra (uraeus), the most prestigious item of royal and divine regalia. These changes seem to coincide with the time when words and images suggestive of Amun, local god of Thebes and up to now patron deity of the ruling family, were mutilated where they appeared in temples and tombs. Other religiously unacceptable words and phrases were also erased from monuments, though not exhaustively or consistently. These unacceptable words included the Amun element in the name of Akhenaten's father Amunhotep.
Meanwhile, at Akhet-aten an extensive city was under construction which seems to have been conceived as a sacred microcosm (see Figure 2.4). This in itself was nothing new. Amunhotep III had redesigned and integrated the monuments of cast and west Thebes as a ccrcmonial stage or cityscapc for religious pageantry. Akhenaten re-created his father's ceremonial stage in a unique way, the result being a 'symmetrically divided site, its primary orientation centred on a temple and a tomb'." The boundary stelae, temples and the royal tomb apparently form a series of rectangles which mirror the proportions of the principal
Figure 2.4 Map of ancient Akhet-aten and the area of modern Amarna
Aten temple in the centre of the city. The entire city was thus defined spatially as a temple to the Aten on a colossal scale. Akhet-aten was the site of the Aten's creation and his perpetual rebirth which maintains the cosmos, and all that the Aten created was contained within its boundaries.
The city's religious and ceremonial architecture was planned to accommodate changing beliefs and the rituals and ceremonies that went with them. Most of the deities in traditional human or animal forms had now been replaced by the Aten, a single aniconic god visible in the sky. The Aten was worshipped through his earthly representatives, the king and queen, who presented themselves as divine intermediaries, the sole means of access to the Aten. Palace architecture underscored this divinisation of the king and his family. Palaces were aligned to the east like temples, and equipped with temple-like features, such as open courts adorned with colossal statues of divinised royalty, like those at the Gem-pa-Aten. They also had balconies where the royal family made ceremonial appearances. The physical setting of these appearances enabled the king, queen and their children to be seen like cult images of gods, divine objects of human veneration (see Plate 2.3). When Akhenaten travelled from his palace at the north of the site to conduct political or sacred business in the buildings of the central city, he drove in a chariot along a road cutting through the centre of Akhet-aten. As he drove along, the people saw him and made obeisance to him, just as the people of the created world worshipped the Aten. Akhenaten's journey through the city may also have been a substitute for the parades of divine images that were such an important feature of traditional religious festivals, especially Theban ones like the Radiant Festival of the Valley.