Read Online Atlantis and the Ten Plagues of Egypt: The Secret History Hidden in the Valley of the Kings by Graham Phillips - Free Book Online
Authors: Graham Phillips
Tags: Egypt/Ancient Mysteries
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almost exclusively with the activities of a royal family, these illustrations differed markedly from the traditional religious or militaristic mode. The king, queen and several daughters were not depicted as triumphant conquerors, smiting their enemies, but in everyday domestic scenes, feasting, relaxing and embracing one another. Neither were they shown engaged in the formal cultic practices of the time, but in an altogether more dynamic attitude of worship. Likewise, their subjects, who would usually have been portrayed as sombre onlookers, were shown as a joyful congregation, dancing, singing and waving palms. Even the artistic style was distinct. The principal figures were not afforded the formal bearing of might and grandeur, but a demeanour of grace and sensuality, while a normally rigid and static affectation was replaced by a sinuous, more relaxed mien. Everything about the tombs was in stark contrast to the Egyptian norm. Gone entirely was the funerary ambience which pervaded the tombs at Thebes and Saqqara, and even the usual gods were absent from the scenes. It was quite clear that the people of Amarna had customs and religious beliefs very different from those practised elsewhere in ancient Egypt.
Early Egyptologists began referring to these people as 'disc worshippers', as the upper part of nearly every scene was dominated by a glyph depicting the sun's disc, from which shone forth a dozen or so rays, each ending in a hand holding an
ankh
(the symbol of life). So different was everything about the Amarnans that some scholars even concluded that they had not been Egyptians at all, but foreign settlers who had merely adopted the Egyptian language. Even when the hieroglyphics were eventually deciphered, it was some time before their identity could be determined. Throughout the site, the figures of the royal family had been defaced and their cartouches erased from inscriptions. This excising – clearly an act of desecration contemporary with the ruins – had been so thorough that it was hard to find an intact royal name, or any clue to the meaning of the revered disc. Nevertheless, there had been oversights in places difficult to access, and the arcane ruins began to relinquish their secrets. The king was found to have been the previously unknown Akhenaten, the son and successor of Amonhotep III; his queen had been Nefertiti, the mother of six princesses but apparently no sons; and the strange sun glyphwas found to represent a single deity called the Aten. The entire city was dedicated to this god and was even named after it. Called Akhetaten – 'the horizon (or seat) of the Aten' – the city was occupied for less than two decades, before being abandoned to the mercy of the desert.
Sadly, many of the inscriptions and illustrations no longer exist. Following various German, French and British expeditions to Amarna during the nineteenth century, the local population began to resent foreign intrusions. To deter the Europeans from returning, they began to smash statues and destroy carvings and reliefs. Thankfully, however, many of them were copied by these early visitors. The last scholar to work at Amarna before the destruction was Norman de Garis Davies, the surveyor for the British-based Egypt Exploration Fund in the 1890s. Over a period of six years he painstakingly copied all the decorations that still survived in the cliff tombs and published them in his six-volume
The Rock Tombs of El Amarna.
Together with some earlier drawings in the Berlin Museum, made by a German team led by Egyptologist Richard Lepsius in the 1840s, they were almost the only means by which later scholars could piece together the lifestyle of the citizens of Akhetaten.
The first archaeological excavation of Amarna was carried out by Ayrton and Carter's mentor, Flinders Petrie, in the 1890s, and for the first time the colossal scale and splendour of the city became apparent. Akhetaten was a straggling metropolis built along a
Early Egyptologists began referring to these people as 'disc worshippers', as the upper part of nearly every scene was dominated by a glyph depicting the sun's disc, from which shone forth a dozen or so rays, each ending in a hand holding an
ankh
(the symbol of life). So different was everything about the Amarnans that some scholars even concluded that they had not been Egyptians at all, but foreign settlers who had merely adopted the Egyptian language. Even when the hieroglyphics were eventually deciphered, it was some time before their identity could be determined. Throughout the site, the figures of the royal family had been defaced and their cartouches erased from inscriptions. This excising – clearly an act of desecration contemporary with the ruins – had been so thorough that it was hard to find an intact royal name, or any clue to the meaning of the revered disc. Nevertheless, there had been oversights in places difficult to access, and the arcane ruins began to relinquish their secrets. The king was found to have been the previously unknown Akhenaten, the son and successor of Amonhotep III; his queen had been Nefertiti, the mother of six princesses but apparently no sons; and the strange sun glyphwas found to represent a single deity called the Aten. The entire city was dedicated to this god and was even named after it. Called Akhetaten – 'the horizon (or seat) of the Aten' – the city was occupied for less than two decades, before being abandoned to the mercy of the desert.
Sadly, many of the inscriptions and illustrations no longer exist. Following various German, French and British expeditions to Amarna during the nineteenth century, the local population began to resent foreign intrusions. To deter the Europeans from returning, they began to smash statues and destroy carvings and reliefs. Thankfully, however, many of them were copied by these early visitors. The last scholar to work at Amarna before the destruction was Norman de Garis Davies, the surveyor for the British-based Egypt Exploration Fund in the 1890s. Over a period of six years he painstakingly copied all the decorations that still survived in the cliff tombs and published them in his six-volume
The Rock Tombs of El Amarna.
Together with some earlier drawings in the Berlin Museum, made by a German team led by Egyptologist Richard Lepsius in the 1840s, they were almost the only means by which later scholars could piece together the lifestyle of the citizens of Akhetaten.
The first archaeological excavation of Amarna was carried out by Ayrton and Carter's mentor, Flinders Petrie, in the 1890s, and for the first time the colossal scale and splendour of the city became apparent. Akhetaten was a straggling metropolis built along a
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