Excavations at the Great Aten Temple
The area of the Great Aten Temple measures about 900m x 300m and has been excavated and documented several times before:
In 1891/92 by William Matthew Flinders Petrie and his assistant Howard Carter, who carried out a rather superficial survey of the temple and produced rough but accurate plans.
Then in 1926/27 by Henri Frankfort, who concentrated on the rear part of the temenos and the 'Sanctuary'.
Most recently, an excavation by the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) in 1932, led by John D. S. Pendlebury, uncovered the entire area of the stone temple in just one month, and architect Ralph Lavers produced detailed plans (right).
In the past, however, priorities were set differently and the primary aim was to satisfy sponsors with impressive art objects in order to secure funding for future campaigns. Probably the most famous representative of this category is the bust of Queen Nefertiti, which can be admired today in the Neues Museum Berlin.
The Amarna Project's current excavation work at the Great Aton Temple, under the direction of Barry J. Kemp and Anna K. Hodgkinson as Deputy Director, began in 2012 and has since taken place once or twice a year, depending on available funding and the arrival of work permits. Initially, the excavations were limited to the entrance area of the temple, including the mud-brick pylon, and the uncovering and re-documentation of various structures, such as several mud-brick sacrificial tables in the southern area of the temenos (left). Furthermore, a revised plan of the temple building was drawn up (above). In addition, various spoil heaps from previous excavations had to be removed in order to access the underlying layers. For this purpose, the sand was sieved and yielded hundreds of fragmentary finds that previous expeditions had either overlooked or considered irrelevant. These were meticulously documented in the excavation house and are now stored in the adjacent magazine.
The aim of the Amarna Project is a comprehensive analysis of the cult activities in the temple, including older and new finds, in the hope of gaining new insights into Akhenaten's conception of the 'perfect' cult site for the sun god Aten.
In the course of the excavation work, more and more evidence of earlier buildings comes to light. They have been separated from the stone structures of the last building phase by a layer about 70cm thick and thus preserved.
This layer, also called 'levelling rubble', consists mainly of sand, mud bricks, pot sherds and any kind of ancient 'waste' for which the workers once had no further use. The finds are correspondingly varied and interesting, e.g. the torso of an almost life-size statue of Queen Nefertiti, which was broken during the early occupation of the temple (right).
The intention of this rubble layer was to level the temple site, which slopes down to the west, towards the Nile, in preparation for the final construction phase. At the same time, the layer protected various structures from earlier phases of construction, giving us a unique insight into the first building projects after the foundation of the city.
Among other things, the remains of a previously unknown building came to light. It is apparently a 'royal tent' in which Akhenaten could refresh himself and prepare for ceremonies. Over 40 post holes and shallow trenches represent the arrangement of individual rooms, and a group of painted plaster fragments provided further evidence that this was a royal building: They come from the representation of a foreign prisoner and were probably part of the floor decoration under Akhenaten's throne (below).
This type of floor covering was reserved for the king, who trampled down his enemies 'in passing', as it were, or rested his feet on them. The tent walls were either made of coloured fabrics, woven palm leaves or perhaps even leather.
Since the temple buildings of the last construction phase were built of stone, which was a valuable building material, the so-called talatat limestone blocks were systematically removed after Akhenaten's death and reused elsewhere, e.g. in Hermopolis on the other side of the Nile. However, they left their imprints in the gypsum-concrete foundations of the temple, which make it possible to reconstruct the corresponding walls.
In addition to the excavation work, the Amarna Project has decided to rebuild the outlines of the stone structures from the last construction phase (left and below, as of fall 2023). This serves both to protect the ancient structures (a layer of sand separates the modern walls and the foundations below) and to protect the temple site itself, as the cemetery of the neighboring village of Et-Till already covers large parts of the northern temenos and is creeping closer. In addition, visitors can now get an idea of the dimensions and structure of the temple.
As a result, the excavations have been extended to the rear part of the stone temple since 2019 (see right; as of fall 2023). First, the trenches left behind by the demolished temple walls, which had been filled with old building rubble and sand that had accumulated over the centuries, were uncovered. Here, too, numerous finds came to light that provided information about the decoration of the respective temple section, as well as the imprints of the talatat blocks in the gypsum cement foundation and orientation lines drawn in ink by the ancient master builders.
As usual, the foundations are documented on a scale of 1:25 by drawing (mainly by Juan Friedrichs) and by orthophotography (Paul Docherty, www.amarna3d.com). The position of the temple structures is then reconstructed using fresh limestone blocks from the Tura quarries near Cairo, which already provided material for the pyramids of Giza, among others.
Because the project is not limited in time and large parts of the temple remain unexplored, the excavation work could continue for several decades.
Since we are not bound to any institution, the continuation and success of the work of the Amarna Project depends on funding.
Therefore the possibility exists to acquire personalized limestone blocks as well as offering-tables and thus contribute to the preservation of the temple complex.
Additional donations are of course also welcome at any time.
The photo at left shows Mohamed Shahata sinking a time capsule containing a sponsor's personal message to posterity.
The excavation reports of the past years can be viewed and downloaded here.
This link leads to a short film by Dalia el-Abd about the work on the temple.