When the city of Akhenaten grew and the population increased it
naturally expanded towards the North, occupying an area beyond the wady north of the Great Temple but still within easy
reach of the centre of the city . To this area the name of the North Suburb has
been given . That it is a later expansion is proved not only by the
comparatively high proportion of objects bearing the names of Akhenaten's
immediate successors, but also by the fact that, as we have seen, it was still
spreading northwards when the city was deserted .
There are few houses here of any great size . They seem for the most
part to belong to the middle class, merchants and petty officials . It is only
the house of Hatiay, in the wady which cuts the suburb in
two, that has any pretensions, and he, being Overseer of Works, had every
opportunity of making himself comfortable . Graft is not a new feature in the
East .
The most important part of the suburb, however, lay
on the South side of the wady . Here was the quarter of the corn
merchants, with rows of corn-bins and steps leading down to a lower level . It
is conceivable that a canal was actually cut as far as this from the river .
Nearly opposite to it in the modern village a great artificial cutting runs up
some way from the bank, and it would certainly have been a great convenience to
be able to bring your corn by barge to your very door .
In the North Suburb we can see very well the course of
events ; how the richer classes lined the roads with their estates, using the
space behind them as a common dump for rubbish and for refuse pits . Next came
others, not quite so rich, who built a second ring of medium-sized houses,
filling in the rubbish pits and sometimes even disinfecting them by burning .
Finally come the slums, a mere tangle of hovels sharing common courtyards,
their thin walls often to be found fallen into the earlier pits which they had
not taken care to fill up properly .
If we continue northwards we come to the North Palace . This was built
apparently as a kind of Zoological Gardens . It has finely carved mangers,
fish-ponds and aviaries . From other rooms come beautiful wall-paintings, in
the new style, representing bird life in the marshes .
Finally, as the cliffs approach the river again we
come to the North City . The most noticeable feature here is a great double
wall with a gate in it, over which was a room with brightly painted walls .
Here perhaps was another Window of Appearance at which Pharaoh would show
himself .
Local tradition has attributed to this wall a version
of the story ( nearly contemporary with the city ) of the Doomed Prince of whom
it was prophesied that he should be killed by a crocodile, a snake or a dog .
This wall, says the modern story-teller, was built by the King his father to
protect him and to keep out his fate . Since we excavated it, however, the
names have been added . The prince has become Tutankhamun and his father King
Till – presumably the eponymous hero of the modern village of El-Till . So are
folk-stories made .
Behind this wall lies a palace, built up against it at
a slightly later date . Only a little of it remains, but enough objects were
found to suggest that it belonged to Nefertiti and, since the paintings from
the gateway in the wall show that the wall can be assigned to a date after the
Queen's fall from power, it is a reasonable assumption that it was to this
palace that she retired . The houses near by are notable for their great size
and for the lack of accommodation for a family . This, together with the great
numbers of granaries and store-yards in the estates, implies that they were the
official houses of nobles who would have private residences elsewhere . Many of
the houses, as yet unexcavated, run some way up the slope of the cliffs, and at
the extreme North end is a big terraced building which may have been a Customs
House, at which goods arriving up-stream would have to be unloaded . Traces of
what may be a similar building are visible in a corresponding position at the
South end of the plain .
So much for the inhabited part of the city .
Now comes what was as important for the Egyptian as
his dwelling-house – his tomb or " House of Eternity " .
To those nobles who had followed him to his new city Akhenaten presented
tombs . These are situated in the face of the surrounding cliffs in two groups,
the northernmost of which is by a little the later . No traces of burial or
even of sarcophagi have been found in any of them, and we must either assume
that none of the nobles died during the fifteen years the city was inhabited, a
most unlikely thing, or else that the bodies and all the funeral paraphernalia
were piously removed to Thebes when the court left . Many of the tombs are
still unfinished, whole walls being left blank or with the proposed scenes
merely sketched-in in ink and awaiting the sculptor . The completed scenes are
in low relief and the details have been emphasized with colour . In plan they
are of essentially the same type as the rest of the 18th Dynasty
tombs at Thebes . There is a forecourt from which a door leads into a large
Hall the roof of which is sometimes supported by " papyrus columns "
left in the solid rock . The other feature is a chamber containing a statue of
the owner of the tomb reached either directly from the Hall or via a corridor
and ante-room . The grave shaft varies in position but is most frequently in
the front Hall . All the tombs have been sadly defaced, first by the destroyers
who came to remove all trace of the hated heretic, next by casual robbers and
dealers who have cut out large pieces for the benefit of European and American
Museums, and lastly by local inhabitants who either wish to do an injury to the
guards in charge or act out of pure wantonness .
Perhaps the most striking of the separate finds was that of the studio
of the sculptor Thutmose ( P47.3 ), which was made by the German Expedition
which worked at El-Amarna just before the war . The results of this find are
well-known to the world, and include such fine pieces as the painted limestone
bust of Queen Nefertiti, the brown sandstone head of the same lady, several heads
and masks of Akhenaten himself, and a number of other interesting portrait
studies . Other famous sculptors of this reign are Bek and Auta, who worked for
the royal household ; so that we are fairly well acquainted with the men who
must be supposed to have been the main creators of the Amarna School of Art .
The school is well exemplified in the decorations of the two great groups of
rock-tombs which lie in the hills behind the city .
The interest of the tombs lies in the series of vivid pictures they give
us of life in the new city, and particularly in the representations of public
buildings and ceremonies which they show . Carelessly and hastily carved as
many of them are, the new spirit of realism is strikingly evident . The
incidental groups of spectators are so alive, the princesses turn to one
another with their bouquets so naturally . Almost more important, however, are
the religious texts from which we can read the hymns to the sun written by
Akhenaten and giving the theology and philosophy of the new religion .
In connection with these tombs are several structures . In the
North-East corner of the plain are a group of three buildings . Originally it
seems that a pavilion and an altar were set up here for some ceremony perhaps
connected with the dedication of the Northern boundary stelae . The pavilion,
which had been faced with stone, was immediately dismantled, probably to be set
up elsewhere . With the cutting of the tombs, however, the altar was enlarged,
and although the pavilion was ignored, possibly already having been sanded up,
a great altar approached by four ramps was erected, as well as a small stone
chapel, and the whole surrounded by a brick wall . Here no doubt funeral
services were to be held, for desert roads, formed merely by brushing aside the
stones, run hence to the mouths of the tombs . Other roads run to the Southern
tombs, and there is certainly a similar series of buildings to be found close
to these as well .
Hard by, on the hillside above in fact, lie a number of tomb chapels
belonging apparently to the wealthier members of the middle classes . These are
built of mud brick and are essentially all of the same plan, though
considerable differences occur . First came an outer court mud-paved and
surrounded by a low brick wall ; an inner court lay immediately behind with a
low bench of plastered brick running round . Behind this lay the shrine, a
rectangular room usually on a slightly higher level, with niches in the back
wall, and a small pedestal or altar in the middle . One – the most elaborate –
has two columns in antis in front of the shrine and
the whole is approached by a gateway between two small pylon towers . These
chapels were brightly decorated . The walls were whitewashed and the cavetto
cornices and columns brilliantly painted . In connection with the chapels a few
grave shafts were found . These lay at a little distance, for the rock
hereabouts is so friable that a suitable place had to be searched for in each
case . All these graves had been robbed of their valuables in antiquity . It
must have been a cemetery of importance, although the graves are surprisingly
few in number . No other cemetery for the common folk has ever been found .
Possibly it is to be looked for on the Western bank, for tradition dies hard
and for countless generations the Western desert had been the last
resting-place of the people .
The destruction and plundering of these tomb chapels
has robbed us of the chance of learning what difference the new religion made
in the ideas of the middle classes with regard to the after life . Evidently
the dead man was conceived as returning in the traditional manner to this
chapel for the food and drink provided for him by his pious relatives . More we
cannot say, for there are only two stelae found here and both are of an unusual
type . It is indeed strange that not only on them but also on fragments of
inscribed plaster are found the names of other gods, in particular that of Amen
the arch-enemy of the new religion . Perhaps they date from the time when
Akhenaten was making overtures to Thebes and people were realizing that they
could safely pay their respects to the old gods . Indeed an ostracon inscribed
with the sixteenth year of the King's reign was found near by . And it is
justifiable to see in these chapels evidence of the immediate and relieved
return to the worship of the powers which had so long protected the Egyptians
in life and death .
Part ( 4 ) .. Coming
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