In connection with the King's House was the smaller temple – the Chapel
Royal one might almost call it – of Hat-Aten . The main entrance to this is on
the Royal Road, but, as we have seen, the King had a private entrance from his
own house, and so had the priests from their quarters to the South .
The temenos wall which surrounds it is
considerably thicker than that of the Great Temple and is heavily buttressed
every fifteen yards . The pylon towers are very well preserved with the slots
for the two tall flagstaffs which fronted each . The entrance was paved with
stone . This has all been taken, though the imprint of the mason's marks can be
seen in the plaster bedding below .
Immediately within the entrance lies a brick chapel or altar flanked by
rows of brick offering tables . Sphinxes may have guarded the approach, for
there are two oblong bases strengthened with stone as if to bear a heavy weight
. On the inner face of the wall stelae were set .
Another set of pylon towers led to the second court and a third to the
court of the Sanctuary .
Against the outer wall-face of the latter is a small building with a
brick altar in the front room . This may be the house of the priest on duty .
The Sanctuary itself is exactly like that in the Great Temple . It was built of
rubble walls faced with stone and has been even more badly treated, for not one
single stone remains in situ . Here again we see a
raised central way flanked by offering tables leading, through a door with a
screen wall to shut out a view, into the court of the High Altar, open to the
sky and surrounded by chapels . The fragments of columns and statues in
fine-grained limestone imply that there was a colonnade of the same type as in
the Great Temple .
All round the Sanctuary is an ambulatory with an avenue of trees, while
small buildings occupy part of the court South of the Sanctuary . It is
possible that we have a representation of Hat-Aten in the tomb of Tutu, for his
picture alone shows avenues of trees in connection with a Temple .
South of the Small Temple lie the Priests' Quarters, the Temple
store-houses and the Sacred Lake . The store-houses lie to the West . There is
a big open court off which an open gangway leads . On either side of the
gangway are long rooms, magazines ( storerooms ), glass furnaces and bakeries .
East of these are further store-rooms with a large sunken stone press, and East
again a small compact house with two bedrooms and a number of robing-rooms with
shelves . Last of all comes the Lake .
This then was the royal Estate . But the King had other residences, and
the most important of these was Maru-Aten, the precinct of the Southern Pool .
This pleasure-palace or Paradise lies opposite the village of El-Hawata, nearly
a mile South of the South end of the city .
Here are two large rectangular enclosures, lying side by side . There
was a great entrance pavilion with columned halls and a throne-room . Behind
this lay a small lake surrounded by a garden with trees and shrubs . At the
back of this seems to have been the chief gardener's house . From the garden a
small door leads into the larger enclosure . Along the West side of this,
screened off by a wall, ran a row of buildings for workmen, while just outside
the enclosure is a building which, from the skeletons of greyhounds found
there, may well have been the Royal Kennels .
Most of the Northern enclosure, however, was taken up by a great
pleasure lake over a hundred and twenty yards long and half as broad . Out into
this ran a stone quay with an ornamental gate at the end decorated with painted
reliefs and steps leading down into the water . The lake was surrounded by a
garden and must have been the scene of such picnics as we see depicted on the
walls of the tombs of Theban grandees . Though only about three feet deep the
water was quite sufficient to float the light pleasure craft while shallow
enough not to be dangerous should a boat capsize . Among the trees and
flower-beds lay other buildings .
To the North were perhaps the retiring-rooms of the King with a dais for
a throne beneath a baldaquin, a bedroom and a small central court surrounded by
pillars . Here were flower-boxes, mud compartments filled with garden mould .
On either side of a columned hall behind were wine-cellars, containing "
very good wine of the Western river " or of the " House of Akhenaten
" .
In the North-East corner of the enclosure was the water court . This
consisted of one long room, its roof supported by square pillars . Down the
centre run a series of T-shaped tanks, the heads of the T's being alternately
North and South, so that between the arms of each pair was left a square base
for the pillar . The sloping sides of the tanks were painted white up to the
surface of the water and above this with brightly coloured water plants,
lotoses and water-lilies which must have looked as if they were actually
growing out of the water . The low parapets were similarly decorated, while the
pavement itself consists of a series of frescoed panels showing all kinds of
wild plants from which startled flights of duck arise, and brakes of papyrus
amongst which cattle are plunging .
From this water court a formal garden runs South to the small temple and
kiosks . An artificial canal had been cut round to form an island on which
stood a kiosk and two small pavilions . South of this appears to be a chapel
which is of unusual shape in having a court surrounded by a colonnade, a
pronaos with four columns and a sanctuary also with columns . But so little of
the original was left that it is possible that this reconstruction is at fault
.
The North Palace, which lies just over a mile North of the Great Temple,
is a building unique in the ancient world . It has every appearance of having
been a kind of Zoological Gardens where the King could watch animals and birds
and satisfy his love of nature .
There is a great court in the centre of the building mainly occupied by
an artificial lake . At the back of this are two columned halls which led to a
small throne-room at the East end .
The North side of the Palace is divided into three parts . To the West
lies an open court with a chapel and altars in the middle . Then comes an
enclosure for animals . The stone mangers found here are carved with reliefs of
cattle and antelopes . The North-Eastern corner is occupied by a garden
surrounded by a colonnade . Below the colonnade are a series of rooms, some of
which from their decoration seem to have been aviaries .
The South side is likewise divided into three parts ; two appear to be
for servants and officials, while the third, in the South-Eastern corner, may
conceivably have been a suite for the Queen . It is noteworthy that a corridor
which runs through the King's apartments has a flight of steps at each end so
as to command a view of the aviary at the North and the harem quarters to the
South . But the North Palace is most famous for its frescoes of bird life in
the marshes, the freshness of which is unparalleled even at Amarna . To these we
shall return when the time comes to discuss the art of the period .
No doubt other Royal
residences existed which will in time be excavated . ( In London, for instance,
the King has Buckingham Palace, St. James's Palace, Kensington Palace and the
Tower ) . There is, for instance, no building yet discovered which would house
the princesses once they had grown up and had households of their own . Indeed
the King's house in the Central City is a real home and gives us an
extraordinary sense of intimacy with the family life which we can certainly not
obtain from the sprawling ruins of Amenhotep III's palace at Thebes .
But
enough has been said to indicate the character of the public buildings of the
city and it is time to turn to the private residences .
Part ( 8 ) .. Coming SoOoOon .....
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