Something New Under the Egyptian Sun
You’d think there wouldn’t be vast new archaeological discoveries in Egypt. In fact, recent years have brought to light both Amenhotep’s mortuary temple and an entire city, called Tehn Aten, or Dazzling Aten (the sun god). Ancient Egyptians during the 18th Dynasty built the city to serve the needs of the temple and Amenhotep’s Malqata Palace.
Somehow I’ve never made it to Egypt, so I don’t have my own images of what it’s like to see, smell, and feel a day in ancient Thebes (Luxor) or along the Nile. I feel a little intimidated when I write Egyptians into my fiction. It’s not my area of expertise. It helps, at least, that “my” fictional Egyptians find themselves on foreign territory, in the Hittite Empire.
So I enjoy capturing vivid images of Egypt from reading about recent archaeology. Residents abandoned these two related sites abruptly when the next pharaoh moved the capital to what is now called Amarna. Then, in a subsequent generation, an earthquake toppled the walls and statues. Egyptians left the rubble to be covered with flood silt. So what’s come to light is pretty extraordinarily well preserved.
Bringing to life Dazzling Aten and Amenhotep’s mortuary temple
This article in Archaeology Magazine, “Rediscovering Egypt’s Golden Dynasty” does a good job of bringing to life the newly excavated city of Dazzling Aten and Amenhotep’s mortuary temple. The amount of artwork–hundreds of sculptures–they have found is mind boggling. It’s all from a period considered ancient Egypt’s golden age. During this dynasty, in any case, Egypt enjoyed a period of extended peace. Amenhotep engaged in massive construction projects and commissioning of art.
I had fun reading this article. Not a time machine, but a good way to take a peek at this ancient civilization.
Here for a post about interpreting the Egyptian cartouche.