page_title: Amarna
section_title: Religious life
hierarchical_section_title: Amarna / Life in ancient Amarna/Akhetaten / Religious life
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Ancient Egyptian art in the Museo archeologico nazionale (Florence)
context_page_description: Amarna is an extensive Egyptian archaeological site that represents the remains of the capital city newly established and built by the Pharaoh Akhenaten of the late Eighteenth Dynasty, and abandoned shortly after his death. The name for the city employed by the ancient Egyptians is written as Akhetaten in English transliteration. Akhetaten means "Horizon of the Aten".
  The area is located on the east bank of the Nile River in the modern Egyptian province of Minya, some 58 km south of the city of al-Minya, 312 km south of the Egyptian capital Cairo and 402 km north of Luxor. The city of Deir Mawas lies directly west across from the site of Amarna. Amarna, on the east side, includes several modern villages, chief of which are el-Till in the north and el-Hagg Qandil in the south.
  The region flourished from the Amarna period up to the later Roman era.
context_section_description: While the reforms of Akhenaten are generally believed to have been oriented towards a sort of monotheism, or perhaps more accurately, monolatrism. Archaeological evidence shows other deities were also revered, even at the centre of the Aten cult – if not officially, then at least by the people who lived and worked there.
  ... at Akhetaten itself, recent excavation by Kemp (2008: 41–46) has shown the presence of objects that depict gods, goddesses and symbols that belong to the traditional field of personal belief. So many examples of Bes, the grotesque dwarf figure who warded off evil spirits, have been found, as well as of the goddess-monster, Taweret, part crocodile, part hippopotamus, who was associated with childbirth. Also in the royal workmen’s village at Akhetaten, stelae dedicated to Isis and Shed have been discovered (Watterson 1984: 158 & 208).
caption: Children with pens and papyrus scrolls. Relief from Amarna
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