Professor Barry Kemp publishes 'tour-de-force' on Amarna

Professor Barry Kemp, Senior Fellow of the McDonald Institute, has published a definitive account of Amarna and its inhabitants The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Amarna and its People (.pdf) based on more than three decades of research and excavation which is described as a tour-de-force of archaeological writing.

A city of temples, royal palaces, civic offices and elite tombs, and simultaneously a city of small-scale mud-brick dwellings, Amarna was an 'urban village', where most of its citizens were only two or three steps removed in the social scale from the king himself. Barry Kemp evokes the sights and smells of Amarna itself, bringing to life its people - not only the royal family but also prominent citizens such as the high priest Panehsy, the vizier Nakht, the general Ramose and the sculptor Thutmose, whose bust of Nefertiti is one of


the masterpieces of ancient art.

Although Akhenaten had overturned the old religion and introduced worship of the Aten, the sun’s disk, beneath the surface the old belief in the traditional Egyptian gods continued. Likewise themes of abundance and prosperity depicted in the art are contradicted by new cemetery evidence showing malnutrition in childhood, skeletal injuries and early death.

Barry Kemp has been conducting research and excavation at Amarna since 1977. Among his many publications are A Survey of the Ancient City of El-‘Amarna (with S. Garfi), the multi-volume Amarna Reports, The Ancient Textile Industry 
at Amarna (with G. Vogelsang-Eastwood) and The Main Chapel at the Amarna Workmen’s Village and its Wall Paintings (with F. Weatherhead), as well as the standard introduction, Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization.

The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Amarna and its People
Thames and Hudson ISBN 9780500051733, 24.70 x 18.50 cm, Hardback 320pp 287 Illustrations, 53 in colour
Including plans and maps
First published 2012
£29.95