Tell el-Amarna

Ruined desert capital of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten

Address East bank of the Nile, 60 km south of Minya

Tell el-Amarna is the site of the short-lived capital Akhetaten, built around 1346 BC by the pharaoh Akhenaten as the centre of his new monotheistic cult of the Aten. After his death the city was abandoned and the religious revolution reversed, leaving the site as a unique archaeological record of a single moment in Egyptian history.

Visiting today involves crossing the Nile by ferry and then traveling out across the desert plain. The remains include the foundations of the Great Temple of the Aten, the royal palace, several private villas of the elite, and the boundary stelae that marked the city's limits. Most striking are the northern and southern tomb groups cut into the surrounding cliffs, decorated with scenes of the royal family worshipping the sun and uniquely informal portraits of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. The site is eerie in its emptiness — there are no later layers, no medieval town, just the bare bones of a vanished capital.

things to do sight archaeological site
A story
Akhenaten abandoned Egypt's ancient capitals in his fifth regnal year to found Akhetaten — "Horizon of the Aten" — on a virgin desert plain, dedicating the city to a single solar deity in the most radical religious reform in Egyptian history. The whole experiment lasted less than 20 years before his successors abandoned the site and tried to erase his memory. What remains is an entire ancient capital in outline, never overbuilt.