Tomb Builders of Amarna

The History of Egypt Podcast

Dominic Perry

Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 March 2022

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Amarna Tales (Part 1). East of Akhet-Aten (Amarna), a walled-village hides among the hills. This "East Village" is a well-ordered, secluded community. It seems to be the new home of pharaoh's tomb builders. Originally, they lived at Deir el-Medina in west Luxor. But when Akhenaten founded his new royal city, the tomb-builders left their homes and came here. Today, archaeologists have uncovered a vast amount of material. Homes, animal pens, chapels, and countless artefacts shed light on daily life and family organisation in ancient Egypt. From homes to chapels, guard-houses to water depots, the East Village offers fantastic insights. It even includes traces of Tutankhamun, before he abandoned Amarna... Episode details: Date: c.1355 - 1340 BCE. Location: Akhet-Aten (el-Amarna). Kings: Akhenaten, Neferneferuaten, Tutankhaten/Tutankhamun. Website: www.egyptianhistorypodcast.com. Support the show via Patreon www.patreon.com/egyptpodcast. Make a one-time donation via PayPal payments. Logo image: A battle standard or soldier's emblem, with a sigil of Wepwawet (Kemp 2012). Music by Keith Zizza www.keithzizza.net. Music by Bettina Joy de Guzman www.bettinajoydeguzman.com. Music interludes by Luke Chaos https://twitter.com/Luke_Chaos. Select Bibliography: Read reports on the East Village and other aspects of Amarna's archaeology free, at The Amarna Project. M. Bierbrier, The Tomb-Builders of the Pharaohs (1982). A. H. Bomann, The Private Chapel in Ancient Egypt: A Study of the Chapels in the Workmen’s Village at El Amarna with Special Reference to Deir el Medina and Other Sites (1991). B. G. Davies, Life Within the Five Walls: A Handbook to Deir el-Medina (2018). B. Kemp, The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Amarna and Its People (2012). B. J. Kemp, Amarna Reports I (1984). Free at The Amarna Project. B. J. Kemp, ‘The Amarna Workmen’s Village in Retrospect’, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 73 (1987), 21–50. T. E. Peet and C. L. Woolley, The City of Akhenaten, Volume I (1923). Available free at Archive.org. A. Stevens, Private Religion at Amarna. The Material Evidence (2006). A. Stevens, ‘Private Religion in the Amarna Suburbs’, in F. Kampp-Seyfried (ed.), In the Light of Amarna: 100 Years of the Nefertiti Discovery (2012), 95—97. A. Stevens, ‘Visibility, Private Religion and the Urban Landscape of Amarna’, in M. Dalton et al. (eds.), Seen & Unseen Spaces (2015), 77—84. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This story takes place in the reigns of Akanaten, Tutankhamun, and Ai.
0:20.8	It concerns a town, a village in the citys of Akanaten, Tutankhamun, and Ai. It concerns a town, a village, in the city of Amana.
0:25.3	That village is important, because it may be the place where tomb builders lived and worked.
0:31.8	In the 18th Dynasty, the royal tomb builders were a sophisticated, complex organisation.
0:38.6	Many of them lived in a village called Dia El Medina.
0:43.4	That village is located at Wasset, Thieves or Luxor, on the west bank of the Nile.
0:49.5	It is an important place, and we've visited before.
0:53.2	But I haven't talked about Dear El Medina for a while.
0:57.2	Not to worry, in coming years and episodes, we will have many chances to explore the village.
1:03.7	As we leave the 18th dynasty and move into the 19th, the town at Deer El Medina, the village of
1:10.0	the tomb builders, would grow rapidly,
1:13.0	producing a huge amount of material and many stories.
1:17.5	In the 18th dynasty, that village is harder to track.
1:21.8	There is less information about the residents and the buildings.
1:25.6	We have some that I've covered previously, but recently the
1:29.5	village has been a background concern in our narrative. The tomb builders did their work on
1:35.4	tombs and chapels, but in terms of the evidence, things are a bit quiet. That changes in the reign
1:43.6	of Arcanatan. Suddenly, we get a lot of information about
1:47.4	these people, not at Derell Medina specifically, at another place, where the tomb builders moved on
1:54.8	Arcanaten's orders. This new village was located at Amana, and it gives clues to these people and their lives.
2:03.5	Today, I want to explore it.
2:06.4	Before we begin, I should note that the website for the podcast is Egyptian Historypodcast.com.
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