Nobles' tombs
Distinctive Amarna art.
Olaf Tausch — CC BY 3.0 · Tobeytravels — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Tobeytravels — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Olaf Tausch — CC BY 3.0 · Einsamer Schütze — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Kurohito — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Olaf Tausch — CC BY 3.0 · isawnyu — CC BY 2.0
The remains of Akhetaten, Horizon of the Aten, the capital King Akhenaten built from nothing on the east bank of the Nile around 1346 BC, when he left Thebes and its gods to proclaim the worship of a single god, the sun disc Aten. The city was abandoned a few years after his death, so its ruins stand as a unique witness to that era. The city spreads across a wide plain ringed by cliffs in a crescent, its limits marked by boundary stelae Akhenaten carved into the rock. You walk among the foundations of the North Palace, the Small Aten Temple and the houses; the famous bust of Nefertiti, now in Berlin, was found in one of them. In the cliffs are the rock-cut tombs of the nobles, with raised reliefs in the distinctive Amarna style showing Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their daughters beneath the Aten's rays ending in hands. A remote valley holds Akhenaten's royal tomb. A foreign visitor pays about two hundred Egyptian pounds for the site and about a hundred and twenty more for the royal tomb according to the ministry list, open from eight to five. You cross the Nile by ferry from Mallawi and need a car to move between its far-flung parts.
Distinctive Amarna art.
Royal palace foundations.
Carved in the rock.
East bank of the Nile, south of Mallawi, Minya Governorate
No, it was found in a house in the city in 1912 and is shown today in the Neues Museum in Berlin; the site holds the ruins and tombs.