Quick answer
The Amarna period is the late 18th Dynasty era, roughly 1353–1323 BC, when Akhenaten made the sun disc, the Aten, the focus of state religion and moved the court to a new city at Amarna in Middle Egypt. It lasted barely a generation: Tutankhamun restored the old gods, the city was abandoned, and later kings tried to wipe the whole episode from history.
What was the Amarna period?
The Amarna period is the short, extraordinary stretch of the 18th Dynasty when Egypt’s religion, art and capital were all overturned by one king, and then restored within a generation. It takes its name from Tell el-Amarna, the modern name of the site of Akhetaten, “Horizon of the Aten”, the city Akhenaten founded for his god.
Historians usually take it to run from Akhenaten’s accession around 1353 BC to the early years of Tutankhamun, when the court left Amarna, with a long tail as Ay and Horemheb cleaned up its legacy. This guide looks at the period as a whole: how it unfolded, what life was like in the city and how it was erased. For the theology itself, see our guide to the Aten.
What set the stage for the revolution?
Akhenaten inherited a country at the height of its wealth, in which the sun god was already rising in importance and the priesthood of Amun at Thebes had become enormously rich. His father, Amenhotep III, presented himself in his later years as a living sun god, and the disc of the Aten had begun to appear in royal names and titles, including that of his royal barge.
Amun’s temple at Karnak controlled vast estates, and its high priest was one of the most powerful men in the land. Whether Akhenaten’s reforms were driven by personal faith, by politics or by both is still argued, but most historians think genuine religious conviction was at the core. His mother, Queen Tiye, remained an influential figure at court and corresponded with foreign kings.
How did the Amarna years unfold?
The revolution came in stages over 17 years, and its dated inscriptions let us follow it almost year by year.
- Years 1–4: as Amenhotep IV, the king builds a series of temples to the Aten just east of Karnak, using small standard blocks called talatat, and celebrates an unusually early jubilee festival.
- Year 5: he changes his name to Akhenaten and chooses an empty desert bay on the east bank of the Nile in Middle Egypt for a new capital, marked by boundary stelae cut into the cliffs.
- By about year 8: the court has moved to Akhetaten, and the city fills with palaces, open-air temples and officials’ villas.
- Around year 9: the Aten’s formal name is revised to remove references to other gods; later, agents are sent to hack the name of Amun from monuments across Egypt.
- Year 12: a great reception of foreign tribute, shown in the tombs of the officials Meryra II and Huya at Amarna.
- Years 13–14: deaths in the royal family, including the princess Meketaten, and probably Queen Tiye.
- Year 16: a quarry inscription shows Nefertiti still Great Royal Wife.
- Year 17: Akhenaten dies, around 1336 BC.
What was everyday life like in Akhetaten?
Because the city was occupied for barely 15 years and never rebuilt, Amarna preserves the layout of an entire Egyptian city: palaces, workshops, suburbs and cemeteries. Estimates of its population range from about 20,000 to 50,000. A royal road linked the palaces to the Great Aten Temple, whose courts were open to the sky and filled with hundreds of offering tables.
Away from the centre, excavators have found the house and workshop of the sculptor Thutmose, where the bust of Nefertiti was discovered in 1912, a walled village for the workmen who cut the tombs, and some of Egypt’s earliest glass-making workshops. The Amarna Project, directed by the British archaeologist Barry Kemp since 1977, has mapped much of the city.
Its most sobering work has been in the cemeteries of ordinary people. Skeletons from the South Tombs Cemetery, excavated from 2005, show many people dying young, with stunted growth and injuries to the spine and joints from heavy labour. Building a new capital at speed came at a cost, and it is a side of the period the royal reliefs never show.
How did the Amarna period end?
After Akhenaten’s death two short-lived rulers, Smenkhkare and a female king called Neferneferuaten, held the throne before the boy king Tutankhaten, who soon changed his name to Tutankhamun. Who exactly these rulers were is one of Egyptology’s great puzzles, discussed in our Akhenaten and Nefertiti guides.
Within a few years the court had left Amarna for Memphis and Thebes, Amun’s temples were reopened and the Restoration Stela at Karnak blamed Egypt’s troubles on the neglect of the gods. Tutankhamun died young around 1323 BC; the elderly courtier Ay reigned for about four years, followed by the general Horemheb, who ruled until around 1292 BC and handed power to his fellow officer Ramesses I. Our Tutankhamun guide covers the succession drama in detail.
How was the Amarna period erased, and rediscovered?
Later kings dismantled Akhenaten’s buildings, reused the blocks as rubble and left the Amarna rulers out of official king lists, so that by the Ramesside era the whole episode had been written out of history. Tens of thousands of talatat from the Karnak Aten temples were packed inside the pylons Horemheb built at Karnak, and more than a thousand blocks from Amarna were carried across the river to Hermopolis for the foundations of a Ramesside temple. This destruction, ironically, preserved their carving and paint.
Rediscovery began in 1887, when a local woman digging for fertiliser at Amarna found clay tablets that turned out to be the Amarna letters, the diplomatic archive of the court. Flinders Petrie excavated in 1891–92, with a teenage Howard Carter on his team, thirty years before Carter found Tutankhamun. German excavations followed before the First World War, and British ones between the wars.
What was the legacy of the Amarna period?
The religion did not survive, but the period left lasting marks on Egyptian art and language, and gave us some of the most human images of ancient royalty. The relaxed, curving lines of Amarna art carried on into Tutankhamun’s reign: the golden throne showing his wife anointing him is pure Amarna in feeling. Inscriptions of the period use more of the everyday spoken language, Late Egyptian, which became the standard for documents afterwards. And the Amarna letters remain the best evidence we have for how the great powers of the 14th century BC dealt with one another.
Where to see the Amarna period in Egypt today
To understand the period, visit the city itself, then look for its scattered pieces in Luxor and Cairo.
- Tell el-Amarna: the North and South Tombs of the officials, the royal tomb and a boundary stela, about 300 km south of Cairo near Minya. See our Middle Egypt guide and check Smartraveller before planning.
- Luxor Museum: a wall rebuilt from painted talatat of the Karnak Aten temples.
- Tomb of Ay: in the remote West Valley, perhaps begun for Tutankhamun.
- Saqqara: the tomb Horemheb built as a general, before he became king, and the tomb of Tutankhamun’s treasurer Maya.
- Grand Egyptian Museum: Tutankhamun’s treasures, with Amarna styles still visible in many pieces.
Amarna and the Middle Egypt sites feature in our Egypt for history lovers journey.
Frequently asked questions
Why is it called the Amarna period?
After Tell el-Amarna, the modern Arabic name for the site of Akhetaten, the city Akhenaten built as his capital. The name is usually said to come from the Beni Amran, a tribe who settled in the area.
How long did the Amarna period last?
About 30 years in the broad sense, from Akhenaten’s accession around 1353 BC to Tutankhamun’s death around 1323 BC. The city itself was the capital for little more than 15 years.
What is Amarna art?
The distinctive style of Akhenaten’s reign: elongated faces and bodies, intimate scenes of the royal family, naturalistic plants and animals, and the Aten’s rays ending in hands. It softened in the later years and influenced Tutankhamun’s treasures.
Can you visit Amarna?
Yes, usually as a long day trip or overnight from Minya. Tours there need local arrangements, so it is best organised as part of a private itinerary. Check current Smartraveller advice for Middle Egypt.
Why did the Amarna period fail?
Akhenaten’s religion centred on the king himself, had little popular support and alienated the powerful temples. Without him, his young successors and their advisers returned to the gods most Egyptians had always worshipped.
