Despite lasting only 30 years, the Amarna period is one of Ancient Egypt’s most intriguing and controversial eras. Within this period fall the reigns of the ‘heretic’ king Akhenaten, famous for abandoning the traditional Egyptian gods in favour of monotheistic sun-worship, his beautiful Queen Nefertiti, and the boy-king Tutankhamun, whose tomb is arguably the most significant archaeological find ever made. We will explore this period from beginning to end, considering the religious developments that led to the Amarna revolution, controversies like the identity of Akhenaten’s successors and the location of Nefertiti’s tomb, and the restoration of traditional religion under Tutankhamun.

DELIVERY MODE

• Hybrid (F2F & Online simultaneously)

SUGGESTED READING

• A. Dodson, Amarna Sunset, (American University in Cairo Press, 2009), ISBN: 9781936190195
• A. Dodson, Amarna Sunrise, (American University in Cairo Press, 2014), ISBN: 9789774166334
• M. Bommas, _Tutankham_un: A Biography, (Taylor and Francis Group, 2024), ISBN: 9780415748704
• N. Reeves, The burial of Nefertiti, Amarna Royal Tombs Project Occasional Paper 1, (2015), available at: https://www.academia.edu/14406398/The_Burial_of_Nefertiti_2015_
• Griffith Institute, Tutankhamun: Anatomy of an Excavation, available at: http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/discoveringtut/

COURSE OUTLINE

• The path to Amarna and its foundations
• Life in Amarna: religious reform and the building of a new city
• Amarna after Akhenaten: The identity of his enigmatic successors, Smenkhkere and Neferneferuaten
• The end of the Amarna period: Tutankhamun, his life and death
• Post-Amarna: the response in later Egyptian history

LEARNING OUTCOMES

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

1. Have a sound knowledge of the development of the Amarna period, including the factors that led to it, its rulers, key events, and ending
2. Consider how scholarly understanding of the Amarna period and its rulers has changed over time
3. Recognise areas of controversy in the study of the Amarna period, such as the identity of the successors of Akhenaten, and the proposed location of the tomb of Nefertiti within the tomb of Tutankhamun