Akhenaten's Reign (1353 B.C. to 1336 B.C.): the Arts, Letters, Foreign Policy | Middle East And North Africa

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AKHENATEN

Akhenaten
Akhenaten was one of ancient Egypt’s the most influential and divisive pharaohs and one world's most important religious innovators. Considered the father of monotheism, he established a monotheistic cult to Aten (“Sun Disk”) and forced Egyptians to abandon the worship of all other gods. He once boasted "My Lord promoted me so that I might enact His teaching." [Source: Rick Gore, National Geographic, April 2001]

Akhenaten is arguably the second best known pharaoh after his Tutankhamun (King Tut). His image in the Egyptian Museum is among the most memorable there. Agatha Christie wrote a play about him; Phillip Glass penned an opera about him and Nobel-prize-winning Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz wrote a novel “Dweller of Truth” inspired by him. Even Sigmund Freud wrote at length about him and his beliefs, arguing that Moses was an Egyptian priest spreading the word of Aten.

Akhenaten (ruled 1353–1336 B.C.), son of Amenhotep III, began his rule under the name Amenhotep IV. He defied tradition by establishing a new religion based on the belief in one and only god; the sun god Aten. At the time he took the throne, his family had been ruling Egypt for nearly two hundred years and Egypt was a huge empire that embraced Palestine, Phoenicia, and Nubia. Westerners came to know of Akhenaten through material discovered at his capital city at Tell el-Amarna. Consequently “the Amarna Period” is often used to refer to Akhenaten’s entire reign and the period characterized by his devotion to a single deity, the Aten. [Source: Mark Millmore, discoveringegypt.com, Jacquelyn Williamson, George Mason University, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2015, escholarship.org ]

Mark Millmore wrote in discoveringegypt.com: “Akhenaten was an intellectual and philosophical revolutionary who had the power and wealth to indulge his ideas. However, the ancient Egyptians were a deeply religious people who loved their ancient traditions and were not ready to embrace such radical changes. It would not be until the Christian era that the Egyptians would finally reject the old gods in favour of a single universal deity. [Source: Mark Millmore, discoveringegypt.com discoveringegypt.com]

Websites on Ancient Egypt: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Discovering Egypt discoveringegypt.com; BBC History: Egyptians bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians ; Ancient History Encyclopedia on Egypt ancient.eu/egypt; Digital Egypt for Universities. Scholarly treatment with broad coverage and cross references (internal and external). Artifacts used extensively to illustrate topics. ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt ; British Museum: Ancient Egypt ancientegypt.co.uk; Egypt’s Golden Empire pbs.org/empires/egypt; Metropolitan Museum of Art www.metmuseum.org ; Oriental Institute Ancient Egypt (Egypt and Sudan) Projects ; Egyptian Antiquities at the Louvre in Paris louvre.fr/en/departments/egyptian-antiquities; KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt kmtjournal.com; Egypt Exploration Society ees.ac.uk ; Amarna Project amarnaproject.com; Abzu: Guide to Resources for the Study of the Ancient Near East etana.org; Egyptology Resources fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk

Akhenaten's Rule

Akhenatan’s reign can be divided into two phases: the years before the move to the site of Amarna, when building was centered on Karnak in Thebes (Luxor) and the Amarna years. The former is termed the proto-Amarna phase by scholars.

Jacquelyn Williamson of George Mason University wrote: “Amenhotep was approximately ten years old when he assumed the throne. Many once suggested he served the first years of his young rule in a coregency with Amenhotep III, but current opinion holds that their reigns did not overlap. The first two years of Amenhotep IV’s reign conformed to Egyptian royal traditions. He completed his father’s unfinished building projects at Soleb in Nubia as well as the third pylon at Karnak, decorating each in traditional Pharaonic style. Akhenaten may have even started building himself a traditional mortuary temple on the site that is now the Ramesseum. [Source: Jacquelyn Williamson, George Mason University, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2015, escholarship.org ]

Akhenaten ruled for 17 years (from the death of his father Amenhotep III in 1353 B.C. to Akhenaten's death in 1336 B.C.). His reign began with great optimism and hope as expressed by the great works of art that were created in that period.

After an unknown event, five years into his reign, Akhenaten moved the capital of Egypt from Thebes to a new location called Akhetatem ("Horizon of the New Sun") in present-day el-Amarna (180 miles north of Thebes on the east bank of the Nile).

Zahi Hawass wrote in National Geographic, “In the fifth year of his reign, he changes his name to Akhenaten — "he who is beneficial to the Aten." He elevates himself to the status of a living god and abandons the traditional religious capital at Thebes, building a great ceremonial city 180 miles to the north, at a place now called Amarna. Here he lives with his great wife, the beautiful Nefertiti, and together they serve as the high priests of the Aten, assisted in their duties by their six cherished daughters. All power and wealth is stripped from the Amun priesthood, and the Aten reigns supreme. The art of this period is also infused with a revolutionary new naturalism; the pharaoh has himself depicted not with an idealized face and youthful, muscular body as were pharaohs before him, but as strangely effeminate, with a potbelly and a thick-lipped, elongated face. [Source: Zahi Hawass, National Geographic, September 2010]

Some scholars believe that a natural disaster provoked the move to Amarna. Some have suggested that Akhenaten founded the new capital to escape the bubonic plague ravaging Egypt’s main urban centers. Others believe that priests in Thebes had enough of him and forced him to leave. Within a year or two, a city with 20,000 people had sprouted up on the Nile.

Foreign Policy in the Amarna Period

Akhenaten renounced militarism, halted foreign military campaigns and dramatically scaled down Egypt's military defenses. His military reforms caused divisions within his kingdom.

Jacquelyn Williamson of George Mason University wrote: “A century before Akhenaten, Thutmose III pushed Egypt’s boundaries to the Euphrates River in Syria and expanded control over Nubia. Akhenaten’s father, Amenhotep III, further cemented alliances with the nation of Mitanni and established a peaceful border. The Amarna Letters, cuneiform tablets found at Tell el-Amarna which record international diplomatic correspondence, indicate that by Akhenaten’s time six northern kingdoms corresponded with Egypt as equals: Assyria (the upper Tigris River region), Babylonia (southern Iraq), Hatti (central Turkey), Mitanni (northern Syria and Iraq), Arzawa (southwestern Turkey), and Alashiya (Cyprus). [Source: Jacquelyn Williamson, George Mason University, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2015, escholarship.org ]

“This vast territory endowed Egypt with considerable wealth and influence by the time of Akhenaten, but it appears he did not exert himself to maintain the empire he inherited. Akhenaten, unlike his father, was a poor correspondent and stayed isolated from outside affairs, even when Egypt’s holdings abroad were threatened. Perhaps he felt that foreigners were less deserving of his or the Aten’s protections. In the Amarna Letters, Akhenaten seems to negate his father’s diplomacy with Mitanni by ignoring King Tushratta’s pleas for help before

Mitanni fell to the Hittites under King Suppiluliuma. In addition, Akhenaten ignored his foreign vassals’ requests for protection from the Apiru, a group of aggressive nomads. Many of those vassals switched allegiance to Suppiluliuma, further shrinking Egyptian influence and enabling the Hittites to grow in power. This is not to say that Akhenaten was entirely uninvolved; there was a small rebellion he quelled in Nubia, recorded on two stelae from Buhen and Amada, but on the whole he did not work to maintain the empire built by his ancestors.

“Several of the official’s tombs at Tell el- Amarna record a lavish event in year 12 featuring international ambassadors bringing gifts to the royal family. The reason for the event is obscure, but its purpose may have been to reinforce Akhenaten’s flagging international status.”

Letter to Akhenaten

Historian Robert William Rogers wrote: “This letter was found in the mound of Tell-el-Hesy (ancient Lachish) Clay 14, 1.i92, by F. I. Bliss, and awakened great interest because it obviously belongs to the same series as the Tell-el-Amarna letters and possesses the additional interest of having been actually discovered in the soil of Palestine.

Letter of Pabi, Prince of Lachish, to Akhnaton, King of Kemet (i.e. Egypt), circa 1350 B.C.. Reads: To the Great One, thus speaks Pabi, at your feet do I fall. You must know that Shipti-Ba'al and Zimrida are conspiring, and Shipti-Ba'al has said to Zimrida "My father of the city Yarami has written to me: give me six bows, three daggers and three swords. If I take the field against the land of the king and you march at my side, I shall surely conquer. He who makes this plan is Pabi. Send him before me." Now have I sent you Rapha-el. He will bring to the Great man intelligence concerning the matter. [Source: Robert William Rogers, ed., Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament (New York: Eaton & Mains, & Cincinnati: Jennings & Graham, 1912), pp. 268-278.

Akhenaten and the Arts

Under Akhenaten’s stewardship Egyptian art blossomed with new freshness. It is believed to have been inspired by the widespread belief that the sun god had come to Earth in the form of the royal family.

Under Akhenaten, sculptures expressed feeling, sensuality and beauty. Ceramics were filled with color and flare. Beautiful jewelry was made from balls of glass and precious stones. Murals with a natural realism were created that flied in the face of stiff Egyptian art.

Because Akhenaten wanted as many temples as possible to be built for his new god and the temples built under him didn’t need roofs a new style of construction was invented. Before Akhenaten walls were constructed of huge stone slabs that had to be strong enough to support a roof. The temples built under Akhenaten were huge open air structures made of 20-x-10-x-10-inch stone blocks. Many of the temples featured color paintings of Akhenaten and Nefertiti

Akhenaten’s Religion and the Arts

Marsha Hill of The Metropolitan Museum of Art wrote: “The seventeen-year reign of the pharaoh Amenhotep IV-Akhenaten is remarkable as revealing ideas, architecture, and art that stand out as different against Egypt's long tradition. Shortly after coming to the throne, the new pharaoh Amenhotep IV, a son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye, established worship of the light that is in the orb of the sun (the Aten) as the primary religion, and the many-armed disk became the omnipresent icon representing the god. The new religion, with its emphasis on the light of the sun and on what can be seen, went together with new emphases on time, movement, and atmosphere in the arts. Exceptional as the new outlook seems, it certainly had roots in the increasing prominence of the solar principle, or Re, in the earlier eighteenth dynasty, and in the emphasis on the all-pervasive quality of the god Amun-Re, developments reaching a new height in the reign of Amenhotep III (ca. 1390–1353 B.C.). Likewise, artistic changes were afoot before the reign of Amenhotep IV / Akhenaten. For example, Theban tombs of Dynasty 18 had begun to redefine artistic norms, exploring the possibilities of line and color for suggesting movement and atmospherics or employing more natural views of parts of the body. [Source: Marsha Hill, Department of Egyptian Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 2014, metmuseum.org \^/]

“While the art and texts of what is commonly called the Amarna Period after the site of the new city for the Aten are striking, and their naturalistic imagery easy to appreciate, it is more difficult to bring the figure of Amenhotep IV / Akhenaten himself or the lived experiences of Atenism into focus. The courtiers who helped the king monumentalize his vision refer to a kind of teaching that the king provided, to them at a minimum, and the art and particular hymns or prayers convey a striking appreciation of the physical world. \^/

Akhenaten and his family worshipping Aten

“Beautifully you appear from the horizon of heaven, O living Aten who initiates life—
For you are risen from the eastern horizon and have filled every land with your beauty;
For you are fair, great, dazzling and high over every land,
And your rays enclose the lands to the limit of all you have made;
For you are Re, having reached their limit and subdued them for your beloved son;
For although you are far away, your rays are upon the earth and you are perceived.
When your movements vanish and you set in the western horizon,
The land is in darkness, in the manner of death.
(People), they lie in bedchambers, heads covered up, and one eye does not see its fellow.
All their property is robbed, although it is under their heads, and they do not realize it.
Every lion is out of its den, all creeping things bite.
Darkness gathers, the land is silent.
The one who made them is set in his horizon.
(But) the land grows bright when you are risen from the horizon,
Shining in the orb in the daytime, you push back the darkness and give forth your rays.
The Two Lands are in a festival of light—
Awake and standing on legs, for you have lifted them up:
Their limbs are cleansed and wearing clothes,
Their arms are in adoration at your appearing.
The whole land, they do their work:
All flocks are content with their pasturage,
Trees and grasses flourish,
Birds are flown from their nests, their wings adoring your Ka;
All small cattle prance upon their legs.
All that fly up and alight, they live when you rise for them.
Ships go downstream, and upstream as well, every road being open at your appearance.
Fish upon the river leap up in front of you, and your rays are within the Great Green (sea).
[Source: excerpted from the “Great Hymn to the Aten in the Tomb of Aya,” as translated in William J. Murnane, Texts from the Amarna Period in Egypt, edited by Edmund S. Meltzer, Scholars Press, 1995)

“At the same time, Atenism gave the king himself a divine-like role as sole representative and interpreter of the Aten—as stated elsewhere in the above hymn, "there is no one who knows you except your son"—so that any access to and understanding of the god was mediated through the figure of the king and his family. Although there is no reason to think the king's self-promotion was only politically motivated, the differentiation of king and gods was altered.” \^/

Art from Akhenaten’s Karnak Years

Marsha Hill of The Metropolitan Museum of Art wrote: “The proto-Amarna phase lasted for about five years. Understanding of this seminal period is aided by the preservation of sculpture dismantled where it stood, and building stones from the Aten's Karnak complexes systematically reused as packing stones inside the Karnak temple pylons shortly after the Amarna Period. Discoveries of fundamental importance have been made by following the clues these building stones hold about the changes that unfolded at Karnak as Atenism emerged, discoveries contextualized and elaborated in a recent biography of the king. [Source: Marsha Hill, Department of Egyptian Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 2014, metmuseum.org \^/]

“The king at first continued traditional attentions to Amun-Re, but already within his first year revealed a new focus on the falcon-headed god Re-Harakhty, who was given a long name identifying him with the Aten, although the name was not yet written in cartouches. The king undertook a considerable expansion of an area already devoted to Re-Harakhty on the eastern side of Karnak. Year 4 saw several major happenings, more or less in the following sequence: the Aten's name with epithets became fixed and immutable, written in cartouches (termed by scholars the "didactic" name), "Living Re-Harakhty who rejoices on the horizon in his name of Shu who is in the Aten"; a representation of the human figure was introduced that was overall more sinuous and heavy in the hips and evolved hereafter to be more so; the Aten's new icon—a many-handed sun disk represented as very spherical—was created and the falcon-headed image abandoned; Nefertiti emerged as the king's wife; and a vast complex was undertaken for the Aten yet further to the east within the Karnak precinct. \^/

“Nefertiti serves as Akhenaten's religious counterpart from her first appearance in year 4. The representation of their relationship certainly evoked traditional divine pairings. Shu and Tefnut, the children of Re, are alluded to. Scholarship has also drawn attention to Nefertiti's multifaceted relationship to Hathor, counterpart to Akhenaten in his relation to Re. With the move to Amarna, the royal pair were supplemented by the halo of—ultimately—six daughters. \^/

“The focus on Aten corresponded to a radically decreased attention to Amun in particular. By early in year 5, Amenhotep IV had identified a new home for the Aten at the site of Amarna, an area that he claimed belonged to no other god, and by the time his oath was recorded in boundary stelae some time during the ensuing year, his name had been changed to Akhenaten: at that point the focus shifts to the site of Amarna, considered in the second section of this essay.” \^/

Architecture and Statuary in Akhenaten’s Karnak Years

Marsha Hill of The Metropolitan Museum of Art wrote: “The new religion unleashed a progression of changes, almost as if by domino effect, in architectural forms and representational organization. Amenhotep IV's initial constructions in East Karnak had employed the huge blocks typical of traditional Egyptian temple architecture, and on the walls the king officiated before the god depicted as a man with a falcon head. But in year 4, when the sun disk with hands appeared as the god's new icon expressing the new focus upward toward the sunlight, a large platform reached by a ramp was erected on which the king officiated in the open air. [Source: Marsha Hill, Department of Egyptian Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 2014, metmuseum.org \^/]

“With this emphasis on worship taking place toward the light in the sky, solar worship spaces typically dispensed with the roof. Realizing the walls of the primary god's main temples no longer needed massive blocks to bear heavy roofing stones, Egyptian architects switched to the small blocks called talatat that characterize constructions of this period. Measuring about 20 1/2 inches long by 10 1/4 deep by 9 1/2 high (26 x 52 x 24 cm) and weighing about 120 pounds, talatat were considered manageable by one worker. In wall scenes, the displacement of the divine image to the top of scenes left the king or the king and queen alone under the Aten's rays without a divine figure placed in symmetrical opposition, creating a static appearance. This aesthetic quandary played a role in the changes in scene organization that evolved along with new subject matter introduced into temple scenes—scenes of the lives of the royal family, the royal entourage, and surroundings teeming with activity. \^/

Stela from the Great Temple of Aten

“To the north of the platform temple, a gigantic court was built that was surrounded by sandstone colossi, depicting the king and probably Nefertiti, with some other smaller royal statuary. The court seems to have been connected with a Heb Sed, or rejuvenation festival, celebrated by the king and the Aten probably again in year 4. Discovered in the early years of the twentieth century, and before Amarna became otherwise well known, the colossi have evoked the radical nature of the Amarna experiment for moderns. The figures have the heavy hips that characterize Amarna depictions. These have been recognized as feminized proportions, and this may have been intended to characterize the king and queen, and indeed the entire world as it is represented in this way in Amarna art, as recipients of life and divine inspiration in relation to the Aten.

“More difficult to comprehend are the facial features of the colossi: slit-like eyes, swollen noses, and bulbous drooping chins that are dramatically stranger than most faces known from the reign, a difference that has been attributed to an evolution in the art. A recent insight has tamed this appearance in some measure by reminding the modern viewer that these faces, which were on statues that stood plus or minus 15 feet high, were never meant to be seen at eye level as they now tend to be photographed; rather, they seem to have been carved in this way with the perspective of the viewer far below in mind. With this corrective, the features of the king still strongly suggest a very particular picture of the divine and the king's relation to it, but are more in accord with the range of variability one sees in the Karnak reliefs of the period. A more coherent picture of Amarna style is the result.” \^/

Decline During Akhenaten's Rule

Within a two or three year period beginning in the 9th year of his reign, Akhenaten lost his mother, three daughters and maybe one of his wives. Scholars believed that so many death in such a short period of time may have been the result of a plague or epidemic.

The kingdom itself was neglected and Egypt's arch enemies the Hittites began encroaching from the east. There was also trouble with Mitannians. One ruler wrote a letter to Akhenaten's mother asking why the Egyptian king had not sent gifts as he had promised. "I had asked your husband for statues of solid cast gold...But now...your son has [sent me] plated statues of wood. With gold being like dirt in your son’s country, why have they have been a source of such distress to your son that he has not given them to me?...Is this love?"

Dr Kate Spence of Cambridge University wrote for the BBC: “Early in his reign Akhenaten used art as a way of emphasising his intention of doing things very differently. Colossi and wall-reliefs from the Karnak Aten Temple are highly exaggerated and almost grotesque when viewed in the context of the formality and restraint which had characterised Egyptian royal and elite art for the millennium preceding Akhenaten's birth. Although these seem striking and strangely beautiful today, it is hard for us to appreciate the profoundly shocking effect that such representations must have had on the senses of those who first viewed them and who would never have been exposed to anything other than traditional Egyptian art. [Source: Dr Kate Spence, BBC, February 17, 2011 |::|]

“With the move to Amarna the art becomes less exaggerated, but while it is often described as 'naturalistic' it remains highly stylised in its portrayal of the human figure. The royal family are shown with elongated skulls and pear-shaped bodies with skinny torsos and arms but fuller hips, stomachs and thighs. The subject matter of royal art also changes. Although formal scenes of the king worshipping remain important there is an increasing emphasis on ordinary, day-to-day activities which include intimate portrayals of Akhenaten and Nefertiti playing with their daughters beneath the rays of the Aten. Animals and birds are shown frolicking beneath the rays of the rising sun in the decoration of the royal tomb. While traditional Egyptian art tends to emphasise the eternal, Amarna art focuses on the minutiae of life which only occur because of the light-and life-giving power of the sun. |::|

“In addition to the changes he made to religious practices and art, Akhenaten also instigated changes in temple architecture and building methods: stone structures were now built from much smaller blocks of stone set in a strong mortar. Even official inscriptions changed, moving away from the old-fashioned language traditional to monumental texts to reflect the spoken language of the time.” |::|

Who Succeeded Akhenaten?

When the pharaoh Akhenaten died, he left no obvious successor. Jarrett A. Lobell wrote in Archaeology Magazine: Three of his and his wife Nefertiti’s six daughters had died, and his son, Tutankhaten (later Tutankhamun) was too young to be king. Who would rule Egypt and bring peace back to a land rent by the religious revolution led by Akhenaten? For present-day scholars, too, the answer is far less than evident. The chronology of deaths and inheritors to the throne, which is usually relatively clear in Egyptian history, is extremely murky during this period. [Source: Jarrett A. Lobell, Archaeology Magazine, September/October 2022]

Some have suggested that Akhenaten’s successor was Nefertiti herself. But a particularly interesting alternate theory has recently been advanced by Egyptologist Marc Gabolde of Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 University. “We are sure that a queen-pharaoh ruled between Akhenaten and Tutankhamun,” he says. “The clues I have gathered allow us to say that it was not Nefertiti, who died a few months before her husband. The ruler is therefore Meritaten.” Meritaten was one of Akhenaten and Nefertiti’s surviving daughters, and Tutankhamun’s older sister. (Other chronologies state that Nefertiti died after Akhenaten.)

Three of the Amarna Letters — a collection of hundreds of cuneiform tablets discovered in Akhenaten’s capital city of Akhetaten in the late nineteenth century — mention Meritaten using the name Mayati. In two of these letters, she is said to have quasi-royal status, Gabolde explains. After Nefertiti’s death, however, Meritaten appears without her previous title of royal daughter, but as “first lady” and later with a nearly royal rank. “This can only be properly explained if she is now becoming queen-pharaoh,” Gabolde says. Furthermore, at least one artifact from Tutankhamun’s tomb, which originally belonged to the queen-pharaoh, has two cartouches side by side, one with her coronation name, Ankhkheperure, and the other her birth name, Meritaten. “This ensures that the queen-pharaoh is none other than Meritaten,” says Gabolde.

After Akhenaten

The name of Akhenaten’s immediate successor is uncertain. Ann R. Williams wrote in National Geographic History: Nefertiti may have been a co-ruler with her husband at the end of his reign, which lasted about 17 years. She then could have continued to rule in her own right after his death, perhaps even taking a man’s throne name to mask being a female ruler. But there’s another person in the mix here — Smenkhkare. Did he become king upon Nefertiti’s death? Or did Nefertiti not rule at all, and it was Smenkhkare who succeeded Akhenaten? His rise to the top would make sense. He had the right lineage, and he may have been married to Meritaten, the oldest of Akhenaten and Nefertiti’s daughters.[Source: Ann R. Williams, National Geographic History, November 4, 2022]

Dr Kate Spence of Cambridge University wrote for the BBC: “Akhenaten died in his seventeenth year on the throne and his reforms did not survive for long in his absence. His co-regent Smenkhkare, about whom we know virtually nothing, appears not to have remained in power for long after Akhenaten's death. The throne passed to a child, Tutankhamun (originally Tutankhaten) who was probably the son of Akhenaten and Kiya. The regents administering the country on behalf of the child soon abandoned the city of Akhetaten and the worship of the Aten and returned to Egypt's traditional gods and religious centres. The temples and cults of the gods were restored and people shut up their houses and returned to the old capitals at Thebes and Memphis. [Source: Dr Kate Spence, BBC, February 17, 2011 |::|]

“Over time, the process of restoration of traditional cults turned to whole-scale obliteration of all things associated with Akhenaten. His image and names were removed from monuments. His temples were dismantled and the stone reused in the foundations of other more orthodox royal building projects. The city of Akhetaten gradually crumbled back into the desert. His name and those of his immediate successors were omitted from official king-lists so that they remained virtually unknown until the archaeological discoveries at Akhetaten and in the tomb of Tutankhamun made these kings amongst the most famous of all rulers of ancient Egypt. |::|

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum, The Egyptian Museum in Cairo

Text Sources: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Tour Egypt, Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com; Mark Millmore, discoveringegypt.com discoveringegypt.com; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated July 2024