The New Secrets opf Luxor

This site may well have been abandoned largely intact.  The workers may have been ordered to Amarna and left hurriedly without completely looting the apparent town  Possibly they expected to return.

It is already a huge find and captures much from this pivital era .

Comparing it to Pompei is completely appropriate.

THE NEW SECRETS OF LUXOR

Monday, April 12, 2021

PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF ZAHI HAWASS

By Debra Adams Simmons, HISTORY Executive Editor

Almost 100 years after the discovery of King Tut’s tomb, a 3,400-year-old “lost golden city” has been unearthed that offers new details about ancient Egyptian civilization.

Archaeologists searching for Tut’s mortuary temple have unearthed a stunningly well-preserved royal metropolis (detail above). The lost city, called the “Rise of Aten” by archaeologists is believed to have been built by King Amenhotep III and inherited by his son. But the pharaoh Akhenaten abandoned his name, his religion, and his capital in Thebes (modern Luxor).

He built the short-lived city of Akhetaten (royal site name: Amarna), where he ruled alongside his wife, Nefertiti, and worshipped the sun. After his death, his young son Tutankhamun became ruler of Egypt—and turned his back on his father’s controversial legacy. The discovery may provide new clues about why Akhenaten walked away from the royal family.

Archaeologists were looking for Tut’s mortuary temple when the royal industrial city was unearthed. To the north is Amenhotep III’s 14th-century B.C. mortuary temple, and to the south is Medinet Habu, a mortuary temple built almost two centuries later for Ramses III.

“Archaeologists had hoped the space between might be the site of the mortuary structure where Tutankhamun’s subjects would have placed the food and funerary items they offered him when he died around 1325 B.C. Instead, they uncovered something very different: zigzagging mudbrick walls up to nine feet high and piles of ancient artifacts from the era of Amenhotep III, “ Erin Blakemore writes for National Geographic.

Structures are packed with everyday items, many of which relate to the artistic and industrial production that supported the pharaoh’s capital city. There are homes where workers might have lived, a bakery and kitchen, items related to metal and glass production, buildings that appear related to administration, and even a cemetery filled with rock-cut tombs, according to a statement from the archaeological mission, led by Zahi Hawass, an Egyptian archaeologist and former secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities. (Pictured above, decorative and ritual items such as small amulets.)

Because the city was initially discovered just months ago, archaeologists have only scratched the surface of the sprawling site, and understanding where this discovery ranks in Egyptological importance is hard to say at this time. The level of preservation found so far, however, has impressed researchers.

“It’s extraordinarily beautiful,” says Salima Ikram, an archaeologist and Nat Geo Explorer who leads the American University in Cairo’s Egyptology unit. She recalls walking through the well-preserved streets, surrounded by tall walls where, she says, she expected an ancient Egyptian to come around the corner at any moment.

“I don’t think you can oversell it,” she says. “It is mind-blowing.”