Focus (KFD): Transfer to Akhetaten

Question 1

Significance of Location

Answer 1

Akhenaten was placed:

• Halfway between Thebes (religious capital) and Memphis (administrative capital)
• No previous settlement at the site
• No previous dedication to another god
• On a barren plain with the agricultural land lying on the western bank of the Nile

Question 2

Construction and Administration Details

Answer 2

Additional revenue was necessary to build the new city and fund lavish offerings to the Aten.

• A new class of courtiers was created to administer the property
• Workers from Deir el-Medina were transferred to construct the new city

The king established the limits of the city with fourteen boundary stelae, each featuring the king’s formal announcement of the city and a vignette of the royal family worshipping the Aten.

EVIDENCE: Boundary Stelae

• “Bring me the royal courtiers, the great ones of the palace, the army officers, [and the] entire [entourage]: and they were quickly ushered to him.”

Question 3

Focus on the Aten

Possible Motives for Move

Answer 3

The move to Akhetaten would allow for total focus on the Aten to the exclusion of all other cults.

EVIDENCE: Boundary Stelae

• “See [Akhetaten], which the Sun-disc wishes to have built [for] himself as a memorial in [his] own name…And my father has conversed with me. It shall belong to me as a horizon of the Disc for ever and ever!”

Question 4

Maintaining Political Power

Possible Motives for Move

Answer 4

The king reduced the power of the Amun priesthoods and officials for the traditional cults, diverting their estates and income to his own purposes.

EVIDENCE: Jacobus van Dijk

• “…the king appears to hint at opposition to his religious reforms in the decree inscribed on a series of ‘boundary stelae’ defining the territory of Akhetaten. Opposition there must have been, especially among the dispossessed priestly establishment of the great temples of Amun at Thebes and probably elsewhere as well.”

Question 5

For His Safety (Attempted Assassination)

Motives for Move

Answer 5

Akhenaten’s life may have been threatened, causing him to flee for his safety.

EVIDENCE: Boundary Stelae

• “…worse than those things heard by any kings who had ever assumed the white crown.”

EVIDENCE: Nicholas Reeves on his Assassination Theory

• “Had there, in short, been an attempt on the life of the royal person? What could have been worse than regicide? If Akhenaten had narrowly escaped assassinaton—and his subsequent persecution of the Theban god does indeed suggest a grudge of considerable magnitude—then he was now moving cleverly and decisively to outflank the opposition.”