The Archaeology Magazine website has been updated with an interview with Barry Kemp, who has been directing excavations at Amarna since 1977. The interview is timed to compliment the new exhibtion, Amarna, Ancient Egypt's Place in the Sun, opening at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in November. Here's an extract from the interview:
"One of the major unresolved and perhaps unresolvable difficulties with the Amarna Period is how to disentangle whatever hostility there might have been to Akhenaten's religious ideas with the dynastic politics of the day. The end of the Amarna Period witnessed the demise of a long established ruling family that was rooted in an even longer Theban ascendancy. It was the end of an era and the start of a new one. The advancement of those who took over might have dictated the agenda of court affairs just as much as dislike of Akhenaten's ideas. The fate of Nefertiti's mummy, even if we know what it was, is not likely to help us here."
See the above page for the entire interview.
I will post details of the travelling exhibition nearer its launch date 21st November 2006), but for those that want to see details about the Penn Museum exhibition see
http://www.museum.upenn.edu/new/exhibits/amarna/index.shtml
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My essay on Amarna art, Ramses II art, Shelley's poem Ozymandias, and mocking of patrons by artists, is here.
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