What Did Ancient Egypt Look Like? (Cinematic Animation)

This was captured from Origins. A big thanks to Ubisoft for creating such a tremendous video game.

In this cinematic animation video, we explore some of the major Landmarks, architecture, art buildings and landscapes of ancient Egypt! We also take a look at daily life and what the people of Ancient Egypt got up to.

Akhenaten and Nefertiti

(d. c. 1362 b. c. e. and fl. 14th century b. c. e.) 

City of Amarna

 

Royal Palace

Egyptian rulers Akhenaten, the pharaoh of the eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, was the second son of Amenhotep III (r. 1391–54 b. c. e.) and Tiy (fl. 1385 b. c. e.). His reign ushered a revolutionary period in ancient Egyptian history. Nefertiti was his beautiful and powerful queen. He was not the favored child of family and was excluded from public events at the time of his father Amenhotep III.

Akhenaten ruled with his father in coregency for a brief period. He was crowned at the temple of the god Amun, in Karnak, as Amenhotep IV. From his fifth regnal year, he changed his name to Akhenaten (Servant of the Aten). His queen was renamed as Nefer-Nefru-Aten (Beautiful Is the Beauty of Aten).

The pharaoh initiated far-reaching changes in the field of religion. He did away with 2,000 years of religious history of Egypt. In his monotheism, only Aten, the god of the solar disk, was to be worshipped. The meaning of the changed names for himself and his queen was in relation to Aten.

Even the new capital that he constructed was given the name Akhetaton (Horizon of Aten). Making Aten the “sole god” curbed the increasing power of the priesthood. Earlier Egyptians worshipped a number of gods represented in animal or human form. Particular towns had their own gods. The sun god received the new name Aten, the ancient name of the physical Sun.

The king was the link between god and the common people. Akhenaten was the leader taking his fol- lowers to a new place, where royal tombs, temples, palaces, statutes of the pharaoh, and buildings were built. In the center of the capital city, a sprawling road was built. Designed for chariot processions, it was one of the widest roads in ancient times. The capital city Akhetaton on the desert was surrounded by cliffs on three sides and to west by the river Nile. The tombs of the royal family were constructed on the valley leading toward the desert. Near the Nile, a gigantic temple for Aten was built. The wealthy lived in spacious houses enclosed by high walls. Others resided in houses built between the walled structures of the rich. About 10,000 people lived in the capital city of Akhetaton during Akhenaten’s reign.

Artwork created during the reign of Akhenaten was different from thousands of years of Egyptian artistic tradition by adopting realism. Akhenaten, possibly suffering from a genetic disorder known as Marfan’s syndrome, had a long head, a potbelly, a short torso, and prominent collarbones. Representations of the pharaoh did not follow the age-old tradition of a handsome man with a good physique. The sculptor portrayed what he saw in reality, presumably at the direction of Akhenaten.

The background of the exquisitely beautiful and powerful queen Nefertiti is unclear. Some believe that Queen Tiy was her mother. According to others, she was the daughter of the vizier Ay, who was a brother of Queen Tiy. Ay occasionally called himself “god’s father” suggesting that he was the father-in-law of Akhenaten. She carried much importance in her husband’s reign and pictures show her in the regalia of a king executing foreign prisoners by smiting them. According to some Egyptologists, she was a coregent with her husband from 1340 b. c. e. and instrumental in religious reforms.

Some Egyptian scholars believe that in the same year she fell from royal favor or might have died. Nefertiti was probably buried in the capital city, but her body has never been found. Some researchers think that she ruled for a brief period after the death of Akhenaten. She had no sons, but future king Tutankhamun was her son-in-law. Known as the “first individual in human history,” the reign of Akhenaten forms an important period in Egyptian history. Despite his revolutionary changes, Egypt reverted to earlier religious discourse after his death.

Further reading: Aldred, Cyril. Akhenaten, King of Egypt. London: Thames and Hudson, 1991; David, A. Rosalie. The Making of the Past: The Egyptian Kingdoms. New York:­ ­ E. P. Dutton, 1975; Freed, Rita, Yvonne Markowitz, and Sue D’Auria, eds. Pharaohs of the Sun: Akhenaten, Nefer- titi, Tutankhamun. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1999; Kemp, B. J. Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization. New York: Routledge, 1989; Redford, Donald B. Akhenat- en: The Heretic King. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984; Reeves, Nicholas. Akhenaten: Egypt’s False Prophet. London: Thames and Hudson, 2001; Shaw, I. The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Amarna: An Egyptian City

Amarna (ancient Akhetaten) offers an unusually full view of an ancient Egyptian city. Planned as the new capital by the pharaoh Akhenaten (ruled c. 1353- 1337 BC), the city, rapidly built on previously undeveloped land, was inhabited for a short time only. Not long after Akhenaten's death, the city was abandoned in favor of Thebes and Memphis, the previously established royal centers of New Kingdom Egypt. Two factors have helped preserve this site. First, much of the city lies just inland from the flood zone of the Nile, and thus was neither covered with silt nor destroyed by farmers' ploughs. Second, the site was never rebuilt. For its short life and good preservation, Amarna is unusual among ancient Egyptian cities. Air-dried mud brick, with stone or wood for columns and certain details, was the standard building material. Walls have melted or eroded away, with much cut building stone carried off even in New Kingdom times, but nonetheless many ground plans have been recovered. Excavations conducted from the late nineteenth century until 1936, and again since 1977, have revealed much about this city, especially about its overall layout, its city center with palaces and temples, and its suburban houses. Additional evidence for the appearance of the city comes from pictures that decorated tombs.

The city proper lay on the east bank of the Nile, its various sectors linked by a north-south road (the Royal Road) c. 8km long. The territory of the city was much larger, however (an area measuring 16 x 13km2, marked by 14 inscribed boundary `stelai'), that extended across the river to the western desert and included farmlands and small villages. The city was not walled. Desert cliffs to the east were used for rock-cut tombs, including, in a remote valley, that of Akhenaten himself. The population of Akhetaten has been estimated at 20 000-50 000.

The architecture documents social distinctions. First, the great social difference between ruler and ruled is clearly expressed in the contrast between the grandiose royal palaces and the houses used by everyone else. The king resided in a fortified palace in the extreme north end of the city, but the city center contained two additional palaces. The first, the Great Palace, is a huge complex used for receptions and ceremonies. Its plan consists of flat-roofed buildings, courts - notably a large court lined with colossal statues of Akhenaten - and gardens, and larger columned reception halls. Decorations included wall paintings with images of the royal family. A covered bridge across the Royal Road connected the Great Palace with the King's House, a smaller palace in which the king met with officials and dealt with day-to-day affairs. This building contained the Window of Appearances, from which the king, accompanied by his family, could address the people.

Near the palace was the Great Temple, for worship of Akhenaten's preferreddeity, the Aten (life force depicted as a sun disk). Much of this large (730 x 229m2) compound was open to the sun - a contrast with the usual temple residence of Egyptian gods, a small, dark room. The open area contained several hundred offering tables. A butcher's yard and a large bakery complex located nearby contributed to the supply of offerings.

The city center also contained, in fairly symmetrical arrangement, storehouses, police barracks, and administrative buildings, including the Records Office in which the important Amarna Letters were found, clay tablets recording correspondence with foreign states in western Asia.

In outlying districts to the north and south of the city center, excavations of private houses have given a good idea of the lives of Amarnans of all social levels. Here overall planning was much looser than in the city center; Kemp has compared these districts to collections of villages or neighborhoods, with walled house compounds randomly arranged, interspersed with streets and garbage dumps. Houses of both rich and poor resembled each other in design, differing mainly in size. The typical house was built on a low platform inside its walled compound. The focus of the ground plan was a main hall with an adjacent twostory loggia, both with a higher roofline, held up by columns, with windows. The main room might contain a low brick platform where the owner and his wife would sit, a plastered stone washing place for water jars, and a shrine. Off this main room lay smaller rooms, bedrooms, toilets and bathrooms (from which liquid wastes drained into the ground outside), storage rooms, and stairs up to the flat roof. Outside the house, the compound would contain a garden, a well for water, servants' quarters, kitchens (with circular clay ovens for baking bread, open fires for the rest), storage areas, a shelter for animals, and a shrine to the Aten. These compounds served as economic centers, collecting food products from lands leased or owned, either near (in Amarna) or further away in the owner's home region, and for crafts or manufacturing. An example of this last is the house of the sculptor Thutmose; in his workshop was found the well-known painted bust of Queen Nefertiti.

Although Egyptian cities are otherwise poorly preserved, because of the silt covering brought by the Nile flood or subsequent rebuilding, our knowledge of the daily life of the ancient Egyptians is highly detailed. This we owe to Egyptian burial practices - in which tomb decorations and grave offerings reproduce the elements of the deceased person's material world as faithfully as possible - and to the preserving qualities of the dry climate (and burials were placed in the desert areas, beyond the fertile farm lands nourished by the annual rising of the Nile). In addition, the long life of this civilization ensured that these burial concepts continued to be practiced for over 3000 years, leaving us a wealth of examples to study.

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