Entrevista a Barry Kemp

Interview: Barry Kemp on the Latest Findings of the Amarna Project Malcolm “There is no other site like it,” states the introductory paragraph on the website of the Amarna Project – the body which, since 2005, has been responsible for excavations and research at Tell el-Amarna, the short-lived capital city of the “heretic pharaoh” Akhenaten (King Tut's dad) in the 14th century BC. As a living site, Tell el-Amarna is perhaps unparalleled in all of Egypt in terms of scale, ready accessibility and quality of preservation. Professor Barry Kemp – of the University of Cambridge – is the director of the Amarna Project, and also the chairman of the Amarna Trust, a UK registered charity which provides most of the funding for the project. Kemp has directed excavation and archaeological survey at Amarna for the Egypt Exploration Society since 1977, and is one of the world’s leading authorities on the ill-fated ancient Egyptian city. It in a wide-ranging interview with Heritage Key, Kemp explains what makes Amarna so important, and details the history of excavations there. He also reveals the latest news on the construction of a brand new visitor centre at Amarna, and gives us a heads-up on plans for future investigations and study at the site. HK: Can you sum up for us first of all what is so very special about Amarna? BK: The uniqueness of Amarna is twofold. Firstly, it was created – so its founder the Pharaoh Akhenaten tells us – to be a sacred place. It was to be sacred in an absolute way: not for pilgrimage, but as a place where the sun-god (the Aten) would feel at home. It was thus a place of communication with the divine. The choice of the location and the layout are therefore crucial to understanding what was in the king’s mind. Later religions, including those that are with us now, came to centre on words. In the world of ancient Egypt, however, material expression of belief counted for a lot more. The study of material remains, the essence of archaeology, correspondingly counts for more, too. Amarna itself is central to the beliefs that Akhenaten promoted. Secondly, although the building of a residential city of several tens of thousands of people – that was necessary to support the court and service Egypt’s administration (read about daily life in Amarna here) – was incidental to Akhenaten’s vision, it has survived as a major source of information on the way that the people of ancient Egypt lived. It was laid out on what has remained a tract of desert, and this has ensured excellent conditions of preservation. It was abandoned within a short time (maybe fifteen years) so that it comes close to preserving a snapshot of buildings and artefacts. Its scope extends across the houses of poor and rich, across palaces and temples and tombs. HK: Give us a brief overview of archaeological work carried out at Amarna prior to the start of the Amarna Project. How much had already been excavated? BK: Amarna was the object of extensive archaeological clearances carried out in the first part of the 20th century. An expedition of the Deutsche Orientgesellschaft had excavated between 1911 and 1914, entirely within the housing areas. This reflected an interest in domestic architecture. Amongst the objects found was the painted Bust of Queen Nefertiti, in the house of a sculptor. Between 1921 and 1937, a British-based expedition, of the Egypt Exploration Society, took up the work and extended it to all parts of the site, including the central area of palaces and temples. By the time the expedition finished, most of the royal buildings had been cleared, and around half of the residential city. These clearances were done rapidly and, to some extent, should be regarded as providing preliminary accounts. HK: Tell us about the background of the Amarna Project – how did it come together, and how did you come to lead the project? BK: Early in my working life, I was invited to prepare a paper for a seminar entitled ‘Man, settlement and urbanism’, to be held in December 1970 at the Institute of Archaeology of London University. Writing it brought me to see that archaeology could be better used to address fundamental questions about urban society in ancient Egypt, and that Amarna was the best place to tackle this on a significant scale. Eventually, I asked the Egypt Exploration Society if they would support a new survey of Amarna. They agreed, and in 1977 I started. After two seasons of mapping they agreed to fund an excavation. In 2005, as a result of changes in British government funding to archaeology abroad, I set up the Amarna Trust (a registered charity) to raise funds specifically for Amarna. The Amarna Project now runs independently, funded largely by the Trust. HK: What are the main aims of the Amarna Project? And – for you – what have been the most important discoveries made by the Amarna Project to date? BK: The main research goals are a better understanding of why Amarna has its particular appearance (bearing in mind that it is a projection of Akhenaten’s thoughts), how it functioned as a major city and how its sizable population adapted to living there. We seek integration, between evidence from the site and ideas drawn from the general history of cities and from the workings of Egyptian society in the New Kingdom, the period in which Amarna is set. Individual discoveries of the kind that people associate with archaeology, fairly rare even in the days of the grand-scale clearances of the past, are not the proper measure of success. HK: What have you been concentrating on in your latest season of fieldwork? BK: Current fieldwork embraces surveying and excavation. The main excavation at present is a large cemetery of the ordinary people who lived in the city. The remains of the individuals, which are preserved only as bones not mummies, are an invaluable guide to health and living-standards, and the style of burial reveals aspects of belief and behaviour not otherwise accounted for. The burials were extensively robbed not long afterwards, so much work is needed to piece individuals together and to draw out a general pattern of how the burials were originally made. HK: Give us a sense of the scale of the Amarna Project – the number of people involved, the size of the area excavated etc? BK: The project has no full-time staff other than a local caretaker who looks after the expedition house. We maintain an office in Cairo not far from the Egyptian Museum. The research is done by experienced archaeologists and by other experts interested in material that accumulates in the storerooms maintained at the house. Fieldwork is supported by groups of men from the local villages hired for limited periods, usually of between one and two months at a time. The cemetery is a long narrow site along the sides of a wadi, extending for a distance of around 600 metres but only some 60 metres wide at the maximum. Excavation is contained within grids of five-metre squares and is necessarily slow to ensure full recovery of material. At the end of four seasons the total number of squares excavated is 27. HK: What are the unique challenges of the Amarna Project? I imagine the sheer size of the area you’re investigating must present many problems in itself?
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