A brand new research, published within the American Journal of Archaeology, goals to point out that the traditional Egyptian metropolis of Akhetaten was deserted not due to a plague, as many have beforehand assumed, however for various causes completely.
Akhetaten, or present-day Amarna, was based in the course of the reign of Akhenaten, who was generally known as Amonhotep IV and who worshiped the solar god Aten. His new royal residence and the capital of the Egyptian kingdom was solely occupied for about 20 years till it was deserted not lengthy after the pharaoh’s demise.
It has lengthy been thought that the fast decline and mysterious abandonment of the town was attributable to an epidemic that was additionally cited in textual sources. Hittite plague prayers, for instance, claimed that Egyptian struggle captives introduced an epidemic to its empire. Letters from Amarna moreover point out a illness outbreak in Meggido, Byblos, and Sumur. Nevertheless, none of those sources particularly named an epidemic in Akhetaten.
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Researchers Gretchen Dabbs and Anna Stevens seemed to the cemeteries surrounding the Akhetaten, together with 4 used for most of the people: the South Tombs, the North Cliffs, North Desert, and North Tombs Cemeteries, containing between 11,350 and 12,950 burials. A complete of 889 interments from excavations carried out between 2005 and 2022 have been used within the research.
The stays point out such stress markers as low grownup stature, spinal trauma, linear enamel hypoplasia, and degenerative joint illness, all related to financial and social hardship. Whereas seven people have been discovered to have tuberculosis, different illness was uncommon among the many recovered stays.
Most our bodies weren’t embalmed and have been discovered with varied grave items, textiles, and mat coffins. Burial positions didn’t seem to have been executed rapidly, as can be anticipated in an epidemic. Paleodemographic modeling additionally indicated that the variety of burials fell inside anticipated vary.
The town additionally appears to have been systematically deserted. It appears that evidently it was even occupied after Akhenaten’s demise.
“Egyptological sources present plenty of completely different connections between Amarna and scary phrases like ‘plague’ and/or epidemic. A number of Amarna Letters point out plague. The Hittite Plague Prayers join an excessive mortality/illness occasion with the Egyptians. Members of the Royal household died at Amarna. Amenhotep III constructed plenty of statues to Sekhmet, a goddess of illness and pestilence in historic Egypt,” Dabbs advised Phys.org.
“It creates this community of circumstantial proof that hyperlinks Amarna and Akhenaten/the Royal household with illness from, largely, textual information written in and about different locations and/or occasions… As soon as the seed of that connection was planted, it grew to become a ‘truth’ by way of repetition,” Dabbs added.
