Lost city of Amunhotep III discovered at Luxor

[Wistman]

Now I'm reading articles online referring to the city as "Aten".   wtf  

including sites like these

https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/5-strange-discoveries-from-egypts-lost-golden-city/

https://www.discovery.com/exploration/3-000-year-old-lost-city-found-in-egypt

I'm also reading further references to Zahi's claim to have unearthed 'three complete palaces'.

This is getting ridiculous.

Edited April 16, 2021 by Wistman

[Wepwawet]

The second link redirects to "foodnetwork.com" and a blank screen with the message that it is not available in your country.

It seems that Hawass is flailing about trying to give a unique name to this site, which has failed I would say, and so is calling it Dazzling Aten either to say that he thinks it is a part of a larger Malkata area, probably, or, being cynical, knows that joe public, if they have heard of Malkata, will not know it's original name and think Hawass has found this, to them, "new" city. I would give the finding of the site an A, but for presentation only a C+

[Wistman]

 

23 minutes ago, Wepwawet said:

The second link redirects to "foodnetwork.com" and a blank screen with the message that it is not available in your country.

It seems that Hawass is flailing about trying to give a unique name to this site, which has failed I would say, and so is calling it Dazzling Aten either to say that he thinks it is a part of a larger Malkata area, probably, or, being cynical, knows that joe public, if they have heard of Malkata, will not know it's original name and think Hawass has found this, to them, "new" city. I would give the finding of the site an A, but for presentation only a C+

The Discovery link?  Works fine for me.

Not important anyway really.

I'm getting a bad feeling about the misdirection and errors.  I hope the field report is...ahem...accurate, whenever that comes out.

[docyabut2]

I still think Akhenaten was the Moses of the Bible ,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten

 

[Wepwawet]

15 hours ago, docyabut2 said:

I still think Akhenaten was the Moses of the Bible ,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten

 

Physically or as the basis for a memory existing for 800 or so years outside of Egypt.

[Wistman]

Trying to excavate some of the discrepancies between what is being reported and what is otherwise known.  Here's what's being reported as of now.

Business Insider (Apr 18... just.4 hrs ago) :

Quote

In 1935, a French excavation team searched for the city — which may be the largest ever built in Ancient Egypt — but never found it. 

The plates from that French report have shown us they did in fact find the city's remains within the limits of their concession, including wavy walls.  Is this the only reference to his claim that no other missions could find it?

Quote

"This is a place we knew existed," [Betsy] Bryan said. But its precise location had eluded diggers for almost a century.  "Many foreign missions searched for this city and never found it," Hawass said in a press release, adding it may be the largest ancient city ever found in Egypt.

In 1934 and 1935, a French excavation team searched Luxor for the "lost golden city" but came up empty, Hawass said. 

That effort failed because the French archaeologists had been looking in the wrong place, Hawass added. Figuring the city would be clustered around buildings dedicated to the Pharaoh who built it, the group searched next to the Collosi of Memnon: twin statues that depicted Amenhotep III. The Pharaoh's mortuary temple was nearby as well — but they had no luck finding the city.

"It never occurred to them to look slightly south," Bryan said.

Okay....  I wonder which other teams were granted concessions to search the area...besides Zahi that is, he did say teams.  I suppose there may be problems getting at land which is currently cultivated, which some of the reports from Malkata have noted is a problem, ie. that some of the settlement near the palace sits beneath cultivated fields.  But, there's plenty of open space to dig...nobody else other than the French bothered?   It's not exactly a remote place, right there in the middle of things.  And Hawass's dig has shown that the city reaches up to the Amenhotep III temple, at least.  He keeps talking about things going northward.  So how did the French get it wrong again?  I'm confused.

Quote

The city, named "tehn Aten," or the dazzling Aten, was built by Amenhotep III, King Tut's grandfather. He is considered the wealthiest Pharaoh who ever lived.  [...]  Only one-third of Aten has been uncovered so far.

Yipes, which name are we using again?  And, I'm guessing, publications claiming the city's name as "Aten" must be seeing the descriptive modifier as not part of the city's name.  But what happened to 'Rising of the Aten'?.  I'm so confused...

Quote

But the city is likely far larger, Bryan said, stretching all the way to the Pharaoh's palace at Malkata, which is almost 2 miles south of the Colossi of Memnon.

Finally...

Quote

This discovery shows that Amenhotep III believed in Aten too, Hawass said — which explains why the Pharoah named the city "tehn Aten," meaning the dazzling Aten.

Hawass didn't know that Amunhotep III revered the Aten?  Huh?

Quote

After taking over from his father, Akhenaten — King Tut's father — briefly lived in Aten.

So there's no dispute about the identity of KV55 mummy.

I was hoping there'd be a bit more referencing the claims I'm reading that there's another palace to the north (since that would be another pairing with Akhetaten), but none of that in this article.

eta:   https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-egyptian-archaeologists-uncover-lost-golden-city-luxor-2021-4#hawass-said-theres-plenty-more-to-find-of-the-lost-golden-city-since-only-one-third-of-it-has-been-uncovered-so-far-17

Edited April 18, 2021 by Wistman

[Wepwawet]

3 hours ago, Wistman said:

Trying to excavate some of the discrepancies between what is being reported and what is otherwise known.  Here's what's being reported as of now.

Business Insider (Apr 18... just.4 hrs ago) :

The plates from that French report have shown us they did in fact find the city's remains within the limits of their concession, including wavy walls.  Is this the only reference to his claim that no other missions could find it?

Okay....  I wonder which other teams were granted concessions to search the area...besides Zahi that is, he did say teams.  I suppose there may be problems getting at land which is currently cultivated, which some of the reports from Malkata have noted is a problem, ie. that some of the settlement near the palace sits beneath cultivated fields.  But, there's plenty of open space to dig...nobody else other than the French bothered?   It's not exactly a remote place, right there in the middle of things.  And Hawass's dig has shown that the city reaches up to the Amenhotep III temple, at least.  He keeps talking about things going northward.  So how did the French get it wrong again?  I'm confused.

Yipes, which name are we using again?  And, I'm guessing, publications claiming the city's name as "Aten" must be seeing the descriptive modifier as not part of the city's name.  But what happened to 'Rising of the Aten'?.  I'm so confused...

Finally...

Hawass didn't know that Amunhotep III revered the Aten?  Huh?

So there's no dispute about the identity of KV55 mummy.

I was hoping there'd be a bit more referencing the claims I'm reading that there's another palace to the north (since that would be another pairing with Akhetaten), but none of that in this article.

eta:   https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-egyptian-archaeologists-uncover-lost-golden-city-luxor-2021-4#hawass-said-theres-plenty-more-to-find-of-the-lost-golden-city-since-only-one-third-of-it-has-been-uncovered-so-far-17

Barry Kemp and David O'Connor excavated in the general area in the 1970s. I'll need to find a more detailed report on that.

Aten sounds good, doesn't it, so lets use it for everything. Come to the Aten cafe on Aten street and sit outside under the gaze of the Aten. Have some Aten soup, and here's some Aten bread to dunk in it, and why not try our delicious Aten wine in an Aten crystal glass.

KV55? the tomb of the Aten of course

Hawass in the photo on that link looks like Screaming Man E/Pentawere

 

[Wistman]

1 hour ago, Wepwawet said:

Barry Kemp and David O'Connor excavated in the general area in the 1970s. I'll need to find a more detailed report on that.

Aten sounds good, doesn't it, so lets use it for everything. Come to the Aten cafe on Aten street and sit outside under the gaze of the Aten. Have some Aten soup, and here's some Aten bread to dunk in it, and why not try our delicious Aten wine in an Aten crystal glass.

KV55? the tomb of the Aten of course

Hawass in the photo on that link looks like Screaming Man E/Pentawere

 

There's this, 1974, but I don't have a Wiley Online Library subscription:  

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1095-9270.1974.tb00863.x 

here's a photocopy version of that, difficult viewing though:

https://imalqata.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/kemp-and-oconnor-an-ancient-nile-harbour-university-museum-at-the-birket-habu-1974.pdf

I read it, interesting and mostly about the harbor and its surroundings.  Here's the iMalqata page with their links:

https://imalqata.wordpress.com/about/

If you have JSTOR access , there's this on the Temple of Malkata: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27801605?seq=1 

Quote

Abstract

This paper presents the archival material of the Metropolitan Museum of Art concerning the temple of Malkata, a monument virtually unknown to Egyptologists, as it has never been published. Besides the detailed description of its individual rooms, this study focuses upon the architectural form and use of space of this temple in order to argue that the officials/architects of Amenhotep III studied the Old Kingdom texts and/or monuments, in order to properly organize the Pharaoh's Second jubilee, and hence created a specific architectural design style that closely resembles its Old Kingdom predecessors.

BrownU/David O'Connor has this download (only), interesting pertinent notes on AE royal palaces, esp. 18D starting p. 78:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwim5pHH5ojwAhUEnOAKHbDgBXYQFjAQegQIBxAD&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcanvas.brown.edu%2Fcourses%2F949659%2Ffiles%2F47187928%2Fdownload%3Fwrap%3D1&usg=AOvVaw05fL2ypK00CllxVJUMCJhm

I'm not seeing what I want though.  Not sure any of this will suit you either.  Still looking around...

 

Edited April 18, 2021 by Wistman

[Wepwawet]

Looking at all the info on these many previous digs, it looks like this new dig has been made on the basis that it is one of the few areas yet to be excavated, and maybe, from it's location, not on the basis of it potentially being the mortuary temple of Tutankhamun, but just a case of let's dig here and see what we get. I'm not saying that this temple could not have been there, which it isn't anyway, but that it would put it out of the at least rough alignment of those temples that were extant in the time of Tutankhamun, and that rough alignment is along the edge of cultivation. But, being cynical, if you bring in the name of Tutankhamun it gets attention, while other names do not. Something like. I was looking for the lost GOLDEN PALACE OF THE GOLDEN KING TUTANKHAMUN, and found these workmens houses with some nice pottery and groovy walls, but the GOLDEN KING TUTANKHAMUN might have once passed by them, wow!.

[Wepwawet]

Found this video from a few years back, French but with an English talk over. It details work at the mortuary temple of Amunhotep III, and some graphics of how it may have looked when new. In some shots the new site can be clearly seen, thought it's just sand.

 

[Wepwawet]

Missed this video of "The Dazzling Aten" from nearly a month back. Sound is not so good, but it's a long walkthrough showing that this is a city were the population seems to have just picked up their bedding, clothes and storage chests and walked away. What I had not seen on previous videos were rooms with walls almost up to where the ceiling would have been, and complete doorways, very low, but interestingly with a mix of rounded and pointed head jambs. The workers village, where door frames survive to that hight, are squared off, the usual way for their architecture at that time, so to see rounded arches and gothic type arches is something different. However, surviving granaries have arched roofs, so the arch itself is not unique, but not well attested for other buildings. The doors start to appear at about 9:40 in.

 

Edited May 7, 2021 by Wepwawet