Tell el-Amarna
The Society’s first expedition to Tell el-Amarna, in middle Egypt, was mounted between 1901 and 1907 when Norman de Garis Davies recorded the nobles’ tombs and the boundary stelae of Akhenaten for the Archaeological Survey. Excavation proper began in 1920 and continued until 1936, under a series of highly-skilled Field Directors, revealing the plan of the temples and houses of this unique ancient city.
The first Director was Leonard Woolley, later to become renowned as the excavator of Ur. He was succeeded by Francis Newton and Henri Frankfort, before direction of the excavation passed in 1931 into the gifted hands of John Pendlebury, curator of the site of Knossos in Crete.
In addition to continuing the excavation of the town, the Society’s team also worked in the Royal Tomb, prepared for Akhenaten and his family in a nearby desert wadi.
The excavation of the town was published in three detailed volumes but the Royal Tomb records languished in the Society’s archives until, supplemented by his own research, they were prepared for publication by Geoffrey Martin in the 1970s and 80s.
In 1977 the Society returned to Amarna, under the directorship of Barry Kemp, to undertake a detailed survey of the site and prepare accurate plans of the area. These were published by the Society in 1993. From this survey work, the EES team moved on to excavate the Workman’s Village and, in more recent years, areas of the central city and Kom el-Nana, which is under threat from cultivation. The current Amarna expedition (now a project of The Amarna Trust) has also become a focus for research-based projects into aspects of ancient Egyptian life, such as brewing, baking and glass-making.