Boundary Stelae Of Akhentaten

Williiam J. Murnane, Charles C. Van Siceln III

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136158780
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Egyptian Ancient History
• Index: History

First published in 1993. This is a new edition of Akhaenaten's boundary stelae, which now includes information about most of the boundary markers, the tablets were accompanied by statues of Akhenaten, Nefertiti and two of their daughters, all of which stood on low platforms that were raised above the level of the floor. In addition was the awareness that the statues at the site of Stela A were elevated to a greater degree than were the corresponding statues at other sites (insofar as this could be judged from published photographs). The evidence in the publication indicated, moreover, that Stela A, along with Stela B (some two miles south) were the latest of the boundary monuments to be inscribed, since both concluded with a colophon, dated to the end of Akhenaten's eighth regnal year, added to the standard text of the Later Proclamation found on these and other stelae of this series.

Chapter One Discovery and Previous Study of the Boundary Stelae

DOI: 10.4324/9780203038468-1

The monuments under discussion in this volume define the territorial limits of Akhet-Aten, a new cult center which the Pharaoh Akhenaten (c. 1350–1334 BCE)¹ built for his god, the solar orb or “Aten”, at the site known today as El-Amarna.² The eastern side of the Nile, where the hills that hug the riverbank to the north and south suddenly pull back to form a desert bay that runs to some ten kilometers in length and six in depth, was chosen to be the site of the city proper. This distinctive topography, which is not matched on the west bank (see Plate 1), influenced the manner in which Akhenaten delimited the frontiers of his new foundation.

Plate 1 Map of the El-Amarna region, with boundary stelae

Fifteen boundary stelae are known at present: three on the western side of the Nile, cut into the limestone cliffs that run along the edge of the cultivation (Stelae A, B and F); and twelve on the eastern side (Stelae J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, U, V and X), at a number of sites along the hills that recede to form the desert bay beside the river. The practice of identifying the stelae in this fashion (i.e., by a discontinuous series of letters) was begun by Petrie in 1892 (see below) to allow for the possibility that more of them might be found. Only one additional site -- Stela X, at the extreme north end of the eastern side -- was discovered, however, in the years between Petrie’s publication and the editio princeps of all the known stelae which Davies issued in 1908.³ The possibility of other such monuments cannot be excluded (especially on the west bank, where cliffs at the northern end give way to infrequent, low outcroppings of limestone that are often swamped by drifting sand). No other boundary monuments have been found since the beginning of this century, however, and further discoveries are unlikely without the wholesale movement of sand that would tax even the best funded of expeditions.

It has been recognized since the pioneering days of Petrie, Breasted and Davies that the stelae fall into two main groups. Stelae K, M and X are inscribed with what has been termed the “Earlier Proclamation”, in which Akhenaten describes his discovery of the site, his reasons for choosing it, and the proposed layout of the new city. The rest of the stelae (with the exception of Stela L, which belongs to neither series)⁴ bear the text of the “Later Proclamation”, with one or two addenda on most (if not all) of the tablets. The main text of this second decree, dated to Akhenaten’s sixth regnal year, briefly confirms the arrangements detailed in the Earlier Proclamation and specifies that the city’s dimensions are to be defined on both sides of the river by stelae set at the northern, central and southern limits of the hills. The Later Proclamation is ordinarily followed by a short text, known as the “repetition of the oath”, which describes how the king renewed his promises concerning the borders of Akhet-Aten in his eighth regnal year. The “colophon” text, which is also dated in year 8, follows the “repetition” on Stelae A and B and reconfirms the earlier enactment on the occasion of the “establishment” of these monuments on the western side of the Nile.

The contents of these various decrees and their relationship with one another will be discussed at appropriate points in the chapters that follow. In the remainder of this chapter we will confine ourselves to describing how these monuments were discovered and to outlining the research that has been done on them in modern times.

Not many westerners ventured south of Cairo before the nineteenth century of our era, and the banditry endemic to Middle Egypt discouraged most foreigners from lingering there. Thus it was not until the early 1700’s that Europeans were allowed a glimpse of Akhet-Aten and its antiquities. Stela A, by virtue of its proximity to modern settlements no less than by its relatively good preservation, is the most conspicuous of Akhenaten’s monuments in the region around El-Amarna, and western travellers began noticing it in the early years of the eighteenth century.⁵ The first European to call attention to it was the Jesuit Claude Sicard, who published a description of the site, along with a sketch, shortly after visiting it in 1714.⁶ Other travellers passed through the area later on, notably Richard Pococke⁷ and E. Jomard (the latter with the Napoleonic expedition at the end of the eighteenth century),⁸ but the stela itself was noted by only one other visitor, in 1777.⁹ By the earlier part of the nineteenth century, when more westerners were able to travel and even reside in Egypt, the monument of Tuna el-Gebel was one of the recognized sights on any visitor’s itinerary through Middle Egypt. Joseph Bonomi saw it early in 1825,¹⁰ and Robert Hay made a number of drawings at the site in 1827,¹¹ perhaps having learned of it from John Gardner Wilkinson.¹²

Gradually, the efforts of European antiquarians brought other boundary stelae to light. The largest of these monuments, Stela U, was found in 1840 by A. C. Harris and George Gliddon.¹³ Nestor L’Hôte of his last journeys through the Nile valley, having earlier attempted the first copy of the entire tablet of Stela A.¹⁴ Yet another of the sites on the eastern side of the river, most probably Stela S, was discovered and copied in the early 1840’s by George Lloyd of Brynestyn, who was travelling with E. Prisse d’Avennes.¹⁵ At this time Prisse also made a copy of Stela U, which he later published along with Lloyd’s copy of P and with a fresh copy of A.¹⁶ Based on his reading of the inscriptions (only stelae bearing the “Later Proclamation” were known at the time) Prisse was the first to realize that there should be at least six of these monuments in all: one other stela on the east bank (in addition to U and S) and two more on the west side, to the south of Stela A. These additional markers were yet to be found,¹⁷ but scholars’ increasing awareness of these ancient records was at least pointing them in the right direction.

Further discoveries were made by Karl Richard Lepsius, whose expedition visited El-Amarna briefly in 1843 and again, for a somewhat more detailed examination, in 1845. With ample time and the resources of the Prussian government at his disposal, Lepsius not only took in familiar sites such as Stela A (which by now was to be seen by virtually all serious travellers),¹⁸ but more remote locations as well. Although the expedition spent most of its time in the private tombs on the east bank, Lepsius discovered three more monuments at the south end of the site (Stelae K, M and N), as well as Stela R, which Prisse and Lloyd had missed a few years earlier when they had found Stela S nearby.¹⁹ The harvest was impressive, especially after only a week’s work, but a number of obvious gaps remained: on the west bank, the two southern stelae were still missing; and while the Prussian initiative had raised the total on the east bank to six, their asymmetrical arrangement around the site as a whole might have suggested that more might yet be found.

Perhaps the very wealth of material in Lepsius’ publication explains the prolonged period of inactivity that followed. More than forty years would pass before the ruins that the great Prussian expedition had found at El-Amarna were systematically explored.²⁰ Yet, as often happens, the next discoveries came tumbling on one another’s heels. Pride of place undoubtedly goes to the thorough survey that W. M. Flinders Petrie made on both sides of the river in 1892, and which he published two years later.²¹ Exploring the desert hills on foot, often with no more than a compass and a number of small notebooks as his equipment, Petrie brought the number of boundary stelae up to fourteen: six new sites were found by Petrie himself (B, F, J, L, P and V), while yet another (Stela Q) was discovered by Percy E. Newberry in 1893, just in time to be noted in Petrie’s publication of the following year.²² Petrie’s pioneering volume is disappointingly sparse, however, in its coverage of the monumemts themselves. Only a map, indicating locations, and brief descriptions of each site were published. Petrie’s documentation of the stelae had been more complete than this. His papers, now kept at the Petrie Museum at University College London, include a number of photographs, a squeeze of Stela S (later made into a cast for the museum), and hand copies of texts (Stelae F, J and U complete, with snippets from others: see below). Petrie’s journal, moreover, supplies a number of details that his notebooks lack: On Petrie’s visit to Stela J, for instance, his Egyptian guide told him that someone had already taken a paper squeeze of the text²³ --- an interesting observation, although no trace of this copy or its maker has ever surfaced. In any case, given the materials he had collected already, it is surprising that Petrie concerned himself neither with the history of the stelae nor (for the moment) with making their contents better known. Perhaps he shied away from the purely philological rigors that a publication of these inscriptions would have entailed. More probably, however, Petrie himself realized that he had merely laid the groundwork for a complete edition in 1892. Now that he had shown where the materials were, he was apparently content to leave their further study to others.

By coincidence, the desired understanding of the stelae’s contents was being realized, at least in part, even while Petrie was preparing his report. Not long after his departure the El-Amarna area had attracted the attention of the prolific French Egyptologist Jean Daressy. His work, undertaken independently of Petrie and published in an article that appeared in 1893, is an oddly spotty achievement. Daressy published copies of Stela S (which he identified with the monument that Lloyd and Prisse had found in the 1840’s) and of the nearby Stela R, which was still unpublished and virtually unknown. These copies, which were set in hieroglyphic type, made use of the variants found on Stelae A and U, published by Prisse, and thus they represent the earliest attempt to reach an integral text of the Later Proclamation.²⁴ Daressy’s is also the earliest printed translation of the complete composition, and despite numerous infelicities it was fundamentally sound in its understanding of the contents.²⁵ Somewhat less distinguished, however, was Daressy’s attempt to ennumerate the eight stelae that were known to him.²⁶ His list included unambiguous references to the following stelae, in their modern alphabetical order: A (= Daressy 8, which included an incomplete copy of the “colophon”, along with a translation), M(=D5), N(=D4),R(=D 2), S (=D 1) and U (=D 6). Curiously, the list did not include K (which had been found and even published by Lepsius). Instead, two other stelae were noted, although not in a fashion that lends itself to easy identification:

Daressy 3. described as being “on the mountain that runs along the south of the valley: stela at the top of which the king, the queen and their daughters are shown twice. The stela is flanked by two pillars that bear the royal titulary. The preamble is written vertically at the top of the stela beneath the disk.” The “two pillars” of this description can only refer to the inscribed statue groups, which in this case stood at each side of the tablet. The rest of this description, however, is more difficult to match with others of the known monuments. In aggregate, the details fit only two of the extant stelae, S and B, neither of which is possible here. Among the others, Stelae Q and R both have a “mirror image” representation of the royal family on both sides of the lunette, but neither one has the opening lines of the decree centered between the figures under the disk. Vertical columns of text are found in the lunettes of Stelae J and K (both unknown to Daressy), M(=D 5),N (=D 4), and U (=D 6), as well as X (as yet undiscovered); but in all these cases the inscriptions are arranged on one side, with a single representation of the royal family on the other. Of the remaining monuments on the east bank, Stela V is impossible owing both to its naturally decayed condition (already noted by Petrie) and its northerly location. Unless Daressy was grossly mistaken in his description, the only possible candidate that remains is Stela P, which had been “in tolerable condition” when Petrie had seen it the previous season and which he had identified with George Lloyd’s discovery, published on Plate XIII of Prisse’s Monuments.²⁷ Daressy, as we have seen, had identified this drawing with Stela S, and as we shall see (below, on pp. 77–78) he was undoubtedly correct. Moreover, Stela P resembled S sufficiently to make their confusion possible. Since all the other sites on the east bank are either accounted for or unsuitable, Daressy’s third boundary stela must be identified with P.

Daressy 7. “On the west bank (rive gauche) of the river, near Dirweh, there are statues of the heretic king and his wife, but the stela has not been carved disappeared.” Given the location (unless it refers to a site that has since been destroyed), this can only be Stela B. If so, Daressy’s failure to note the reasonably well preserved tablet is difficult to explain. It is possible that his notes and/or memory failed him, but perhaps he did not visit this site personally and relied on reports of the antiquities found there.

Despite its inaccuracies and omissions (including the continued neglect of the “Earlier Proclamation”, the existence of which had been known since Lepsius’ day),²⁸ Daressy’s study was a modest step forward. Fortunately, it would soon be superseded by more comprehensive efforts. Petrie’s volume, Tell el-Amarna, which appeared in 1894, eclipsed Daressy’s partial survey of the boundary stelae, even if it did not attempt to publish their contents. The first attempt to remedy this omission came four years later, when an expedition led by Georg Steindorff visited most of the stelae on the east bank. While only a popular account of this enterprise was ever printed,²⁹ Steindorff’s field work took a major step toward documenting the boundary stelae. The inscriptions on eight of the tablets (J, K, M, N, Q, R, S and U) were copied, photograp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• STUDIES IN EGYPTOLOGY
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Plates
• Preface
• Chapter One. Discovery and Previous Study of the Boundary Stelae
• Chapter Two. The Earlier Proclamation
• Chapter Three. The Later Proclamation
• Chapter Four. Architectural Features of the Boundary Stelae
• Chapter Five. The Boundary Stelae as Official and Historical Documents
• Appendix One. Fragments of the Boundary Stelae no longer in situ
• Appendix Two. Stelae L.
• Appendix Three. Principal Topics of the Inscriptions on the Boundary Stelae
• Endnotes
• Index of Egyptian Words and Phrases