Barry Kemp spent his career digging up Akhenaten’s abandoned city

Amarna had been dreamed up by Akhenaten, a radical among Egypt’s pharoahs. He said he had been led to the site by the Aten, the disc of the sun, whose cult as a single divinity he had established in place of Egypt’s myriad gods. The site lay to the east, facing tall cliffs through which the sun rose. Around 1344bc Akhenaten began to build a new city there. Temples, administrative buildings, warehouses and worker dwellings went up at breakneck speed. The pharoah ordered 20,000 people to move in; they found themselves on a bleak desert bluff above the Nile, with little drinkable water and where few crops could grow. Since he was absolute, no one had dared to tell Akhenaten that this was a bad idea. After 20 years the city was abandoned. For the next 31 centuries wind, sand and plunderers took it over.