📍Amarna, Minya Governorate, Egypt
1353 BC – 1336 BC“I built Amarna from nothing — a new city on virgin ground in Middle Egypt, dedicated entirely to the Aten, the disc of the sun, whom I proclaimed the one true god. No other pharaoh had done anything like it: abandoning Thebes, rejecting the old gods, creating a capital that expressed a single radical religious vision. I lived here with Nefertiti and our six daughters, and in the art I commissioned you can see something almost never depicted in Egyptian history: a family, together, in the simple warmth of daily life.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📷 Location image · via Wikimedia Commons
Sources: Aldred, C. Akhenaten: King of Egypt (1988), Thames & Hudson; Redford, D. Akhenaten: The Heretic King (1984), Princeton University Press