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An undisturbed skeleton of a man in the extended, supine posture typical at the cemetery; and the burial of a man with a common pattern of disturbance in which the upper torso has been jumbled by robbers and the skull removed.

Builders under Pharaoh Akhenaten worked so hard they broke their backs

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When ancient Eygptian pharaoh Akhenaten ordered the construction of the new city of Amarna dedicated to the sun god Aten, more than 20,000 people moved there to do the back-breaking work. The work was so strenuous that it resulted in numerous broken bones, including many fractured spinal bones, says a new study by archaeologists who examined skeletal remains from a commoners’ cemetery at Amarna.

“Adult trauma levels at Amarna were also extremely high, with 67.4 per cent (64/95) of adults exhibiting at least one healed, or healing, fracture. This is again consistent with a population working at hard and somewhat dangerous jobs,” says a paper in the journal Antiquity by Barry Kemp, Anna Stevens, Gretchen R. Dabbs, Melissa Zabecki and Jerome C. Rose.

The team only examined skeletons with more than 50 percent of the bones remaining and found that in addition to probably work-related fractures and degenerative joint disease, they also had smaller-than-average stature suggesting lifelong malnutrition and other hardships.

The same team announced earlier this fall that five men with wounds to their shoulder blades, exhumed from the same cemetery, may have been punished by being stabbed there for unknown crimes. A wall carving from ancient Egypt spells out the stabbing punishment for stealing animal hides. What these men did wrong or who they were is unknown.

Amarna was built around 1330 BC as a place where Aten alone could be worshiped. Other gods were worshiped in other cities, but no other god ever had been or was meant to be worshiped at Amarna, 350 kilometers (217 miles) south of Cairo, the paper says. The authors of the paper have been analyzing and researching the South Tombs Cemetery in Amarna since 2005.

“The site [of Amarna] reveals something of Akhenaten’s intentions, for it was his wish to purify the cult of the sun (the Aten) by creating a place for worship that was uncontaminated by previous associations, human or divine,” the paper states. “Amarna also became home, almost incidentally, to a population of perhaps 20–30000 people—officials, soldiers, people involved in manufacture and even more whose place in life was to serve others—who followed the royal court to this new city and set about re-establishing their lives and livelihoods.”

Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their children bask in the rays of the sun, Aten, a god that Akhenaten raised above all others.

Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their children bask in the rays of the sun, Aten, a god that Akhenaten raised above all others. (Photo by Andreas Praefcke/Wikimedia Commons)

The authors say the city of Amarna was built quickly, in part because of introduction of a standardized limestone building block measure 52.5 by 25 centimeters (20.7 by 9.85 inches). The weight of this block was about 70 kilograms or 154 pounds. The workers carried the blocks production-line style, handing stones down the line to the next person in line. The authors speculate that these heavy blocks caused many of the bad injuries, including degenerative joint disease and fractures, in the Amarna workers.

The burials in the South Tombs Cemetery were simple, unlike the elaborate tombs of the rich of ancient Egypt. People wrapped their dead in shrouds of linen. Burial containers were rigid mats made of plant material that sometimes had ropes attached for easier carrying from the city to the densely packed cemetery.

Most of the graves were marked with low cairns of limestone builders, some with memorial steles or gravestones. A few of the graves had small limestone pyramids. Because of erosion and looting very little remains of these surface grave markers, the paper says.

Most of the interments excavated thus far have been disturbed by grave robbers, who tended to rummage through the upper part of the body, probably looking for jewelry, but left much of the bone within the grave. It is usually still possible, nonetheless, to gain a good overall understanding of the nature of each burial, and to reconstruct the skeletons to a substantial degree.

“Grave goods, or items that might have been left beside the grave as offerings during or after burial, are rare.” The team found pottery vessels, most of them fragmentary, which they assumed were used to contain food and beverage; amulets and jewelry among the wrappings or on the body; and cosmetic items, including mirrors, kohl tubes and travertine vessels.

Some of the simple grave markers and steles at Amarna commoners’ cemetery; note the pyramidal shape of the bottom two. (Antiquity photos)

Analysis of the skeletons tells a sad tale of the life of the people there. Some of the skeletons showed signs of early childhood hunger, anemia and scurvy. As far as workload injuries, the team found severe degenerative joint disease in at least one limb in nearly 60 percent of the skeletons.

“The spine also exhibited high frequencies of DJD development (56.7 per cent presence; 35.6 percent severe), with the most common severe manifestation being observed in the lumbar region,” the authors wrote. In other words, the lower back was badly injured from the labor.

Featured image: An undisturbed skeleton of a man in the extended, supine posture typical at the cemetery; and the burial of a man with a common pattern of disturbance in which the upper torso has been jumbled by robbers and the skull removed. (Antiquity photo)

By: Mark Miller

 

Comments

Which is Akhenaton said: "You are idle, you are idle, you will have to make the same number of bricks, even if you have no straw.". But what the Torah deliberately omitted from its account, was that the generic 'pharaoh' was these people's own king.

Yes, Aaron and his brother Moses were Akhenaton and his brother TuthMoses. See 'Jesus, Last of the Pharaohs'.

This people may have suffered from life long malnutrition and may have had small bodies, but they had a lot more strength than the average modern person if one person lifted a 70 kilo block.

Most people today have trouble lifting and carrying 50 pounds, much less 154 pounds.

What makes people so cruel to each other? Patriarchy, from the patriarchal family head to the pharoah and our current masters called billionaires, not pharoahs. The mass murder of others always has profited the rich in patriarchal societies and it continues to this very day and will continue tomorrow.

Tom Carberry

I once read that one of the reasons that the Exodus story can't be true is that in the supposed time of the Exodus 'Jewish lands' were a province of Egypt. So in a way they actually were in Egypt..........

The Jews are like the Brian Williams of history. They insist that they were there, but the evidence points to the contrary.

Immanuel Velikosky made the Amarna letters one of the center pieces of his Ages in Chaos. He cogently argues based on linguistic and other evidence, that the generally accepted timeline of the Amarna letters misses the mark by 4 to 5 hundred years to old.

If I remember correctly, Velikovsky dates the Amarna letters at around the time of Omri and Ahab.

Velikovsky makes a convincing case, while Egyptologists make a very unconvincing case for their own timeline, based on dubious historical records, such as Manetho, a priest writing many centuries later.

Tom Carberry

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Mark

Mark Miller has a Bachelor of Arts in journalism and is a former newspaper and magazine writer and copy editor who's long been interested in anthropology, mythology and ancient history. His hobbies are writing and drawing.

 
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