A groundbreaking historiography of the reign of Akhenaten
More ink has probably been spilled on Akhenaten and his times ('the
Amarna Period') than any other figure from ancient Egypt, with a vast
range of interpretations and theories that can leave the uninitiated
utterly bewildered.
Against this background, Akhenaten: A Historian's View examines what
scholars have said over the years regarding key aspects of the period,
to produce a 'history of histories, ' exploring exactly how various
chains of arguments were arrived at--and how houses of cards thus
erected have subsequently come tumbling down. In particular, it teases
out ideas based on solid documentation from those based on theory and
fancy, and tracks ways in which new evidence became available, how it
was interpreted, and how it fed--or didn't--into the big picture.
This book thus fills a major gap in the literature of the Amarna Period
and also contributes to the wider, and much neglected, field of the
historiography of ancient Egypt.