The third north-south street was the East Road, located nearest to the
desert and the rock tombs. As the earlier Pharaohs in Thebes prepared
tombs for themselves in the nearby Valley of the Kings, so Akhenaton and
his courtiers cut rock tombs into the hillside east of Akhetaton. There
are twenty-five of these tombs with decorated walls honoring Aton and
his son, Akhenaton. Davies in his _Rock Tombs of El Amarna_ says,
The scenes in the tombs of El-'Amarna, though abundant and detailed,
yield us very limited information concerning men and things in
Akhetaten. Taken together, they only reveal one personality, one
family, one home, one career, and one mode of worship. This is the
figure, family, palace and occupations of the king, and the worship of
the sun--which also was his, and perhaps, in strictness, of no one
else. Into whatever tomb we enter, as soon as the threshold is past we
might fancy ourselves in the royal sepulchre. The king's figure,
family, and retinue dominate everything. It is his wife and children,
his family affection, his house and treasures which are here portrayed
in detail, and it is with difficulty sometimes that we discover among
the crowd of courtiers the official whose tomb it is, distinguished by
a little hieroglyphic label.[6]
The family tomb which Akhenaton built in the eastern desert, four miles
from the city, was used for the burial of his daughter, the princess
Meketaton. Most of the rock tombs, however, were never occupied. Within
a short time of the death of Akhenaton, his capital was abandoned and
Thebes again became the center of government. Everything of value was
removed from Akhetaton--even the wooden pillars of the houses! The very
stones of the Aton temple were dragged away to be used in the
reconstruction of temples desecrated in the days of Akhenaton's reform
movement. Thus the priests of Amon had their revenge.
IV
ATONISM
Akhenaton thought of himself as the apostle of Atonism, and he exhibited
a mystical devotion to his god. Yet Akhenaton was not the founder of the
Aton cult, which may be traced to antecedents in Egypt's earliest
religious traditions.[7] The Sinuhe story, recounting the death of
Amenemhet I (_ca._ 1960 B.C.), states that the deceased Pharaoh ascended
to heaven and was united to the disk of the sun (_itn_). While this may
mean only that the sun disk was the abode of deity, it suggests the
possibility that the Aton (sun disk) might itself become an object of
worship.