Nefertiti and Akhenaten: New God, New City, Ancient Enemies

Gayle Gibson is a respected Canadian Egyptologist and a Departmental Associate at the Royal Ontario Museum. She worked for over 20 years as a popular teacher, lecturer and Egypt specialist at the ROM, appears frequently on television as a "guest expert" and has led many groups around Egypt! Her main area of expertise as an Egyptologist concerns mummies and their coffins. Gibson was partially responsible for identifying Pharaoh Ramesses I, (Ramesses II's grandfather!) among the forlorn mummies at the old Niagara museum, and giving him an assist on the road home to Egypt.

Explore Akhenaten and the Amarna Age—Nefertiti, Tutankhamun, and rivals—in a talk series on Egypt's most controversial era.

Akhenaten, a king of the Eighteenth Dynasty, was called 'the first individual in history' by the Egyptologist James Henry Breasted. He's been called some other things, too: a madman, a fascist, or maybe Moses. Respectable scholars have almost come to blows about him.

Akhenaten was not the only larger-than-life figure in his world. In this series of talks we'll also meet his father, Amenhotep the Magnificent, his wife, Nefertiti, and son, Tutankhamun. Among the non-royals, we'll visit one of the greatest geniuses of human history, Amenhotep sa Hapu; the elusive Ay, Master of Horses, God's Father, and, eventually, pharaoh; and the brilliant, inscrutable General Horemheb who put an end to Akhenaten's Revolution and set the stage for Seti I and Ramesses the Great.

Akhenaten had sworn never to leave the city he established on virgin soil in Middle Egypt, Akhetaten, the place we call Amarna. Nefertiti enjoyed extraordinary prominence and power, perhaps becoming her husband's co-regent. The workers who built the new city did not share the royal obsessions. Amarna was no Utopia for them; their cemeteries tell of hard labour and cruel punishments.

Gayle Gibson's Bibliography for Talk: Nefertiti and Akhenaten: New God, New City, Ancient Enemies

Websites

Amarna Project This site will keep you up to date on all the projects at Akhetaten. There are medical (palaeopatholigical) reports, and reports on the archaeology of tombs and buildings. There is also a fine obituary of Barry Kemp. https://www.amarnaproject.com/

Books & Articles

Dobbs, Gretchen, and Anna Stevens. 2025. "Mortality Crisis at Akhetaten? Amarna and the bioarchaeology of the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean epidemic." American Journal of Archaeology, October 2025. Online, open access.

Kemp, Barry. 2012. The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. London: Thames and Hudson. In writing this book, Kemp drew upon a long lifetime of archaeology and over forty years excavation at Amarna. His deep experience led him to grace and humility in his theorizing, and careful description of what he could prove. Illustrated with many black and white images, diagrams and charts.

Stevens, Anna, editor. 2020. Amarna: A Guide to the Ancient City of Akhenaten. Cairo and New York: American University in Cairo Press. This fine book should be readily available and relatively inexpensive. It's filled with colour and black and white images and short essays on many aspects of Amarna life and archaeology.

Novels

Doherty, Paul C. 2003. An Evil Spirit out of the West, The Season of the Hyaena (2005) and The Year of the Cobra (2005). This is a trilogy of detective novels set in Amarna, narrated in the first person by Mahu.

Gedge, Pauline. The author of Child of the Morning, a novel of Hatshepsut, also wrote a trilogy about Amenhotep sa Hapu – The Twice-Born, and an interesting novel about Akhenaten and Amarna, The Twelfth Transformation. Gedge had good researchers working with her; she stayed current on Egyptological theories. Sometimes this means that her choice among the theories was of one that has since been abandoned, but that seldom interferes with enjoyment of the novels. She is very good at creating a vivid atmosphere and believable characters. Her novels are readily available in public libraries, and second-hand bookstores. Many of her Egyptian-themed books remain in print.

Videos

There are dozens of videos about Akhenaten and Amarna. Many feature recognized Egyptologists like Aidan Dodson. Some are not very reliable, so there's a bit of 'buyer-beware' in scrolling through YouTube to choose.

Kemp, Barry. Amarna Project January 2023. Professor Kemp used to give a talk every year about what had been done and discovered at Amarna that season. They are all on YouTube. If you link to this one, you should also find links to dozens of other talks by a kind and gracious man who was also the finest and most important archaeologist of the last century. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERdU9KCKpGw

Stevens, Ann, Aidan Dodson et al. Amarna: Egypt's Buried City. 2025 This is a very clear video about Amarna and recent discoveries there. The photography is excellent. As always, there are theories parading as facts, but for the most part, the archaeologists make a clear distinction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im1ZzIMhPtA