"Nefertiti.he book of the dead" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake Nick)

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Three and a half thousand years ago Akhenaten inherited an empire at the peak of its international power and wealth. It was a time of astonishing sophistication and beauty, but also of vanity and brutality. The Empire had a police force – the Medjay – and extensive papyrus archives to keep tabs on its citizens. The affluent worried about going grey, enjoyed their hunts and love affairs, and spent large amounts of money on their tombs in preparation for the afterlife. There were career bureaucracies and an enormous workforce, both local and immigrant. This complex society depended on the waters of the Nile that weaved like a great snake through the desert, dividing the Egyptian world into the fertile Black Land and the barren Red.

Akhenaten chose to do something extraordinary with his riches. He and his Great Royal Wife, Nefertiti – 'the Perfect One' – initiated a period of revolution in religion, politics and art. Rejecting and abolishing Egypt's traditional institutions and gods, and challenging the powerful priesthoods, they built an extraordinary new city, Akhetaten, as a centre for the celebration of their new faith. At the heart of this was the worship of the Aten, now the only god, represented by the disc of the Sun.

Today little remains of the city. Outside the modern Amarna you can trace the line of the Royal Road, and the palaces and Aten Temples. You can visit the cliff tombs of the great men who worked for Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Mahu, the chief of police, Meryra, the High Priest, Parennefer, the architect of the Amarna style, and Ay, 'God's father' and influential adviser to the King. You can descend the many steps into Akhenaten's empty burial chambers.

But you cannot visit Nefertiti's tomb, for she, the most powerful and charismatic woman of the ancient world, mysteriously vanished in year 12 of Akhenaten's seventeen-year reign. Why she vanished when she did, and what happened to her, is the mystery this story explores.