Egypt remains a land of history and mystique. Archeologists have spent years searching for new clues that might help us understand the culture of one of humanity’s cradles of civilization. However, at times, their findings can shine a light on aspects of ancient societies that clash directly with our contemporary values: slavery, authoritarianism, human sacrifices, unjust wars. One of such discoveries was made in the Egyptian city of Amarna, located a little over 200 milles north of Thebes. A set of graves recently excavated revealed a period in the country’s history when the lives of children were used solely to build a ruler’s religious vision.
Akhenaten was born Amenhotep IV, the son of a celebrated pharaoh, Amenhotep III, who brought peace to Egypt through a diplomatic approach to relations with rivaling kingdoms. While his father found success in seeking political stability, Akhenaten focussed his reign on religious reforms. Egyptians at the time worshiped over a thousand different gods, each a representation of a natural phenomenon or abstract concept. A couple of years after he inherited the throne in 1353 BC, Akhenaten got rid of this massive, polytheistic pantheon and replaced it with just one of its deities, the Sun, called Aten.
He changed his name to Akhenaten to honor his god and proceeded to build temples for adoration. The abundance of religious symbols of worship to other deities eventually drove him to move the capital of his empire away from Thebes and into a site unpolluted by their images, where a new city could be built from scratch, with Aten as its only god. Akhetaten, “Horizon of the Aten” —or Amarna, as it’s currently called—, was an imposing metropolis swiftly constructed on the shores of the Nile river.
It’s no secret that slaves were used to work on ancient Egypt’s marvelous buildings. But in 2015 an archeological excavation in the northern end of Amanra found a graveyard filled with the corpses of young men and children that led experts to suspect that Akhenaten’s city was partly erected by child slaves. Tombs have been a constant object of study in egyptology, but these were unlike any found before. Most cemeteries of ancient Egypt contain corpses of a variety of ages, considering child mortality, disease, and lifestyle. However, 90% of the tombs at Amanra contained remains of men, ages 7 to 25.
This uncommon majority of young, male corpses showed that the cemetery served as a mass grave for slaves who died while working on the edification of the buildings. The tombs were unadorned. There was no evidence of ceremonies performed at the grave-sites, and quite a few contained multiple bodies, as though they were dug quickly. The fact that most human remains show signs of severe injuries —such as spinal fractures— or signs of osteoarthritis, caused by heavy workloads, further supports this idea.
So many years have passed since the edification of Akhetaten that it’s hard to pinpoint where the child slaves came from or how they ended up working in the construction of the city. They could be Egyptian children or from a foreign population, captured to serve as free labour in the pyramids and temples. What is evident, if these conjectures are true, is that a pharaoh’s vision of religious reform was partially accomplished by sacrificing children. Even worse, the city was abandoned shortly after its edification, following the death of Akhenaten on the seventeenth year of his reign. Egyptians went back to their tradicional beliefs, ditching Aten as their sole god, and leaving the city to deteriorate. An ironic ending to the pharaoh’s utopia.
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