Amarna

A brief summary of all the archaeological works done on the site is necessary before going deeper into the actual work. Amarna was first discovered by the French Jesuit, Father Claude Sicard in 1714. He was the first to describe one of the stelae that delimited the boundary of the city. The first map of Amarna was established by geographers during Napoléon Bonaparte's expedition in Egypt in 1798-1799.1 The ruins of the city were later explored by Sir John Gardner Wilkinson in the 1820s and an another map of the city was made.2 In 1833, a British copyist, Robert Hay, explored some of the South tombs and reproduced reliefs and engravings found in them. The next expedition aimed, once again, at establishing Amarna's topography. Between 1843 and 1845, a German
Between 1907 and 1914, a German mission directed by Ludwig Borchardt and funded by the Deutsche Orientgesellshaft, a German society created in 1898 in order to promote public interest and archaeological research towards Eastern antiquities, further excavated the Main City and the southern district, where they discovered the famous bust of Nefertiti in 1912. From 1921 to 1936, the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) founded surveys and excavations of almost every area of the city. This society, founded in 1882 in London and which aims at exploring, surveying and excavating ancient sites in Egypt and Sudan in order to acquire a better knowledge and understanding of the past and raise awareness on the importance of protecting historical heritage, launched several missions directed by notably Thomas Eric Peet and John Devitt Stringfelow Pendlebury. The first reconstructions of scenes and facades were also made during this period, by the architect Ralph Lavers. Since 1977, the EES has launched several other missions in Amarna, directed by the British archaeologist Barry