The Amarna Project has a full web-site of its own: www.amarnaproject.com

The Amarna Project embraces several areas of interest that reflect the human occupation of this part of the Nile Valley. Primarily they concern the ancient city of Tell el-Amarna itself, its private houses, its royal buildings, and all the evidence that can be used to reconstruct the kind of a place it was and what it was like to live there. The Project is involved in:

Research through archaeological fieldwork (carried out under the auspices of the Egypt Exploration Society) http://www.ees.ac.uk

Excavation

Survey

Study of material found

Care for the ancient buildings. Built from sun-dried mud brick (adobe), once exposed they steadily degrade through weathering. Many of the buildings have been exposed since the earlier decades of the 20th century. Over many years the Project has cleaned and repaired a selection of them:

The Small Aten Temple

The North Palace

A private house (Q44.1)

This type of work needs to be extended to other buildings, and consideration given to reburying others, a cost-effective way of reducing their continuing decay.

Developing the Amarna site museum. The building itself, located beside the Nile at Amarna, is due for completion in 2007. It is a project of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (designed by Mallinson Architects and Engineers, Ltd). The creation of the displays, utilising the large number of objects in store at Amarna, falls within the remit of the Project. Funding is needed for specialist documentation, conservation and mounting. Beyond that comes the development of an education outreach programme.

Understanding the communities of Amarna of other times. Akhenaten and his people were not the only ones to have lived at Amarna. Although it is not a natural population centre other people at other times have made it their home. It supported a flourishing monastic society in the early centuries of Christianity in Egypt. Centuries later the present spread of villages appeared whose changing way of life reflects the dynamics of modern Egypt.