Quick questions on Akhenaten's new capital at Akhetaten: HSC Ancient History Personalities

Akhenaten's own explanation, inscribed on the boundary stelae that ring the site, is explicitly religious. Around Year 5 of his reign (c. 1348 BC), in the same period he changed his name from Amenhotep to Akhenaten, he chose a stretch of desert on the Nile's east bank, roughly midway between Thebes and Memphis, that had never been dedicated to any other cult.

Because Akhetaten was occupied for only around fifteen years and then largely abandoned, it survives as an unusually complete snapshot of a single short period, making it one of the best-excavated cities of the ancient world. Flinders Petrie carried out the first scientific excavation in 1891-92, establishing the site's basic topography. A German expedition led by Ludwig Borchardt worked the South Suburb from 1907 to 1914, discovering the sculptor Thutmose's workshop and, in 1912, the painted bust of Nefertiti found there. Norman de Garis Davies recorded the decorated rock tombs of Amarna's officials, including scenes of the Window of Appearance, between 1903 and 1908.

At the northern end stood the North Riverside Palace, probably the main residence of the royal family, close to the river.

South of the North City, a residential district mixed elite villas with smaller houses rather than sorting the population strictly by wealth.

This was the functional core of the state: the Great Temple of the Aten (the Per-Hai, or Gempaaten, complex), a vast walled precinct of open, roofless courts lined with rows of offering tables, built so that ritual happened in direct sunlight, unlike the dark, enclosed sanctuaries of Amun; the Small Aten Temple, likely used for the royal family's daily ritual; the Great Palace, the main state and ceremonial palace; the King's House, a smaller residence linked to the Great Palace by a bridge spanning the Royal Road, the Window of Appearance, from which Akhenaten and Nefertiti showed themselves publicly and rewarded loyal officials by throwing down gold collars, a scene repeated in several officials' tomb reliefs; and the records office, the "Place of the Correspondence of Pharaoh," where the cuneiform Amarna Letters were later discovered.

Further residential housing, again mixing large elite villas, such as that of the vizier Nakht, with smaller ordinary houses. The workshop of the sculptor Thutmose, excavated here, produced the famous painted bust of Nefertiti.

A small, walled settlement set apart in the desert to the south-east, isolated from the main city, housing the workers who cut the royal tomb, closely comparable to the workmen's village of Deir el-Medina at Thebes.

Cut into a wadi in the cliffs to the east, intended for Akhenaten and his family.