Mortality Crisis at Akhetaten? Amarna and the Bioarchaeology of the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean Epidemic

The question of whether the ancient Egyptian city of Akhetaten (14th century BCE; modern Amarna) was affected by an epidemic has long been debated. Evidence such as the deaths of several Amarna-period royals within a short period and the identification of Egyptian soldiers as the source of the plague that affected the Hittite empire in Muršili II’s plague prayers has been cited to support the idea. More recently, the presence of burials containing multiple individuals in the Amarna cemeteries, high disease frequencies, and some unusual demographic characteristics have been used to support claims of an epidemic. This paper surveys the debate and then discusses archaeological and demographic hallmarks of epidemics identified by others at cities with historically documented disease outbreaks. Through this lens of expectation, we integrate archaeological and bioarchaeological data from ongoing work at Amarna’s cemeteries with pertinent data from long-running settlement excavations at the site to assess whether there is empirical evidence of epidemic disease at Amarna and the wider implications of this. We conclude that when the evidence is considered as a whole, there is little to currently suggest Akhetaten was affected by a mortal epidemic.

Content warning: Readers are advised that this article contains a photograph of human remains.