Prof. Barry Kemp

ABOUT THE TALK
The British mission to Tell el-Amarna began a study of the Great Aten Temple in 2012. The temple occupies a central site in the city and is presented by Akhenaten as the most important of his projects at Amarna. Although a major construction in stone, following the end of his rule the stonework was systematically demolished down to the level of its foundations. The current work has two main aims. One is to make a fresh record of what is left through cleaning the foundations of accumulated sand and other debris. The other is to recreate the plan in fresh stonework although only to the height of one major course of stones above present ground level. The current work is also drawing attention to the huge amount of open space that surrounds the building and asking, was its purpose to provide the city's population with a place for large-scale gatherings?

ABOUT BARRY KEMP
Barry John Kemp, CBE, FBA is an English archaeologist and Egyptologist. He is Professor Emeritus of Egyptology at the University of Cambridge and directing excavations at Amarna in Egypt. His widely renowned book Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilisation is a core text of Egyptology and many Ancient History courses.

In 1962, Kemp joined the University of Cambridge an assistant lecturer. He was promoted to lecturer in 1969, Reader in Egyptology in 1990, and made Professor of Egyptology in 2005. He was also a Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge from 1990 to 2007. He retired from full-time academia in 2007, and was made professor emeritus. Since 2008, he has been a senior fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at Cambridge.

From 1977 until 2008, he has been the director of excavation and archaeological survey at Amarna for the Egypt Exploration Society. He continues his research of the Amarna Period of ancient Egypt as director of the Amarna Project and secretary of the Amarna Trust. He has also contributed to many highly regarded and widely used Egyptology texts, including Civilisations of the Ancient Near East, edited by Jack Sasson. He is a co-author of Bruce Trigger's Ancient Egypt: A Social History, which incorporates the work of many leading Egyptologists and addresses recent trends in the subject. Kemp states to be interested in developing a holistic picture of Ancient Egyptian society rather than focussing on the elite culture that dominates the archaeological record: This holistic approach involves explaining the present appearance of the site in terms of all the agencies at work.

ABOUT THE AMARNA PROJECT
The ancient Egyptian city of Tell el-Amarna (or simply Amarna) was the short-lived capital built by the ‘heretic’ Pharaoh Akhenaten and abandoned shortly after his death (c. 1332 BCE). It was here that he pursued his vision of a society dedicated to the cult of one god, the power of the sun (the Aten). As well as this historic interest Amarna remains the largest readily accessible living-site from ancient Egypt. It is thus simultaneously the key to a chapter in the history of religious experience and to a fuller understanding of what it was like to be an ancient Egyptian. There is no other site like it.

Website: https://www.amarnaproject.com

List of publications by Barry:

Barry Kemp (2018). Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilisation (3nd ed.). Routledge. ISBN 9781351166485.
Barry Kemp. Amarna Reports, parts 1–5. Egypt Exploration Society.
Barry Kemp (2015). Ancient Egypt: All that matters. Quercus. ISBN 978-1-44418620-8.
Barry Kemp (2012). The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Armana and Its People. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-29120-7.
Barry Kemp (2007). The Egyptian Book of the Dead. Granta Books. ISBN 978-1-86207-913-7.
Barry Kemp (2005). Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilisation (2nd ed.). Routledge. ISBN 0-415-23550-2.
Barry Kemp (2005). 100 Hieroglyphs: Think Like an Egyptian. Granta Books. ISBN 1-86207-658-8.
Barry Kemp (2000). Bricks and metaphor. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10, 335–46. A comparative essay on the theme 'Were cities built as images?'.
Barry Kemp (1998). More of Amarna's city plan. Egyptian Archaeology 13, 17–18.
Barry Kemp (1992). Amarna from the air. Egyptian Archaeology 2, 15–17.
Barry Kemp (1989). Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilisation (1st ed.).
Barry Kemp (1986). Tell el-Amarna, 4000 word entry in the Lexikon der Ägyptologie, ed. W. Helck and W. Westendorf, Band VI. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 309–19.
Barry Kemp (1983). Tell el-'Amarna. In H.S. Smith and R.M. Hall, ed., Ancient Centres of Egyptian Civilization, pp. 57–72. London: Egyptian Education Bureau.
Barry Kemp (1981). The character of the South Suburb at Tell el-'Amarna. Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft zu Berlin 113, 81–97.
Barry Kemp (1977). The city of el-Amarna as a source for the study of urban society in ancient Egypt in World Archaeology 9, 123–39.


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