Free Republic

Archaeologist Mary Shepperson, who previously dug with the Amarna Project, reported in The Guardian this week on the discovery of "the simple desert graves of the ordinary Egyptians who lived and worked in Akhenaten's city and never got to leave." "They paint a picture of poverty, hard work, poor diet, ill-health, frequent injury and relatively early death," ... "As we started to get the first skeletons out of the ground it was immediately clear that the burials were even simpler than at the South Tombs Cemetery, with almost no grave goods provided for the dead and only rough matting used...

...the burials of the deceased of the estimated 30,000 commoners and laborers remained elusive – until 2001, when archaeologist Barry Kemp of the University of Cambridge began to see the first signs. Kemp has directed excavations and surveys at Amarna for the Egypt Exploration Society since 1977. “The puzzle seems now to have been solved,” says Kemp. “ It has come about through the desert GPS survey begun in 2001 and continued in subsequent years. First came the discovery of two cemeteries (clearly robbed) of what must be relatively poor graves on the flat desert not far from tomb no....