The Rock Tombs of El-Amarna - Pt.1 : The Tomb of Meryra

Between 1902 and 1907 Norman de Garis Davies, working under the auspices of the Egypt Exploration Fund (now Society), conducted a comprehensive architectural and epigraphic survey of the tombs of Akhenaten's courtiers, in the cliffs and wadis to the East of the modern village of Tell el-Amarna in Middle Egypt.

This pharaoh's reign, which began in approximately 1353 BC, was a time of great religious and political upheaval, and saw the foundation, at Amarna, of an entirely new capital city, Akhetaten.

It was also a time of great innovation and change in art, not least in the style and content of scenes carved in two dimensions.

This change is abundantly evident in the surviving wall decoration in these tombs, which Davies captured so skillfully, and which was then made available to the scholarly world and the wider public through the six-volume publication resulting from his work.