Readers familiar with ancient Egypt may notice something about The Poisoner's Throne: the story moves between Akhetaten (modern Amarna) and Memphis, but never visits Thebes. Given that Thebes was the great religious capital of the New Kingdom, home to Karnak and the Valley of the Kings, its absence might seem surprising.
It was a deliberate choice, grounded in what the historical and archaeological evidence actually tells us about where power resided during Tutankhamun's early reign.
Where Was the Court?
When Tutankhamun came to the throne around 1332 BCE, the royal court was still at Akhetaten, the city his father Akhenaten had built in the desert of Middle Egypt as the center of his religious revolution. The Berlin stele (ÄM14197), which shows the young king still bearing his birth name Tutankhaten while offering to Amun and Mut, confirms that the coronation took place before the court left Amarna. Marc Gabolde has noted that evidence for Tutankhamun as king at Amarna is limited to ring bezels; there are no stamped bricks, reliefs, or paintings, and he is not mentioned in any private tombs there. The city was being abandoned almost as soon as he took the throne.
The question of where the court went next has occupied scholars for over a century. Multiple lines of evidence point to Memphis emerging as the primary royal residence quite early in the reign. Aidan Dodson observes in Amarna Sunset that Memphis became "much more of an equal partner with Thebes" under Tutankhamun, and that the Restoration Stela, though erected at Karnak, appears to have been issued from Memphis. The significant number of high-status private tombs built at Saqqara during this period, rather than at Thebes, reinforces the picture of a northward shift in political gravity.
Russell Jacquet, drawing on the work of Rolf Krauss and Jared Miller, argues for a rapid timeline: departure from Akhetaten after the wine harvest of Year 1, a brief period at Thebes, and relocation of the royal residence to Memphis by Year 2. Military considerations also favored Memphis. From there, it was far easier to organize expeditions to Western Asia, where Egypt was attempting to recover territory lost during Akhenaten's reign while the Hittite threat grew.
The Name Change
The shift from "Tutankhaten" to "Tutankhamun" is one of the most symbolically charged moments of the reign. In The Poisoner's Throne, I place this event at Memphis during the Nehebkau Festival, the festival of binding that marked the first day of Peret (the growing season). This is earlier than the conventional dating of the Restoration Stela to Year 4, but there is genuine scholarly disagreement about the precise timing of the name change. What is clear is that it was a political and religious act of enormous significance, one that the regent Ay would have wanted to stage for maximum impact before the northern priesthoods.
The Restoration Stela itself was erected at Karnak, but there is no requirement that the decree it published was proclaimed there. Copies of royal decrees were routinely sent to temples throughout Egypt for inscription. The decree could be proclaimed in Memphis and sent south to Thebes for carving, which is how I handle it in the novel.
A River Runs One Way (at a Time)
There is also a practical geographic point that fiction sometimes overlooks. Amarna sits in Middle Egypt. Memphis lies roughly 300 kilometers to the north, downstream. Thebes lies roughly 400 kilometers to the south, upstream. A royal flotilla departing Amarna for Memphis would travel north with the current. Thebes is in the opposite direction entirely. The idea of a "stopover" at Thebes on the way to Memphis is a geographical impossibility; it would require sailing past Memphis, continuing south for days, and then doubling back.
This matters for the narrative. When Ay engineers the court's relocation in the novel, he moves decisively northward toward a city where he has forty years of established relationships and the support of the Ptah priesthood. The urgency and political logic of that choice would be undermined by an implausible detour of several weeks in the wrong direction.
A City Held in Reserve
Thebes does appear in The Amarna Mysteries. By the final book, The Dakhamunzu Affair, the story demands it. (The full scope of the four-book arc is described in the series overview.) Thebes is where the Valley of the Kings lies, and the Valley is where certain threads of the series must come together. I wanted the reader's first encounter with that landscape to carry everything the story has built toward across four novels, not to arrive as a sightseeing waypoint in Book One.
The geographic structure of the series mirrors the political reality of the period. Akhetaten is the dying revolutionary city where the story begins. Memphis is the traditional capital where power is consolidated and where the central investigations unfold. Thebes is the ancestral necropolis, held in reserve for the moments when it matters most.
Dodson, A., Nefertiti, Queen and Pharaoh of Egypt: Lives and Afterlives (2020)
Dodson, A., Amarna Sunrise: Egypt from Golden Age to Age of Heresy (2014)
Dodson, A., Amarna Sunset: Nefertiti, Tutankhamun, Ay, Horemheb, and the Egyptian Counter-Reformation (2009)
Gabolde, M., D'Akhenaton à Toutânkhamon (1998)
Jacquet-Acea, R., Tutankhamun: The Life and Death of The Warrior Boy King
A.J. Tilke is the author of The Amarna Mysteries, a four-book historical fiction series set in ancient Egypt's 18th Dynasty. The Poisoner's Throne (Book 1) publishes June 2026, followed by The Restoration Trilogy — The Hittite Reckoning, The Restoration Murders, and The Dakhamunzu Affair — later in 2026. A short-story anthology, The Twelve Hours of Night, is planned for 2027.
