The late 18th Dynasty of ancient Egypt, roughly 1350 to 1320 BCE, compressed more political upheaval, religious revolution, and institutional crisis into a single generation than most civilizations experience in centuries. Three pharaohs died within a span of weeks. A purpose-built capital rose on empty desert and was abandoned within two decades. An entire theological system was imposed, enforced, and then dismantled. International alliances fractured under the pressure of Hittite expansion while the Egyptian court turned inward.
This is the Amarna period, one of the most intensely studied chapters of the New Kingdom and of Egyptology as a whole. For a writer of historical crime fiction, it offers something rare: a setting where the archaeological and textual evidence is rich enough to constrain invention, yet riddled with gaps large enough to accommodate it.
The Amarna Mysteries is a four-book series that takes this volatile decade as its foundation. What follows is a guide to the period itself, organized by topic.
Explore the Amarna Period
The Revolution and Its Cities
The Aten revolution transformed Egypt's religious, political, and urban landscape in a single generation. Akhenaten imposed a new theology, built a new capital in the desert, and dismantled the priesthoods that had sustained the state for centuries. When the revolution collapsed, the court returned to Memphis, the ancient capital that had functioned since the Old Kingdom.
The Amarna period shattered centuries of artistic convention, replacing idealized forms with dramatic distortion and unprecedented scenes of royal domestic life. The workshop of the sculptor Thutmose produced some of the most celebrated works of Egyptian art.
Nefertiti's public role went far beyond that of a conventional Great Royal Wife. Her image appears in contexts traditionally reserved for the pharaoh. The secondary queen Kiya, the six daughters, and the plague that swept the court all shaped the dynasty's trajectory.
The Amarna period is unusually well documented for Bronze Age Egypt. Textual sources, material culture, and the 2010 DNA study anchor any serious treatment of the period. The overlapping power structures of crown, priesthood, army, and bureaucracy created the conditions for both murder and investigation.
The period between Akhenaten's death and Tutankhamun's coronation is one of the most compressed transitions in Egyptian royal history. The aftermath includes the Dakhamunzu Affair, Ay's brief reign, Horemheb's military succession, and the deliberate erasure of the Amarna kings from official history.
Belmonte, J.A., DNA, Wine & Eclipses: the Dakhamunzu Affaire (2013)
Davies, N. de G., The Rock Tombs of El Amarna (1903–1908)
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)
Hawass, Z. et al., Ancestry and Pathology in King Tutankhamun's Family (2010)
Kemp, B., The City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Amarna and Its People (2012)
Where the evidence permits more than one reading, the series states its chosen interpretation and confines creative invention to the genuine gaps in the record.
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.
