Mortality Crisis at Akhetaten?
Amarna and the Bioarchaeology of the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean Epidemic
New research published in the American Journal of Archaeology found that there was little evidence to suggest that the Ancient Egyptian city of Akhetaten (modern-day Amarna) was affected by an epidemic. Whether Akhetaten was affected or not by an epidemic has been long debated, with burial evidence being used to support the idea.
Anna Stevens and Gretchen Dabbs from the Amarna project team compared the burial evidence to that of other cities with historical evidence of disease outbreak, finding that there is little evidence to support the theory that Akhetaten was impacted by a mortal epidemic.
Since 2005, the Amarna Project has been running a major interdisciplinary study of Amarna’s non-elite cemeteries. These cemeteries are unique in Egypt for their extraordinarily short use-life of c. 15–20 years.
They provide unparalleled insight on life and death in the Bronze-Age Mediterranean, and during the unusual reign of king Akhenaten, known for worshipping a single solar deity.
An international team of researchers is studying the human remains, burial objects, body wrappings and containers, and other evidence from the cemeteries to piece together the story of life at Amarna 3000 years ago.
A sample of burials from the South Tombs Cemetery
A sample of burials from the South Tombs Cemetery
Anna Stevens is a settlement archaeologist, and current director of the Amarna Project for the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. She is also Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at Monash University in Australia and co-directs the cemetery project with Prof. Dabbs.
Gretchen Dabbs is a bioarchaeologist at Southern Illinois University, who directs the study of human remains from Amarna.
The study of Amarna’s cemeteries was initiated by the late Barry Kemp (Prof. Emeritus, University of Cambridge; CBE, FBA) in 2005, in collaboration with Prof. Jerry Rose (University of Arkansas). Other University of Cambridge collaborators on the cemetery project are Dr Pamela Rose (ceramics) and Dr Alan Clapham (archaeobotany).
This paper is a result of almost 2 decades of fieldwork, funded by multiple sources:
- National Endowment for the Humanities (grant RZ-51672-14), British Academy (grant SG121253)
- National Geographic
- King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies (University of Arkansas)
- American Research Center in Egypt (Antiquities Endowment Fund/USAID)
- McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research
- Amarna Research Foundation
- Aurelius Trust
- Thriplow Trust
- Amarna Trust
- Institute for Bioarchaeology (British Museum)
- Pasold Research Fund
- Southern Illinois University’s School of Anthropology, Political Science, and Sociology.
Published 25 November 2025
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
