FROM
AKHENATEN AND THE RELIGION OF LIGHT
Erik Hornung
Translated by David Lorton
STELA S
A C I T Y F O R A G O D
First, Akhenaten set up Boundary Stelae around the place he had chosen for his future royal
Residence, so as to delineate its intended area with du solemnity. The fourteen stelae - three
on the west bank of the Nile and eleven on the east bank - staked out an extensive area,
though the actual city would lie only on the eastern bank, where the cemeteries are also to be
found.
The "Beautiful West," up to then the realm of the dead, would no longer play a role.
The date on the three earlier stelae can be reconstructed as the thirteenth day of the fourth
month of the season PERET, in the fifth regnal year of the king. It thus falls only one brief month
after that of a letter sent from Memphis by the administator Ipi, a nephew of the vizier Ramose,
to the king, who was probably already encamped at Amarna.
In this letter, Ipi informs the monarch, who was still called AMENOPHIS, that all was well in the
temple of Ptah at Memphis and that the prescribed offerings were being carried out in their en-
tirety for all the gods and goddesses of Memphis, with nothing being withheld from them.
All this was being done in the name of the king, and Ipi designated the king's relationship to PTAH
as : 'YOUR TRUE FATHER, FROM WHOM YOU EMERGED'
P T A H
