Amarna Period

The term " Amarna Period " is used in the history of Ancient Egypt and the Ancient Near East as referring to a period of the Late Bronze Age, which includes the 14th and 13th centuries BC. In Egypt, it includes the reigns of the kings ( Pharaoh ) Akhenaten and Smenkhkare. Akhenaten had in its 6th year of reign in the modern Tell el- Amarna ( Amarna ) in Middle Egypt founded a new capital ( Akhetaten ) and worshiped with Aton a Sun God as the only God and pursued the memory of others ( in pictures and inscriptions ) deities, especially that of the ancient kingdom of god Amun. Akhenaten thus broke radically with many ancient traditions of Egypt. In art, many new features are observed. The death of the ruler and the subsequent period are still unclear in many aspects, but it seems to have been of a civil war. Only under Horemheb entered stabilized states.

The name derives from this period is the already mentioned locality Egyptian Tell el -Amarna. There was a fellah woman in the early 1890s, an archive of some 400 clay tablets, the parts of the political correspondence of kings Amenhotep III document. , Akhenaten and Tutankhamun between about 1358 and 1330 BC. Since the political system that reflects this correspondence, stretched BC from the 15th to the late 13th century, the term " Amarna Period " is now applied anachronistically to this entire era.

Called this political system, known as " Club of the Great Powers " or "Club of Great Kings ", handed in his east- west extension of the western Iran to the Aegean Sea and in its north - south extent of Anatolia as far as Nubia. Was supported by this system Kassite Babylonia, the Hittite Empire and Egypt, which had over the entire period inventory. In northern Mesopotamia consisted initially of the Mitanni Empire, which was replaced by the emerging mittelassyrischen empire from the mid-14th century. The eastern border area formed the state of Elam, and the western edge marked Keftiu ( Crete) and Teny ( Peloponnese ) in Greece. In addition to these great states existed mainly in Syria and Palestine, a large number of city-states that were in varying proportions depending on the major powers.