Originally published 2021-04-14.
In April 2021 Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass announced that his team had uncovered a large settlement on the west bank of Luxor, buried under sand for roughly three thousand years. The site dates to the reign of Amenhotep III, one of the wealthiest kings of the New Kingdom, and it carries his seals on its bricks, jars and scarabs. Newspapers quickly called it the "lost golden city", but the real value of the find lies in something less glamorous: ordinary streets, kitchens and workshops where people baked bread, made amulets and stored meat.
Here is what was actually found, where the site sits, why scholars were excited, and what the discovery can and cannot tell us about the age of Amenhotep III, Akhenaten and Tutankhamun.
The short answer: a working royal town from Amenhotep III's reign
The Egyptian mission began digging in September 2020. Hawass has said the original goal was to locate the mortuary temple of Tutankhamun, which is thought to lie somewhere in this part of western Thebes. Instead, within a few weeks, the diggers hit mud-brick walls running in every direction. After about seven months of work, several neighbourhoods had been exposed, with some walls still standing close to three metres high.
Ahram Online reported that the mission called the settlement "The Rise of Aten". Aten was the sun disc, a deity Amenhotep III already honoured and that his son Akhenaten later made the centre of state religion. National Geographic described the place as part of the king's sprawling palace complex, known in ancient texts as "the Dazzling Aten".
The announcement came on 8 April 2021. Hawass summed up why it mattered to him: "Many foreign missions searched for this city and never found it."
Where exactly is the site?
Modern Luxor stands on the ruins of ancient Thebes, the religious capital of Egypt during the New Kingdom. The east bank holds the great temples of Karnak and Luxor. The west bank was the land of the dead: the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens, and a line of royal mortuary temples facing the river.
The newly exposed settlement lies between two of those temples. To the south is Medinet Habu, the memorial temple of Ramesses III. To the north is the vast temple of Amenhotep III, of which little survives today except the two seated giants known as the Colossi of Memnon. The town extends west toward Deir el-Medina, the village that housed the craftsmen who cut and decorated the royal tombs.
That location makes sense. A huge royal estate, with a palace at Malkata nearby, needed bakers, potters, brick makers, metalworkers and clerks living close at hand.
What the archaeologists uncovered
The finds reported by the mission and by journalists who visited the dig include:
- A bakery and kitchen in the southern part of the site, with ovens and storage pottery. Its size suggests it fed a large workforce.
- An administrative and residential district enclosed by a zigzag wall with a single entrance, which may have helped control who came and went.
- Workshops for mud bricks stamped with Amenhotep III's cartouche, moulds for casting amulets and decorative pieces, tools for spinning and weaving, and slag left over from metal and glass production.
- Dated inscriptions, including a vessel marked with year 37 of the king's reign. It had held around ten kilograms of dried or boiled meat and names a butcher called Luwy, apparently linked to the third jubilee, or Heb Sed festival, of the king.
- Unusual burials: two cows or bulls laid to rest inside a room, and a human skeleton with the arms stretched out and a rope wrapped around the knees. The meaning of both is still being studied.
- A cemetery to the north, with rock-cut tombs reached by carved staircases, which the team hoped might include undisturbed graves.
Thousands of everyday objects came out of the rooms: pottery, tools, jewellery, scarabs and amulets. Salima Ikram of the American University in Cairo described the site to National Geographic as "an Egyptian version of Pompeii", meaning a snapshot of daily life frozen in place, though the cause here was abandonment and drifting sand rather than a volcano.
Amenhotep III, Akhenaten and Tutankhamun
Amenhotep III ruled for close to four decades in the fourteenth century BC. Exact dates differ between chronologies; National Geographic gives roughly 1386 to 1353 BC, while other reference works place his reign a few years earlier. His era was a high point of Egyptian wealth and diplomacy, with gold flowing in from Nubia and letters exchanged with the rulers of Babylon and Mitanni.
His son Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten, promoted the Aten above the traditional gods and moved the court to a brand-new capital, Akhetaten, at modern Amarna in Middle Egypt. Some buildings in the Luxor settlement carry Akhenaten's name, and one mud seal refers to a temple of the Aten at Karnak, so the town was clearly still active in his early years.
After Akhenaten's death the court returned to traditional worship. Reports from the dig say Tutankhamun and his successor Ay reused the site, and later layers show people living there into the Coptic and Byzantine periods, roughly the third to seventh centuries AD.
How big a discovery was it?
Betsy Bryan, a professor of Egyptology at Johns Hopkins University who was not part of the excavation, called it "the second most important archaeological discovery since the tomb of Tutankhamun." That line travelled around the world and fed the headlines.
Other specialists were more cautious. When the find was announced, only part of the settlement had been cleared, and nobody yet knew how far it extended. National Geographic noted that ranking it among Egypt's great discoveries was hard to do so early. Bryan herself said the city was unlikely to explain why Akhenaten left Thebes, though she expected it to add a great deal about the royal family and the people who served it.
Settlements are much rarer in Egyptian archaeology than tombs and temples. Houses were built of mud brick close to farmland and the river, so most were dismantled, flooded or built over. A town preserved under sand in the desert edge can therefore answer questions that a royal burial cannot: how food was produced and shared, how workshops were organised, and how ordinary families lived.
Common misunderstandings
"It is a city made of gold." No. "Golden" is a nickname that echoes the wealth of Amenhotep III's reign. The walls are mud brick, and most finds are pottery, tools and food remains.
"It was totally unknown." Scholars long expected royal settlements in this area, and earlier missions had looked for one. What was new was finding such a well-preserved stretch of it.
"It solves the Amarna mystery." It does not explain why Akhenaten moved the capital, though dated jars and seals help pin down when the town was busiest.
Why it mattered for Egypt in 2021
The announcement came at a hard time for Egyptian tourism, which had collapsed during the pandemic. A few days earlier, on 3 April 2021, Cairo had staged the Pharaohs' Golden Parade, moving 22 royal mummies from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square to the new National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. Together, the two events were part of a push to bring visitors back to Egypt's monuments.
For travellers, the west bank of Luxor already offers Medinet Habu, the Colossi of Memnon, Deir el-Medina and the royal valleys within a short drive of each other. Excavation work and access to the settlement itself depend on the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, so it is worth checking current opening arrangements before planning a visit.
Sources: Ahram Online, 8 April 2021; National Geographic. First reported for international readers by the BBC.
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