Under more intense investigation, these basic factors which determine a city can be evaluated from many different angles, depending on your location and cultural background which would influence a person’s perspective on these definable characteristics. In other words there is no standard international definition of a city. The difficulty of determining a city from a town or village is that typically a city would consist of residential, industrial and business areas, all of which could be located in a town or village depending on necessity.
Vision of Amarna
Also a city typically has hard to define boarders which include suburbs and satellite areas surrounding an urban core. A prime example of this idea is the GTA, Greater Toronto Area, in Ontario. The GTA includes many surrounding large scale cities such as Mississauga and Scarborough and smaller places such as Unionville.
That brings up the idea that because of lack of definitive boarders are all these places whether they are worthy of being a city simply because they are grouped to be within the GTA? This modern day example gives segway into the problems of defining a city of ancient times such as El- Amarna.
Due to the fact that ancient cities would lack many of the modern day populations, commerce and culture it makes it more difficult to determine whether a place should be recognized as a city or a ceremonial centre. Therefore, El-Amarna will have to be investigated more intensely based upon more specific criteria. Based on the following evidence which aims to define and determine what a city is, I believe that the ancient place of El-Amarna is in fact a city.
El Amarna
Many theorists have attempted to determine the criteria of a city but with the many different angles from which to approach this topic there is always room for criticism. V. Gordon Childe determined a top ten list of criteria to be used when defining a city. El- Amarna is a place which can be proven as a city through the use of the suggested criteria from Childe’s defining list. El- Amana is a city located on a flat stretch of land beside the Nile River.
A basic criterion for early settlers was to develop a settlement near a water resource such as the Nile River because it is useful for food, transportation and trade. The ruler of this time in the New Kingdom was Akhenaten. He was a pharaoh who despite his short 25-30 year reign drastically changed the city.
Books about Amarna
The Amarna Scholarly Tablets
New Kingdom Amarna Period
The Tell El Amarna Period
More about King Akhenaten
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