The Lemon Fool

He said the find was the largest ancient city, known as Aten, ever uncovered in Egypt.

Something about that sentence grates...unless Aten is the plural for ancient cities in Egypt?

(Interesting article though)

Hawass, the chief archeologist is a wonderfullly enthusiastic ambassador for the country.

Egypt,s history is captivating.

AleisterCrowley wrote:He said the find was the largest ancient city, known as Aten, ever uncovered in Egypt.

Something about that sentence grates...unless Aten is the plural for ancient cities in Egypt?

(Interesting article though)

From another article this city was known as "The Dazzling Aten"

https://theconversation.com/the-discovery-of-the-lost-city-of-the-dazzling-aten-will-offer-vital-clues-about-domestic-and-urban-life-in-ancient-egypt-158874

An almost 3,400-year-old industrial, royal metropolis, “the Dazzling Aten”, has been found on the west bank of the Nile near the modern day city of Luxor.

Announced last week by the famed Egyptian archaeologist Dr Zahi Hawass, the find has been compared in importance to the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb almost a century earlier.

Built by Amenhotep III and then used by his grandson Tutankhamen, the ruins of the city were an accidental discovery. In September last year, Hawass and his team were searching for a mortuary temple of Tutankhamen. ]

There was at least one other city named after Aten - that built by Amenhotep III's son Akhenaten who temporarily forced the Egyptians to swap their polytheistic religion to a monotheistic religion worshipping the Aten (Sun god).

One city closer in age to the Dazzling Aten we do know a little more about is the short-lived capital of Amenhotep’s III son, Akhenaten, known as the “Horizon of the Aten”, or Tell el-Amarna. Amarna was functional for only 14 years (1346-1332 BCE) before being abandoned forever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten

Akhenaten is noted for abandoning Egypt's traditional polytheistic religion and introducing Atenism, worship centered on Aten. The views of Egyptologists differ whether Atenism should be considered as absolute monotheism, or whether it was monolatry, syncretism, or henotheism. This culture shift away from traditional religion was not widely accepted. After his death, Akhenaten's monuments were dismantled and hidden, his statues were destroyed, and his name excluded from lists of rulers compiled by later pharaohs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atenism

Atenism, the Aten religion, the Amarna religion or the "Amarna heresy", was a religion and the religious changes associated with the ancient Egyptian Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh Akhenaten. The religion centered on the cult of the god Aten, depicted as the disc of the Sun and originally an aspect of the traditional solar deity Ra. In the 14th century BC, Atenism was Egypt's state religion for about 20 years, before subsequent rulers returned to the traditional polytheistic religion and the pharaohs associated with Atenism were erased from Egyptian records.

There has been speculation that Judaism's monotheism arose because of, or at least was influenced, by Akhenaten's short lived experiment.

AleisterCrowley wrote:He said the find was the largest ancient city, known as Aten, ever uncovered in Egypt.

Something about that sentence grates...unless Aten is the plural for ancient cities in Egypt?

(Interesting article though)

I agree. I think it was written by an estate agent.

Mind you, I'm not articulate enough to rearrange it into a sentence what sounds right.

But then your comment grates slightly too! Surely you mean "collective noun" rather than "plural"...

He said the find, known as Aten,was the largest ancient city ever uncovered in Egypt
is a bit better
A collective noun would have the form 'an aten of ancient cities" - like a flock of geese

Or something. Don't ask me , I'm an engineer not a bloody linguist