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I'd like to offer some help and suggestions to students writing
a research paper about some aspect of the Amarna Period in Ancient
Egypt. Below you will find comments addressed to different levels
of students. For help finding resources, visit the References
page.
Elementary School
If it's your job to find out about Pharaoh Akhenaten
or his Queen Nefertiti, or something else, this is a good place
to start.
- Read the information I have here, by clicking
on a topic (at the left).
- Find some other information by looking up
the right words in an encyclopedia. If you don't have one at
home, here are some online:
- Visit the library and find books about Nefertiti,
Akhenaten and Akhetaten in the Children's section. There will
always be lots.
- Write down facts like how many daughters Nefertiti
had and their names, and why Akhenaten is famous. Don't copy
sentences from books! Just write down the information.
- Afterwards, write down what you remember (using
the facts you wrote down to help) in your own words.
- Then read it over and have your mom or dad
read it over to help.
- There are some great resources for kids to
learn about Egypt. Here are a few:
- You can also visit the Young_Egyptologists
Discussion! There you can write messages to other young people
interested in Egypt.
High School
- First, do some general reading, by looking here and elsewhere
online. This will give you an idea of the setting of your
research, but don't take notes. This is just to get a general
feel. You can use encyclopedias
here, too.
- Then, once you have a bit of background, choose a specific
topic. For example, What happened to Nefertiti?, The
Art of the Amarna Period or Did Akhenaten have a genetic
disease? depending on how long your paper should be.
- Now comes the time for more detailed research. You can use
resources here to find internet sites that deal with your topic.
Look in the web links. However, you
should now be using the internet resources to help you locate
books and sources, not for taking notes. The internet just isn't
up to scholarly standards, so you should not footnote information
you find here. You can write to the webpage owners, however,
for more information.
- Then get to the library. Some books on Egyptian history in
general will have chapters devoted to Akhenaten and Amarna.
Whereas a whole book on the topic may be daunting for a three-page
paper, a chapter will contain the important facts, with references.
Nearly everything you read on my page can be found in sources
of this type.
-
For more indepth information, read the introduction
to a book about Amarna or Akhenaten. This will often mention
controversies, other theories, more interesting parts of the
story, and then you can look them up in the rest of the book
to find the chapters you are interested in reading.
-
To find books on the subject, look at my references
which includes a list of booklists.
Then visit the library.
- Don't put footnotes to encyclopedias or the internet - that
was okay in grade school, but not anymore.
- Don't forget the Amarna Discussion Group
which is a community of scholars online who could help you with
specific questions.
University
- You should in general follow the path explained above for
high school research papers, choosing perhaps a more specific
topic and being prepared to read more (even a whole book!).
- You can often contact scholars from their webpages.
And the Amarna Discussion Group is a
friendly resource - you don't need to join to ask questions
and read messages. You can also write
to me, but I'm a pure math major so I don't know as much
as you may think!
- Definitely do not reference encyclopedias, children's
books or the internet. It's not scholarly.
See my References Page for more information.
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