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For Students

Doing a research paper

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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This page is part of The Akhet-Aten Home Page
maintained by Kate Stange (email / webpage)
Content Copyright © 1996-2000.
Last updated March 1, 2000.