axis and the western entrance to the Great Temple was along the Royal Road, a road that ran through the city and parallel to the Nile River. Soon after the death of Akhenaten, Atenism was rejected as a religion and the city was destroyed. The temple was dismantled, covered in new sand, and paved over, but ironically this has preserved the site better than it might normally have been for archaeologists today. In 1890, Flinders Petrie, with permission from the Egyptian Antiquities Service, began excavating the area. Based on the remaining foundations he found as well as on multiple scenes of the Great Temple found in private tomb decoration in Amarna, a comprehensive reconstruction of the temple has been possible. One of the most distinctive aspects of the Temple was that there was no cult image of the god. Instead, the Temple was open-aired and had no roof, so that people worshipped the actual sun directly overhead as it traveled from east to west. In fact this was a common theme amongst all of the Aten temples; they were all arranged to direct worship towards the sky (such as in the Ḥwt Aten (Mansion of Aten), the smaller temple of Aten located 500m south of the Great Temple in Akhetaten). In the Great Temple there were two main structures, the Gem-Aten and the Sanctuary, which were separated by about 300m. Upon entering the enclosure wall, one faced the first of these structures, the Gem-Aten, which was a very long building preceded by a court called the Per-Hai (House of Rejoicing). On the left of the main entrance to the Temple was a columned pavilion and on both the left and the right were small chapels. These chapels, originally built for Queen Kiya, were later taken over by the elder princesses. The first great pylon directly ahead was the entrance into the Per-Hai and it had swinging doors and five pairs of tall masts with crimson pennants flanking the doorway. The inside of the Per-Hai had two rows of four columns on each side. Within these colonnades were altars made of limestone carved with images of the King and Queen giving offerings. Through the Per-Hai and the next great pylon was the Gem-Aten, the [Place of] He Who Found the Aten, and this was a series of six courtyards separated by pylons, all leading to a main sanctuary and altar. This