El Amarna in Chaos: December 2012

Gallery of Amarna Art

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This bright fresco from the palace in Akhetaten is one of my favourites. Only this lower corner was preserved, showing two of Akhenaten's young daughters.

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, height 30 cm.

Image source: Christine Hobson, The World of the Pharaohs, New York: Thames and Hudson, 1987, p.109

Other versions on the web: Daughters of Akhenaten (better contrast), House in Tell el-Amarna

The colossal statue of Akhenaten seen here as studied by Ray Winfield Smith. This picture gives a feeling for the size of the statues (from Karnak) and the perspective you see them through in real life (Smith is standing on step-ladder, I believe).

Egyptian Museum, Cairo

Image source: Ray Winfield Smith, Emory Kristof, "Computer Helps Scholars Re-Create an Egyptian Temple", National Geographic, November 1970, Vol. 138, No. 5, p. 653.

Here a first spirited gosling breaks free from an egg. This wooden bird sat atop an unguent jar in Tutankhamun's tomb. It demonstrates the attention paid by artists of the Amarna period to the nature around them.

Image source: "Tutankhamun's Golden Trove," National Geographic, October 1963, Vol. 124, No 4, p. 646.

The canopic-jar lids from Tutankhamun's tomb are particularly beautiful. The art from Tutankhamun's tomb is thought to be in part a collection of artifacts originally intended for Akhenaten, Nefertiti, or other Amarna nobles, and demonstrates the art of the final phases of the Amarna period.

Image source: Kent R. Weeks, "Valley of the Kings," National Geographic, September 1998, Vol. 194, No. 3, p. 28.

This unfortunately poor picture shows a young, idealist Pharaoh Akhenaten. I see a rare innocent, hopeful look about this painted sandstone piece, from his early reign.

Staatliche Museum, Berlin, approx. 8 in.

Image source: Helen Gardner, Art through the Ages, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936, p. 56, fig. 79

This relief from a talatat block shows Nefertiti. Though we wouldn't usually call these somewhat exaggerated features beautiful, it shows her delicate features. This piece dates from Akhenaten's early reign, at Karnak, when the new form of Amarna art was first being experimented with.

Image source: Ray Winfield Smith, Emory Kristof, "Computer Helps Scholars Re-Create an Egyptian Temple", National Geographic, November 1970, Vol. 138, No. 5, p. 645

This touching little statuette of Akhenaten and Nefertiti is probably from a domestic shrine in Akhetaten. The King and Queen are sweetly holding hands. It is from somewhat later in their reign.

Painted limestone, height 22.2 cm

Image source: Lawrence M. Berman, Bernadette Letellier, Pharaohs: Treasures of Egyptian Art from the Louvre, Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996, p. 61.

This is a floor-painting I believe is from Akhetaten (someone correct me if I'm wrong). It shows the trees and the pool from intermixed angles, to show the best parts of each component. I like it for the cheerful colour and interesting interpretation of trees.

Image source: Seton Lloyd, The Art of the Ancient Near East, New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1963, p. 164, fig 126

This painted relief shows Smenkhkare and Meritaten taking a walk in a garden. That later artwork has a relaxed, poetic mood about it. This piece in particular seems carefree and relaxed, and portrays, as many reliefs of the Amarna period did, a scene of intimate daily life.

Height 24 cm, Former National Museums, Berlin

Image Source: Irmgard Woldering, The Art of Egypt: The Time of the Pharaohs, New York: Greystone Press, 1963, p. 111, plate 31.

Other versions on the web: House in Tell el-Amarna

This sweet-looking little bird was part of a room in the North Palace at Amarna which was decorated with a huge scene of bird-life. The relaxed brushstrokes building up the image seem out of place in our conception of Egyptian art as monumental, static and powerful. But evidently the Egyptians of the Amarna period were very interested in portraying wildlife, as most of the palaces at Akhetaten are profusely decorated with marsh and wildlife scenes, few of which have survived the ravages of time in good condition, as the Egyptian fresco was not true fresco (applied to dry rather than wet plaster) and so is less durable.

Image source: Seton Lloyd, The Art of the Ancient Near East, New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1963, p. 183.

This is a famous sculpture of Queen Tiye. Beneath her apparently drab wig lies a silver and golden headdress which was at one time covered up with this brown material, and covered in blue glass beads, now missing. The golden nubs sticking out were once part of cobras adorning her crown. (For more about this, see Dorothea Arnold, The Royal Women of Amarna, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996) The stern look of the sculpted face is common in representations of Queen Tiye.

Yew wood, Agyptisches Museum, Berlin, from Medinet el-Ghurab

Image source: Irmgard Woldering, The Art of Egypt: The Time of the Pharaohs, New York: Greystone Press, 1963, p. 132.

This is a closeup of a famous stela (click here for whole stela) showing Akhenaten and Nefertiti with some of their children carved as miniature adults in their laps. It's a touching family scene, one of the aspects of Amarna art that makes it famous. I like the sure-of-itself style in this piece -- it doesn't seem experimental anymore, nor is it at all willing to change to suit the thousand-year-old standards of Egyptian relief. I think especially in the lighting in this picture, it looks a little alien, too.
Image source: Art Images for College Teaching, items EN006 and EN008.
Other versions on the web: Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung

Many people claim that Akhenaten was ugly, and had his artists paint others as ugly too to make himself feel better. This seems ridiculous to me - Akhenaten has a power in his unique look. I think this fragmentary colossus shows particularly well his unique beauty. With the expert help of David Kennedy, this image was transformed into the Akhenaten you see on my Introduction page.
Image source: I don't remember. Please let me know if you find it on the web.

This is another, very different, image of Akhenaten. This was carved later in his reign (the previous image was carved much earlier), and shows an almost sad person, to my eye. He once sat next to Queen Nefertiti, whose arm still wraps around his back. This statue was featured in the exhibition Pharaohs: Treasures of Egyptian Art from the Louvre which I was fortunate enough to see in Cleveland.
Image source: Unknown, but the same image can be found on the cover of: Lawrence M. Berman, Bernadette Letellier, Pharaohs: Treasures of Egyptian Art from the Louvre, Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996

This beautiful carved head was found at Amarna, still nearly perfect. It was carved to represent one of the princesses and remains one of my favourite amarna pieces. Unfortunately, I have only this small picture at the moment.
Brown Quartzite, Agyptisches Museum, Berlin
Image source: Now-lost website of the Royal Women of Amarna exhibition. See Dorothea Arnold, The Royal Women of Amarna, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996, fig. 48, p. 56.

What Amarna art gallery would be complete without the beautiful bust of Nefertiti? And what needs be said?
Agyptisches Museum, Berlin
Image source: Art Images for College Teaching, item EN010.
Other versions on the web: my favourite, very nice head-on with information - this one is all over the internet, several views of the last one , a pretty bad one.

Thanks for visiting our Gallery. I hope you've developed a taste for the unique art of this little piece of history. Now for more art of the Amarna period may I recommend:

El Amarna in Chaos

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

El Amarna Art