Focus (KFD): Artistic Innovations and Developments

Question 1

Traditional representations

Akhenaten and the royal family

Answer 1

• Like the Aten, Akhenaten was depicted in the traditional style in the early part of his reign → Tomb of Khereuf: Akhenaten and his mother offering incense to Re-Horakhty and maat, depicted in the traditional manner

Question 2

Representations of Akhenaten and the royal family

Answer 2

• Akhenaten’s royal family grows, changes, and ages. Previous tradition presented royal family as unchanging and ageless.

Question 3

Representations of the Aten

Answer 3

• Initially depicted as the falcon-headed god, Re-Horakhty at Karnak
• talatat reliefs and later reliefs from Akhetaten bear depictions of the Aten as a globe, not just a flat disk, wearing the uraeus and with spreading arms ending in human hands
• in all reliefs, these hands caress Akhenaten and Nefertiti, offer the ankh
• Tomb of Huya at Akhetaten: Tiye (Akhenaten’s mother) is offered the sign of life by the rays of the Aten

Question 4

Revolutionary decoration of temples

Answer 4

• scenes common in private tombs now used (daily life, agriculture and animal husbandry, domestic work, Nile activities, building sites)
• Nefertiti depicted smiting enemies, trampling enemies as a sphinx (usually reserved for kings)
• Nefertiti worshipping the Aten without the presence of the king
• the daughters of the king regularly shown

Question 5

Extreme Amarna Art Style

Answer 5

• Nefertiti is shown on the same scale as Akhenaten in reliefs and statuary
• The depiction of emotions felt by the royal family - affection between royal family members and their anguish in the tombs of Meketaten and Kiya
• entire royal family shown with extreme physiques and facial features common to Akhenaten
• the royal children are depicted with characteristic elongated skulls
• introduction of 3D representation - overlapping elements rather than side by side

Question 6

Representations of the natural world

Answer 6

• Akhenaten claimed that he was “the king who lives by maat” (Hymn to the Aten)
• Akhenaten’s conception of truth (maat) may have encouraged the tendency towards realistic depiction in Amarna art
• “The lush beauty of nature and its serendipity are nowhere better seen than in the wall paintings of the ‘Green Room’ of the North Palace, where a variety of birds takes flight from a dense thicket on the riverbank” (Freed, Markowitz & D’Auria, Pharaoh of the Sun)

Question 7

Late Amarna Style

Answer 7

• softening in some of the extreme features
• members of the royal family shown in a more realistic style (without elongated limbs, swollen hips and full bellies) → human figure more aesthetically pleasing