Amarna Art - Sculpture

Sculpture

Sculptures from the Amarna period are set apart from other periods of Egyptian art. One reason is the accentuation of certain features. For instance, an elongation and narrowing of the neck, sloping of the forehead and nose, prominent chin, large ears and lips, spindle-like arms and calves and large thighs, stomachs, and hips.

In a relief of Akhenaten, he is portrayed with his primary wife, Nefertiti, and their children, the six princesses, in an intimate setting. His children appear to be fully grown, only shrunken to appear smaller than their parents, a routine stylistic feature of traditional Egyptian art. They also have elongated neck and bodies. An unfinished head of a princess from this time, that is currently an artifact of the Tutankhamun, and the golden age of the pharohs exhibition, displays a very prominent elongation to the back of the head.

The head shape may have been an exaggeration of a real head shape, based on the similar shape of the head of Tutankhamun, or a completely false representation of ritulistic reason.

The hands at the end of each ray extending from Aten in the relief are delivering the ankh, which symbolized "life" in the Egyptian culture, to Akhenaten and Nefertiti and often also reach the portrayed princesses. The importance of the Sun God Aten is central to much of the Amarna period art, largely because Akhenaten's rule was marked by its monotheistic following of Aten.

In one sculpture of Akhenaten, he has wide hips and a drooping stomach. His lips are thick and his arms and legs are thin and lack muscular tone, unlike his counterparts of other eras in Egyptian artwork. Some scholars suggest that the presentation of the human body as imperfect during the Amarna period is in deference to Aten. Others think Akhenaten suffered from a genetic disorder that caused him to look that way. Others interpret this unprecedented stylistic break from Egyptian tradition to be a reflection of the Amarna Royals' attempts to wrest political power from the traditional priesthoods and bureaucratic authorities.

Much of the finest work, including the famous Nefertiti bust in Berlin, was found in the studio of the second and last Royal Court Sculptor Thutmose, and is now in Berlin and Cairo, with some in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

The period saw the use of sunk relief, previously used for large external reliefs, extended to small carvings, and used for most monumental reliefs. Sunk relief appears best in strong sunlight. This was one innovation that had a lasting effect, as raised relief is rare in later periods.