The Egypt of Amenhotep III was sophisticated and cosmopolitan.

“Gone is the falcon-headed man, while his sun disk remains, enlarged, and viewed straight on.  Where the god’s figure once was, are now a series of long, straight, sticklike arms which splay down [like rays of sunlight].”

The rays were shown ending with human hands holding the symbols for life and dominion.  These hands show that a complete break with customary anthropomorphic representation was difficult, and it becomes clear that even after the name change to Akhenaten, the abandonment of Thebes and the old religious order, he never managed to free himself of the extraordinary hold of the royal and religious tradition that had governed Egyptian artistic expression throughout its history.  Royal portraiture never had the principal aim of enjoyment of form for form’s sake – its purpose was not to please the senses, but to express metaphysical conceptions and to justify temporal power.  This concept is shown by the uraeus serpent that hung from the disk and also adorned the brow of the pharaoh.  Such a thematic development is demonstrative of the recent redundancy of the traditional priesthood and thus the prowess and dominion of the new pharaoh.  Also denoted was the kingly nature of the visible celestial body of the Aten.  Moreover, double cartouches and a titulary for the Aten implies the implicit connection between the deity and the pharaoh.  As the intermediary between the Aten and mankind as a guarantor of life, the presence of the pharaoh and his example provided the assurance of universal life.

The chasm separating the Egyptian visual arts before and after Amenhotep IV’s accession is vividly demonstrated in the unfinished Theban necropolis tomb of Ramose.  Ramose was the vizier of Amenhotep III whose rock-cut tomb was still being completed under Amenhotep IV.  The tomb contains sculptured reliefs, some of which portray Amenhotep IV in the conventional manner.  However, another relief in the new style shows Amenhotep IV and Nefertiti leaning over a balcony under the rays of the Aten to bestow gold neck-bands on Ramose, while officials of the royal harem and servants are in attendance.  This sudden change in the style of the art tells us that Ramose must have been loyal to both the old traditional style and the new, as he left the traditional depictions unchanged. It is extraordinary that only a few months or weeks may have separated the two scenes.  The artists created new types, which became the models for the period, with the pose, dress, architecture, and depictions of foreigners gaining in realism. 

The strikingly unusual style and proportion of the figures in the depiction of Akhenaten and his family demands analysis.  During the early years of his reign, he issued orders that his form was to be portrayed in such a way as to emphasis the attributes that differentiated him from a traditional royal subject, “his youth, his musculature, and beauty.”  Akhenaten, however, is portrayed with a long neck, protruding belly, heavy buttocks and thighs, thin legs, narrow shoulders, and scrawny arms.  The image of a pharaoh with female characteristics is not a new or distinct theme in the history of Egyptian art.  Statues of men have been portrayed with distinct female-like breasts to indicate a well-nourished body, such as that of Hemon (the vizier of Kheops) in Dynasty IV.  Only Akhenaten himself could have sanctioned such representations of himself and his family.  As shown by the art, men and women from the upper circles imitate the royal couple by wearing identical loose garments which are so thin as to allow the image of the ‘ideal’ body to be seen.  The same treatment applies to such groups of figures as prostrate attendants.  The male image seems to be adapting to the female, and Akhenaten depicts himself in the image of Nefertiti.  It is sometimes difficult to tell the two of them apart, as Nefertiti is shown at times with diadems and crowns.  This image arises in some way as an expression of his religious ideals of fertility and motherhood that have been manifested in his form.  Akhenaten may have incorporated these ideals in order to draw attention to the fact that the Aten was both ‘mother’ and ‘father’ as the creator-god.

Of particular interest is the prominence of Queen Nefertiti in the decoration of temple scenes.  Some of the roles in which she appears such as massacring prisoners (no doubt a symbolic image and thus fictitious) were traditionally a prerogative of the king alone.  Nefertiti is present in scenes of tribute giving and homage from members of the court and foreign ambassadors of Nubia, Kush, Asia, and the Aegean.  She is depicted with Akhenaten, both dressed in their festal attire, and seated on a richly ornamented throne set up under the royal baldachin.  Of the art discovered in Thebes, Nefertiti was depicted in a substantially greater number of reliefs than Akhenaten.  Her aforementioned wearing of the diadem and crown as well as her personal influence over the king, and perhaps even her influence of the religious changes that were then underway may explain her pre-eminence.

Depictions of the royal family making offerings and pouring libations to the Disk illustrated the rays of the Disk shed beneficently over Akhenaten and his great wife Nefertiti, the alters at which they officiated, and over images of temples and palaces.  Images of the ‘holy family’ were everywhere in the new capital, with some private houses even containing shrines with depiction of the Aten, Akhenaten and Nefertiti, often accompanied by their daughters.  These shrines were for private worship and so replaced the veneration of house-gods and spirits in the semi-official religion of old.  It appears, however, that the faith of the mass of the Egyptian people as a whole remained untouched by Akhenaten’s religious reforms, and continued to worship their old gods in the manner which they had always done.

Intimate and private moments of the family life were illustrated, with Akhenaten and Nefertiti sitting face to face on simple rest stools or standing side by side almost always accompanied by their daughters.  Akhenaten and his queen represented the primeval couple who had received universal life and who, in their turn, were able to bestow it on the rest of mankind.  De-Rachewitz is cynical of this approach, and instead believes:

“The idea of the sacredness of royalty was destroyed by secularizing even the least important acts in the private lives of the sovereign and his family.” 

This argument put forward by De-Rachewitz is negated by the fact that these scenes do not represent simple family life; the couple are portrayed in a tender embrace, exchanging kisses, and holding hands.  Their children are both the fruit and justification of their union, which was an ‘eternal theogony’ that formed the basis of all life.  Moreover, it was a defiance of the Theban theology, and an attempt to share with all people the divine essence.  Individual characteristics of the family were recorded, and artists went to much trouble to suggest the soft, undeveloped bodies of children.  Earlier artists had been content to portray children as merely small models of adults.  The stress on the private and intimate life of the family required the artist to change tack, and to begin to portray the essence of momentary feelings of triumph, elation, or grief.  The latter is immediately recognisable in the image of the royal family grieving over the death of one of their daughters.  It showed to the rest of mankind that even the royal family was able to be overcome with emotion, and yet still share their grief with the world at a traumatic time.  It is an attempt to express a view of humanity and its frailties, yet there is also a new sense of life, movement, and timelessness.

Many depictions of the Window of Appearances of the royal palace are evident at Amarna.  This image first appears in the tomb of Ramose in Thebes, thus it was not an original Amarna theme.  The king and queen are shown leaning out of a cushioned balustrade and bestowing the gold sign in the form of heavy ceremonial necklaces to palace courtiers for distinguished service.  Another common feature is the giving of rations such as bread by the royal couple.  Akhenaten controlled the wealth of the temple of the Aten, and as such, there were no large granaries inside Akhenaten’s sacred precincts.  Instead, they were in the King’s house, and bread was baked as rations to be royally awarded to his followers.  This is demonstrative of the dependency the people had on their king, who controlled the both the economic wealth of the state religion, and bread production.  This offers a new insight into the realism that has been previously determined as a stylistic convention, but can also be read as political discourse.  Namely, that Akhenaten had a vested interest in portraying his reign as a time of plenty and a time of economic wealth, furthering the portrayal of the Egypt of Amenhotep III as sophisticated, cosmopolitan and prosperous.

It is in the lowest registers and margins of the large reliefs from Amarna  that the art showed itself to its best advantage, in the crowd of small figures who, seemingly indifferent to the main action, exalt the joy of living under Aten’s law in picturesque scenes.  Here, without being distracted by the passing of a royal parade, a young woman gathers several flowers along the roadside; there, at the very gates of the palace, a young rascal flees from a farmyard where he has stolen a few eggs.  And over there, a servant screams and chases a mischievous little puppy that has irked its mistress.  The Aten gave a new impetus to the love of nature always latent in the Egyptian character.  The Aten was a universal god, with each race of people, and each creature of nature having equal importance.  Passionate admiration of the beauties of nature was easily reconcilable with the benevolent rule of the Aten over men, animals, and plants – all springing from the same feeling for life. Indeed, it is the serene celebration of universal harmony, in which the humblest participates, that represents the real victory of the cult of the Aten.

Akhenaten’s religious reform, which for the only time in Egyptian history reversed many of the basic and time-honoured conventions of Egyptian art, did not see out two decades, and the ‘Amarna revolution’ came to an end with the death of its main protagonists.  More often than not, the reign of Akhenaten is portrayed in negative terms.  This is true even in modern times, as Aldred believes the sole significant event of the reign of Akhenaten was the fact that he failed to impose monotheism on Egypt.  However, his successors had good reasons for vilifying him because his reforms represented a challenge to their own right to rule, in that they rejected the religious foundations on which the pharaoh’s own powers and his relationship to Egyptian society was based.  Egyptian priesthood had a similarly vested interest in removing all traces of the opulent and cosmopolitan Amarna Period.  A conscious effort was made by his successor Tutankhamun to return to the earlier artistic conventions, but just as a complete eradication of the ideas that the Amarna interlude produced was not possible, so the artistic innovations of the period were not lost altogether, and for one brief shining moment there was harmony between the Aten and Amun-Re.

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