king Akhenaten with heqa scepter

 

New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, c. 1352-1330 B.C.

Dimensions: Height: 63.9 cm; Width: 19.2 cm; Depth: 23.5 cm

Provenance unknown. Originally part of the collection of Henry Salt (1780-1827).

Musée du Louvre. N 831

This statue depicts a king, almost certainly Akhenaten, and is made from yellow stone. The king holds the heqa scepter (crook and flail), and is seated upon a cushioned throne, wearing a pleated linen kilt, and a striped nemes headdress with the royal insignia of a uraeus upon the centre of his forehead.

Often overlooked is the hand upon the back of the king (not visible in this photograph, please click the "Read more" link below to see), allowing us to see that somebody (likely Nefertiti) once sat or stood beside him.

The seventeen-year reign of the pharaoh Amenhotep IV / Akhenaten is remarkable for the development of ideas, architecture, and art that contrast with Egypt’s long tradition.

Shortly after coming to the throne, the new pharaoh Amenhotep IV, a son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye, established worship of the light that is in the orb of the sun (the Aten) as the primary religion, and the many-armed disk became the omnipresent icon representing the god. The new religion, with its emphasis on the light of the sun and on what can be seen, coexisted with a new emphasis on time, movement, and atmosphere in the arts. Exceptional as the new outlook seems, it certainly had roots in the increasing prominence of the solar principle, or Re, in the earlier Dynasty 18, and in the emphasis on the all-pervasive quality of the god Amun-Re, developments reaching a new height in the reign of Amenhotep III (ca. 1390–1353 B.C.). Likewise, artistic changes were afoot before the reign of Amenhotep IV / Akhenaten. For example, Theban tombs of Dynasty 18 had begun to redefine artistic norms, exploring the possibilities of line and color for suggesting movement and atmospherics or employing more natural views of parts of the body.

Wile the art and texts of what is commonly called the Amarna Period after the site of the new city for the Aten are striking, and their naturalistic imagery is easy to appreciate, it is more difficult to bring the figure of Amenhotep IV / Akhenaten himself or the lived experiences of Atenism into focus. The courtiers who helped the king monumentalize his vision refer to a kind of teaching that the king provided, to them at a minimum, and the art and particular hymns or prayers convey a striking appreciation of the physical world.