Talatat: Portrait of Nefertiti

Description

The son of Amenhotep III, Akhenaten, brought about the short-lived "monotheistic" revolution in Egyptian religion near the end of Dynasty 18. The young king constructed a temple complex to the Aten, the Sun Disk, at Karnak—from which this relief comes—before he moved his capital to El Armana. For reasons yet unknown, the figure of the Queen Nefertiti appears in these reliefs far more often than that of the king. Ironically, the Aten temples were dismantled anciently to be used as foundations and fill for additions to the Great Temple of Amun, whom the Aten had briefly displaced.

Provenance

Mrs. Paul and Milton Girod Mallon, New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art (-1976); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (1976-)

Talatat: Portrait of Nefertiti

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c. 1353–1347 BCE

Accession Number

1976.4

Medium

painted sandstone

Dimensions

Overall: 21.5 x 24.3 cm (8 7/16 x 9 9/16 in.)

Classification

Sculpture

Museum

The Cleveland Museum of Art

Cleveland, United States

Credit Line

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund