Cleveland Museum of Art

Talatat: Portrait of Nefertiti

Date

c. 1353–1347 BCE

Medium

painted sandstone

Culture

Egypt, Karnak, New Kingdom (1540–1069 BCE), Dynasty 18, reign of Akhenaten (1351–1334 BCE)

Department

Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

The son of Amenhotep III, Akenhaten, 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 Amarna. For reasons yet unknown, the figure of the Queen Nefertiti appears in these reliefs far more often that that of the king. Ironically, the Aten temples were dismantled to be used as foundations and fill for additions to the Great Temple of Amun, whom the Aten had briefly displaced. This relief comes from the short end of a talatat, a limestone block of standardized size used during the 18th Dynasty reign of the Pharaoh Akhenaten in the building of the Aton temples at Karnak and Akhetaten. The standardized size and their small weight made construction more efficient.

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