Material : Painted limestone
| Item 10 on 18
Ancient Egypt
Sculpture (Relief)
Area related
Amarna (Egypte)
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| Description |  |
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The limestone reliefs on this wall once decorated temples and halls at Akhetaten (Amarna), the capital of king Akhenaten, on the east bank of the Nile. Considering the vast area once covered with reliefs, the 108 slabs exibited here and the 25 displayed in the Gallery 16 are only a fraction of the original decoration at Akhenaten's residence.
Early in the reign of Tutankhamun, the royal court was moved from Amarna and the city's stone building began to decay. Only half a century later, under Ramsesses II, did architects realize that the dilapited Amarna buildings were an easily accessible source of stone. The blocks were dismantled and shipped to the west bank of the Nile to serve as the fondations of Ramesside temple structures at Hermopolis Magna (El-Ashmunein).
Due to dismantling and reuse, the original order of the blocks was largely lost. It is therefore not possible to reconstruct portions of the original walls by joining survinving blocks. A reconstruction can only identify the scenes represented and group the reliefs accordingly.
Tombs for high officials were cut into the limestone cliffs surrounding the city of Amarna. Reliefs on the walls of the cult chambers of these tombs depicted the king and the royal family worshipping the sun disk (Aten), receiving foreing tribute, and rewarding the tomb's owner with well-deserved "gold of honor". In style and iconography, the tomb reliefs are similar -down to minute details- to the surviving fragments of scenes on relief blocks from the city's stately temples and halls and can therefore be used to explain they original context. With such help, the Museum's blocks have been assigned to specific scenes in Amarna pictorial repertoire.
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