Talatat: Men Hoeing the Earth
Unknown Artist
c. 1353–1347 BCE
Medium
painted sandstone
Dimensions
21.4 × 53.3 cm
Classification
Sculpture
Department
Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
Accession Number
1959.187
About this artwork
In the early part of his reign, Amenhotep IV built an enormous temple to the sun disk (Aten) at the east end of the temple of Karnak. To expedite construction, sandstone was quarried in small, regularly sized, easily manageable blocks called talatat. Unlike the huge monoliths typically used in temple construction, talatat could be carried and moved into position by one man. Not all of the temple was built of stone, however. In this block, workmen are shown bent in toil. They once formed part of ...