Talatat: Nefertiti Offers to the Aten
Unknown Artist
1353–1347 BCE
Medium
painted sandstone
Dimensions
20.5 × 41.2 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
1959.186
About this artwork
The son of Amenhotep III, Akenaten, 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—where this relief originated—before he moved his capital to El Amarna. For reasons 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 to be used as foundations and fill for adapt...