Pharaoh Akhenaten

5/17/2013 04:17:00 PM


who is akhenaten
Amenhotep IV or Akhenaten is the prominent monarch of the 18th Dynasty who transferred the capital of Egypt from Thebes to Tell El Amarna . Numerous colossi of the pharaoh are considered the most conspicuous items from the Theban phase of the reign of Akhenaten .

 Place of Discovery :

This piece was discovered by chevrier in 1926 in the temple of Aten at karnak , the colossus is a part of a group of statues decorated 28 pillars 
Material

The colossus is made out of sandstone , anciently known as inr hd n rwd .t, it mainly come from the quarries of Gebel el Selsela, South of kom ombo, usually used for buildings, statues and stelae.
This is only the upper part of the statue (bust), it is 185cm high. It represents the king in an osirian form crossing his arms on the chest , holding the royal signs, the flail nhh and the croak hk3.
On his head ,he is wearing a nemes headdress, not with the normal strips ,with cobra on the forehead , on top of it are remains of two plumes , probably the symbol of the god Shu . He has the traditional false beard .
The face of the king is elongated , with narrow eyes, heavy eyelids, protruding lips and pierced ears
Those features were characteristic of the early stages of Atenism art.

Akhenaten male or female ?
When the tomb of Akhenaten was rediscovered at Amarna in the early 1880s,portraits of the royal couple were at first thought to represent two females,by virtue of Akhenaten ,s curious androgynous shape .
One explanation for the king,s unusual figure was that he suffered from a tumor of the pituitary gland, restating in what is known as frohlich's syndrome. Certain well known effects of this disorder seem to be very evident in representations of Akhenaten: skull malformation : a lantern-like   jaw: the head looking over-heavy on an elongated neck  excessive fat in areas that are more indicative of the female form, e.g. around the thighs, buttocks and breasts: and spindly legs.
A side-effect of this condition, however, is infertility, and critics have pointed out that Akhenaten would have been unable to father the six daughters with whom he is so frequently shown: on the other hand, he could have been struck by the illness at a later stage in his life.
Perhaps by his representation Akhenaten wanted to demolish the ideal image of the pharaoh, or perhaps represent the god Hapi, who appeared in images similar to this, as presenting goods to the Egyptian, but this doesn't explain, the  image of the rest of the amarna scenes.

Inscriptions:
The king’s wrists are decorated with cartouches strangely have the names of aten and this is very unique, as the gods names are not included in cartouches only kings and queens

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