NEW KINGDOM, 18TH DYNASTY, AMARNA PERIOD, REIGN OF AKHENATEN, CIRCA 1353-1335 B.C.

Details

AN EGYPTIAN LIMESTONE RELIEF
NEW KINGDOM, 18TH DYNASTY, AMARNA PERIOD, REIGN OF AKHENATEN, CIRCA 1353-1335 B.C.
6 5⁄8 in. (16.8 cm.) wide

Provenance

with Royal-Athena Galleries, New York, 1965 (Art of the Ancient World, vol. I, p. 34, no. 65).
Antiquities, Sotheby's, London, 5 July 1982, lot 195.
Antiquities, Christie's, New York, 11 December 2009, lot 9.
Antiquities, Christie's, London, 6 December 2017, lot 91.

Special notice

This lot has been imported from outside of the UK for sale and placed under the Temporary Admission regime. Import VAT is payable at 5% on the hammer price. VAT at 20% will be added to the buyer’s premium but will not be shown separately on our invoice.

Conditions of sale

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Lot Essay

Sculpted in sunk relief, depicting the head and shoulders of a royal attendant in profile to the right, wearing a short echeloned Nubian wig and a disk earring with a hand carrying a offering jar behind. Both men and women of the Amarna period wore a similar type of wig and disk earrings so it is impossible to surmise who this actually represents. Talatats were uniform size and shape light-weight relief blocks, designed for easy of use, used to decorate the wall of Amarna temples. Once these buildings had been abandoned many thousands of these blocks were used as fill and foundations for later 18th and 19th Dynasty buildings. For a relief depicting this wig type worn by men in a procession, cf. R. Freed (et al.), Pharaohs of the Sun, Boston 1999, p. 237, no. 109, and for a relief depciting a similar cone-shaped offering, cf. acc. no. 1971.294 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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