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Talatat: Nefertiti Offers to the Aten
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
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 adaptations to the Great Temple of Amun, whom the Aten had briefly displaced.
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineTalatat: Nefertiti Offers to the Aten, 1353–1347 BCE. Egypt, Karnak, New Kingdom (1540–1069 BCE), Dynasty 18, reign of Akhenaten (1351–1334 BCE). Painted sandstone; overall: 20.5 x 41.2 cm (8 1/16 x 16 1/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund, 1959.186
