Akhenaten

These factors make it easy to misrepresent or distort the original meanings of Amarna art, with considerable cffects on the creation of the Akhenaten myth. Amarna art is perceived to be 'naturalistic' or 'realistic' because its most charac­teristic picccs are scenes from the natural world and the intimate life of the royal family, who appear in much less formal positions than is usual in Egyptian art. Describing these images as 'naturalistic' and 'realistic' implies that they arc ideo­logically neutral and can be read literally - 'an extreme realism . . . this truth in art', according to one of the principal Amarna art critics.¹'" If you believe this, scenes of the king, queen and their daughters dining or sitting en famille can easily be seen as snapshots, vignettes into a real royal home life, and fictitious bio­graphical moments can be constructed around them (see Figure 6.1). But to look at these images in the same way as modern 'royals in their homes' photographs is naive. For one thing, there is no reason whatever to assume that the scenes have any referent in real life. They make me think of the images mass-produced in 1897 for Queen Victoria's golden jubilee, showing her as the matriarch-empress surrounded by her descendants in royal dynasties from Spain to Russia. To convey imperial solidarity, all

her grandchildren and great-grandchildren are shown together with her, although no such reunion ever happened in real space and time. Amarna period images of Akhenaten and his family may be equally unrelated to real-time events. This fixation on the naturalism of Amarna art also minimises these images' religious and devotional function. The art of Akhenaten's reign reflected changes in the theological position of the royal family, presenting them as divine intermediaries and objects of worship in their own right. Many of the most famous images of the royal family apparently relaxing at home appear on stelae originally set up in shrines in elite houses. These shrines were where non-royal persons were supposed to invoke Akhenaten and Nefertiti as intermediaries if they wanted a favour from the Aten.¹'¹ They are religious objects first and foremost.

Amarna compositions using scenes from nature exemplify other images which are often interpreted inconsistently (see Figure 2.7). In discussing Egyptian art from other periods, people have no trouble with the concept that the natural world is shown in order to express human domination of it. Often this domin­ation has a religious significance, such as the fishing and fowling scenes in tombs. Here the tomb owner is shown taming nature by netting marsh fowl and spearing fish, in a symbolic act of maintaining Ma'at which also assists in the deceased person's rebirth. But when Amarna art is discussed, symbolic and theological meanings often drop out of the frame. It has a 'still fresh naturalism' with 'sensi­tive representations of flowers and natural settings'.¹

'² Apparently these have no other dimension or meaning than vcristic depiction. This idea also depends on the assumption that humanity and nature occupy separate spheres, something which is hard to sustain from Egyptian culture. Reactions to the painted floor from the 'House of Rejoicing of the Aten' exemplify such distortions of the symbology behind Amarna 'naturalism'. This justly famous painting juxtaposes images from the natural world - fish swimming, animals leaping, birds rising in flight from clumps of reeds - with a thoroughly conventional pharaonic motif: the bound enemies of Egypt who are symbolically conquered as they are walked upon (see Figure 2.8). Yet in many discussions the nature scenes alone are the focus of attention - but with no suggestion that nature, like the bound captives, is also being subjugated at the same time and in exactly the same way.¹⁾³ There seems to be little desire to understand the pavement as a coherent iconographic schcmc intended to convey Akhenaten's dominion over the whole created world. Both these sets of artistic images, of nature and the royal family, sum up the central paradox of Akhenaten's art as the visual expression of his religion: its 'appealing naturalness in an authoritarian setting."'¹

There is also a desire to see 'naturalness' in the distinctive iconography of Akhenaten himself, whose body is like no other pharaoh's. Akhenaten's self- representation is a very important ingredient in the mythology about him. Some viewers see the bulbous skulls of Akhenaten and his daughters as evidence of

Figure 2.7

Paintings from the so-called avian- in the north palace at Amarna, from Frankfort 1929.

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Figure 2.8 African and Asiatic enemies of Egypt, from the painted pavement in the 'House of Rejoicing of the Aten'. Egyptian Museum, Cairo.