Walking with the OG Sun King - Love, light, and rebellion in the fleeting art of Akhenaten and Nefertiti.
How a heretic pharaoh, a queen with impossible cheekbones, and a garden stroll carved in stone make ancient Egypt feel startlingly modern.
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Exhibition: Kunsthalle Bremen 2019 |
He "has been called a heretic, a false prophet, an incestuous tyrant by some, a loving compassionate peaceful precursor to Moses and Jesus by others" (Darnell and Darnell, 2022 XXI). For Nicolas Reeves "Akhenaten stands alone. He looks different: his often freakish appearance in art - elongated and effete - is totally at odds with that of the traditional Egyptian ruler-hero" (2019, 8).
Cyril Alddred (formerly the Keeper of Art and Archeology in the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh) for example was very keen on Amarna art. Yet, "beliveing that images of Akehenaten which seem to show him physically aberrant may be read literally, in the 1960s he developped the influencial theory (first proposed in 1907) that Akhenaten suffered from a rare endocrinal disorder, Fröhlich's Syndrom" (Montserrat 2003, 13).
Fact is: "Akhenaten has been endlessly coopted by particular interst groups" [...] which makes it difficult to seperate the different discourses from historical facts. Still, "he has survived because behind those recognisable features there is a space where conflicting desires - erotic, aesthetic, political - can be enacted and lived out" (Montserrat 2003, 183f).
While peering into the faces of the ancient Egyptian rules, thus, may have prompted people like Sigmud Freud to psychoanalyse the pair, I confess his ruminations on the Oedipal complex of a long dead king have never really held much of my interst.
Learning to Love the Strange
Egypt’s art is supposed to be eternal — rigid profiles, perfect bodies, gods that never age. But the Amarna period breaks that contract. Akhenaten decided to chuck 1,500 years of canon, invent a new god, and design a new art to go with him.
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In Berlin, colossal statues show the king with narrow chest, swollen belly, elongated skull — features that unsettle and fascinate in equal measure.
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In Munich’s Museum of Egyptology, fragments capture Aten’s rays descending like blessings on the royal family, their princesses climbing over laps and tugging at arms.
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In the Louvre, reliefs show foreign envoys carved with individuality, their faces expressive — something you rarely get in Egyptian art.
And then, of course, there’s Berlin’s own Nefertiti, cool as ice, balanced by the warmth of that garden stroll.
Between Love and Propaganda
I’ll admit: part of why I love Amarna art is its paradox. These semingly intimate family moments were never private sketches; they were propaganda. The king kissing his daughter was a theological message — only through the royal family could Aten’s light reach the world.
But propaganda or not, it works - even 3.000 years later in a completely different setting. The gestures are too tender, the details too alive, to feel like pure politics. You recognize the glance of one partner toward another, the reach of a child for her mother’s hand. It’s human.
Maybe it’s the vulnerability of a king who dared to be shown as a husband, not just a god. Maybe it’s just the reminder that even in the most rigid, ritualized culture, someone change can happen.
Whatever it is: Amarna art stays with you. Not because it’s perfect, but because it’s strange, fleeting, and heartbreakingly alive.
References:
- Montserrat, D. (2003). Akhenaten. Routledge.
- Darnell, J. and Darnell, C. (2022). Egypt’s Golden Couple. St. Martin’s Press.
- Reeves, N. (2019). Akhenaten: Egypt’s False Prophet. Thames & Hudson.
Further Reading:
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