Antiquity · Cleveland Museum of Art · 1959.188
Talatat: Portrait of Nefertiti
Unknown maker, c. 1353–1347 BCE
Cleveland Museum of Art · Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund · Public domain
- Artist
- Unknown maker
- Date
- c. 1353–1347 BCE
- Medium
- painted sandstone
- Dimensions
- Overall: 22 x 22.7 cm (8 11/16 x 8 15/16 in.)
- Era
- Antiquity
Why it matters
The son of Amenhotep III, Akenhaten, 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—from which this relief comes—before he moved his capital to El Amarna. For reasons yet unknown, the figure of the Queen Nefertiti appears in these reliefs far more often that that of the king. Ironically, the Aten temples were dismantled to be used as foundations and fill for additions to the Great Temple of Amun, whom the Aten had briefly displaced.