Amarna Princess – Daughter of Nefertiti & Akhenaten

This head of an unknown princess dates from the Amarna Period, and the family resemblance among the sculptures of the period is noticeable here. The youthful face and enlarged, elongated heads tended to be a choice for the Amarna artists to depict the daughters of the king. Found in Amarna, this head is now on display in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin.

New Kingdom, late 18th Dynasty, reign of Akhenaten, ca. 1353-1336 BC.

The ‘Amarna revolution’ was not only a religious but also an artistic one. The art of this era is recognizable by its unmistakable sinuous shapes and the singular expressiveness of faces and gestures, which end up surviving, albeit in a less marked manner, in the following epoch.

The Amarna Period lasted less than twenty years: with the advent of the still-child Tutankhaten (‘living image of Aten‘), soon to be renamed Tutankhamun (‘living image of Amun’), traditional cults were restored. Akhetaten was abandoned and became a quarry for building material. The Amarna interlude, however, marked the transition to a new political, cultural and artistic phase.