Sandstone Statues of Akhenaten & Nefertiti Making Offerings to the Aten
Nefertiti: The British Museum, EA935
In a quiet chamber of House L.50.12 at Amarna, not far from a modest domestic shrine, excavators of the 1923–24 season uncovered two sandstone figures standing side by side: the heretic king Akhenaten and his queen, the ever-radiant Nefertiti. Fashioned in the later years of the Atenist experiment, both statues once held offering trays aloft towards the sun-disc Aten, whose rays ended in little hands of life. Today their own hands (and indeed their heads) are lost, casualties of ancient zeal and the later dismantling of Amarna’s sacred imagery.
Nefertiti’s statue, now in the British Museum, is a slender, soft-lined figure clad in a pleated, translucent linen gown falling delicately to the elbows. Originally carved in two pieces, her head was once a separate limestone element fitted to a reworked neck strengthened with ancient plaster. She may have carried a flat offering table, though the sideways grip has led some scholars to cast a sceptical eye over that interpretation. Her figure bears an inscription in the later form of the Aten’s name, anchoring her securely within the closing years of Akhenaten’s reign. The statue was found broken at the waist and had suffered deliberate damage long before its modern rediscovery; a fate not uncommon for Amarna royal images.
Her royal counterpart, Akhenaten, now in the Ashmolean Museum, mirrors her pose. Though his arms and hands are missing, their angle makes plain that he too once presented an offering to the Aten. His painted sandstone body retains warm red-orange pigments, with faint traces of a collar still visible despite the absent head. He is rendered in the characteristic Amarna style: rounded stomach, softly modelled limbs, and a hint of gynaecomastia; features that speak to the king’s chosen aesthetic rather than his physiology. Seen in profile, his plump silhouette is delightfully and unmistakably Akhenaten.
Though incomplete, the pair remain rare survivors of Amarna statuary: intimate domestic expressions of royal devotion within the ill-fated city of Akhetaten, where sunlight, ritual, and royal image briefly reigned with revolutionary fervour before vanishing into the sands of history.
Summary:
Sandstone Statues of Akhenaten & Nefertiti Making Offerings to the Aten, c. 1345–1335 B.C.
From Tell el-Amarna (Akhetaten), Egypt
Akhenaten: Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, AN1924.162
Nefertiti: The British Museum, EA935
