Yellow Akhenaten

This statue depicts a king, almost certainly Akhenaten, and is made from yellow limestone. The king holds the heqa scepter (crook and flail), and is seated upon a cushioned throne, wearing a pleated linen kilt, and a striped nemes headdress with the royal insignia of a uraeus upon the centre of his forehead.

Often overlooked is the remnants of an arm wrapped around the back of the king, allowing us to see that somebody (likely Nefertiti or maybe even a deity) once sat or, more likely, stood beside him).

Though not totally impossible, especially if this statue dates from early within Akhenaten’s reign, it is less likely to be a deity once stood beside the Atenist king, but more likely to be his Great Royal Wife Nefertiti, as Anna Stevens of the University of Cambridge & Monash University for the American Research Center in Egypt writes;

“Above all, though Akhenaten is known for his development of a kind of early monotheism that stressed the uniqueness of the sun god Aten, and of Akhenaten’s own relationship with this god. For this king, there was only one god and only one person who now knew the god: Akhenaten himself.“