Synopsis
The city of El-Amarna (Akhetaten, 'The Horizon of Aten'), the capital and residence of the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten, is a site of unique interest. Not only is it the only major Egyptian settlement to have been preserved to the point where it can be largely reconstructed, but it has the unique distinction of being a time-capsule located firmly at the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty. This means that we can gain a very clear picture of what an Egyptian capital city was like during the greatest period of Ancient Egyptian history. Apart from its importance in the development of urbanisation in Ancient Egypt and its significance in its religious history, it has many riches to offer the art historian. The religious revolution of Akhenaten brought significant changes of emphasis and iconography, some of them grotesque, but many characterised by a vigorous and luminous naturalism which give the art of the period a freshness and immediacy which has few parallels at any other stage of Pharaonic civilisation.
Fran Weatherhead's volume is devoted to the study of one of the most important aspects of this artistic tradition; the large corpus of painting which has largely lain either unpublished or only partially known to the scholarly world. In a painstaking and thorough assessment she has worked through all the surviving documentation and has been able to produce an outstanding study of the material, frequently providing new insights even into pieces which have long been known. There is no doubt that this book is a major contribution to the study of the art of the Amarna period and will retain permanent value as a corpus and analysis which will almost certainly not be superseded.
