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The Amarna Triad THE AMARNA TRIAD [PLANCHES I-IV/CAHIER COUL. PL. 1] BY CHRISTIAN J. BAYER & MARIANNE EATON-KRAUSS Institut für Ägyptologie und Koptologie – Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster Schlaunstr. 2 48143 MÜNSTER / Riehlstr. 2 14057 BERLIN On December 11, 1932, the limestone block illustrated in figure 1 (pl. I) was recorded by the Egypt Exploration Society mission to Tell el-Amarna.1 It did not elicit much attention, perhaps not only because the surface with the figures was severely damaged; it may well have already been broken in two. In the published excavation report there is no illustration, only a terse description in the list of objects recovered from the Great Aten Temple.2 The find-spot is not specified beyond simply the Per-hai – described by the archaeologists as two gigantic platforms, each provided with a double row of four columns, within an enclosure in the precinct of the Great Aten Temple.3 The dimensions of the block given in the excavation report – 50 by 25 cm – are clearly approximate, but they conform to the standard size of the talatat employed in the construction of temples at Tell el-Amarna, which were also approximately 25 cm thick. From the photograph it is clear that the figures on the surface which we shall designate the obverse were worked in sunk relief. There can be little doubt that the frieze and inscription on the other side were also executed in sunk relief, even though no photo- graph was apparently made of it, nor did the excavators comment on the technique. Not only were such blocks seldom decorated with raised relief;4 similar friezes at Amarna (see immediately below) are all decorated in sunk relief. The present whereabouts of the block are not known. The summary description of the relief in the publication is not supplemented by citation of a city to which it was alloc- ated following the excavations, nor is the block mentioned in the distribution list.5 If, because of its poor state of preservation, the block was left on site and thus exposed to 1 This block and key thoughts on its potential subject-matter were first brought to our attention by Nicholas Reeves who generously ceded his prior publication rights to us. 2 CoA III, p. 18 (find no. 32/50). 3 CoA III, p. 14; plans on pls. III and IV. 4 G. Roeder, Amarna-Reliefs aus Hermopolis, 1969, p. 20; cf. the comment made in passing by J.D. Cooney, Amarna Reliefs from Hermopolis in American Collections, 1965, p. 96. 5 CoA III, p. 253-254. Revue d’égyptologie 63, 21-41. doi∞∞: 10.2143/RE.63.0.2957945 Tous droits réservés © Revue d’égyptologie, 2012. 95764_RdE_63_02_Bayer.indd 21 23/01/13 11:48 22 CHR. J. BAYER & M. EATON-KRAUSS the elements, it may well have salted away to nothing in the interim.6 It is unlikely that it ended up in the storage facility of the Supreme Council of Antiquities at Ashmunein which is now known from press reports7 and from the latest television ‘documentary’ dealing with Tutankhamun’s ancestry,8 to house a number of blocks from Tell el-Amarna, excavated by the German expedition to Hermopolis in the 1930s, but lost track of in the interim.9 However, until such time as an inventory of the facility’s contents is accessible, this poss- ibility cannot be categorically ruled out. The design across the top on the reverse is summarily rendered in the sketch made at the time of excavation (pl. I, fig. 2), but it is nonetheless recognizable as a tripartite frieze of lotus leaves, bordered above and below by a series of alternating lotus blossoms and buds. The motif will have been schematically rendered in the original, as comparison with several examples of the same kind of frieze on blocks from Hermopolis, illustrated by Roeder,10 suggests. The tops of five columns of hieroglyphs below the frieze preserve elements of the easily reconstructed, standard text identifying the Aten, familiar from countless examples, which read: Great living Aten who is in jubilee lord of all that Aten encircles, lord of heaven, lord of earth who is in the house of Aten in Akhet-Aten. The orientation of the signs is congruent with the remains of the disc itself, preserved at the right hand edge of the block. The indication of the break running vertically through the text to the right of center in the sketch of the reverse is difficult to reconcile with the position of the break to the right of center on the obverse, unless it is presumed that the block had been snapped in two not straight across, but diagonally.11 When this occurred is anyone’s guess. Perhaps the block was broken in the process of dismantling the structure of which it formed a part; or it could have been dropped when workmen were loading the disassembled blocks for transport to Hermopolis for reuse and so left behind, as were many other fragments subsequently 6 An alternative suggested by Nicholas Reeves. We also wish to thank Kristin Thompson for exchanging emails with us about the block and, in particular, for discussing suggestions about the disposition of fragments of relief and statuary from the earlier EES campaigns at Amarna. 7 Z. Hawass, “Dig Diary”, Al-Ahram Weekly No. 929 (Jan. 8-14, 2009; on-line, June 20, 2010). 8 Aired in two, 120-minute episodes on Feb. 21 and 22, 2010; see the commentary of Dennis Forbes, “Tutankhamen’s Family Ties – Full of Knots!”, KMT. A modern journal of ancient Egypt 21 (summer 2010), p. 19-35, passim. 9 Among them, the so-called Hermopolis block with an inscription calling Tutankh(u)aten a King’s Son: G. Roeder, Amarna-Reliefs, pls. 105-106; cf. D. Forbes, KMT 21, p. 35 n. 18. For a recent study of the inscription see, e.g., M. Gabolde, “La parenté de Toutânkhamon”, BSEG 155 (2002), p. 32-38. 10 G. Roeder, Amarna-Reliefs, pls. 42, 110, 213, etc. Roeder (ibid., p. 253-254) called the frieze a Lotus-Blüten- Knospen-Band. Its use was not limited to architecture; for example, it decorates the rim of a stone vessel from KV 47, the tomb of Siptah: Th. M. Davis et al., The Tomb of Siphtah, the Monkey Tomb, and the Gold Tomb, 1908, pl. 23, and the head-rail of the armchair CG 51112 from KV 46: J.E. Quibell, The Tomb of Yuaa and Thuiu (CGC), 1908, pl. 35. 11 Cf. the ‘Hermopolis block’ cited n. 9, supra, which was also broken through diagonally, but not as obliquely as the sketch in the EES records suggests for our block. RdE 63 (2012) 95764_RdE_63_02_Bayer.indd 22 23/01/13 11:48 THE AMARNA TRIAD 23 recorded by the EES. Alternatively, but perhaps less likely, the break may have occurred in modern times. While the decoration of the reverse is unexceptional, the partially preserved scene on the obverse is quite unusual. Two similarly proportioned figures face each other below the radiant sun disc which is positioned remarkably close to them; one hand at the end of sev- eral very short sun beams holds an ankh-sign to the nose of the leftwards oriented person. Other beams, their hands palm downwards, extend behind the head of the figure facing rightwards. An ankh-sign is looped as usual around the disc’s ubiquitous frontal uraeus. The crown of the head of the figure at the right is slightly higher than that of the figure to the left whose face seems to be tilted ever so slightly backwards to glance up at the other. (These details are not accurately rendered in the excavators’ sketch; compare pl. I, fig. 2 with our rendering, pl. II, fig. 3a.) A hand belonging to the right-hand figure cups the head of the figure opposite. This person wears a disc earring that is partially concealed beneath a meticu- lously detailed, short round echelon-curled wig. The damage to the wig is anything but random. Its outlines preserve the form of the features it was intended to obliterate: an uraeus, pendant from a diadem, wound round with another uraeus whose hood projected at the fore- head. This ensemble is exactly paralleled by the headgear of the queen depicted kissing her daughter on a block from Hermopolis now in The Brooklyn Museum (pl. III, fig. 4).12 When Cooney initially published the Brooklyn relief, he remarked that the damaged inscription in the first column of text had named Meritaten, and from this, he deduced that the royal lady kissing the princess ‘…can hardly be anyone other than Nefertiti’.13 The traces of hieroglyphs in the second and third columns can be confidently restored to labels naming Akhenaten and Nefertiti’s second and third daughters, Maketaten and Ankhesenpaaten, as shown in figure 4 (pl. III). The latter’s name displays an unusual, though not unique, ortho- graphy; aten is written first, by contrast to its normal position at the end of the princess’s name. In all likelihood, the standard orthography of her older sisters’ names in the preceding columns resulted in the precedence given the aten-element in Ankhesenpaaten’s name here.14 12 Brooklyn 60.197.8; 22.2 by 44.5 cm; as with the other reliefs in Cooney’s publication, the ‘more interesting’ surface was sawn off, presumably to facilitate transport and eventual sale; the reverse probably bore some purely decorative motif and/or stereotypical inscription, like our block, which led to its being discarded, if it had not already been damaged irrepar- ably or destroyed in the process of separating the more marketable surface.
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