The four colossal statues of Akhenaton

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In the first year of his reign Amenhotep IV as he was originally called, began to construct a series of temples just to the east of Amen’s Karnak temple. He erected at Karnak a temple to the sun god, at that time the only deity worshipped solely in his form of the sun’s disk located outside the enclosure wall to the east of the great temple of Amen. The Aton temple contained a peristyle court whose 28 pillars supported colossal statues of the king. Four of these statues are exhibited here in this museum, two other in Luxor museum, one in Louver museum, one in Munich and the remaining are still at Karnak.

During the reaction that followed his death his temples were dismantled. Their blocks were re used as the hidden cores of new constructions built to the glory of god Amen. These statues were taken down from their places at the rest of Akhenaton’s relics and monuments and after they were taken sown these statues in particular were thrown in a pit and while they fell down they wwere shattered but they were kept buried underneath the sand free of any further damage or destruction until they were found in 1920 by a French excavator working for the Egyptian antiquities organization. These colossi represent the king standing against the pillars holdin the royal insignia which is the crook or HqA and the flail or nHH signs of the king. The king is represented here wearing various costumes. He is represented with different styles of headdresses and different crowns. We can see him once represented with the double crown and another time with the xAt headdress and once more with both. Also we can see him represented with the nms headdress and with the atef crown from which we can only see the feathers which are the only remaining and which are mistakenly known by some people as the feathers of god Amen. All of the statues show the royal beard, frontal uraeus and all bear the double cartouche of Aton carved on various parts of the body. The representation of Akenaton in these statues represents a peculiar style of art. Akhenaton started a revolution in religion thinking he wanted to translate this revolution into sculpture so a new style of art appeared with the strange features of the king but of course these features were certainly exaggerated. May be he was abnormal and had abnormal features in his body this anatomy was not natural but not to that extent. We have a lot of evidence that this was exaggeration in art. All the figures and scenes and representation dating beck to this period take the same form as that of Akhenaton and of course it is not logic that they were all suffering form the same disease. Also we have indications saying that Queen Nefertiti was very beautiful but still we can see her represented like her husband with the elongated skull, elongated neck, half closed eyes and the bulging body. The scholars that refused this conclusion said that Akhenaton was suffering form a disease called Florich syndrome and its causes similar abnormalities to those Akhenaton had. Others said that he is suffering from dropsy disease and others said that he was hermaphrodite.

All the statues have the same features; the elongated skull, the heavy lids, the half closed eyes, the slim extremely tall nose, protruding mouth, and the exaggerated chin. Also we can see the elongated neck with the tow lines which is typical of the Amarna fashion of art; the pierced ear lobs, slim high waist and the slim hands and legs.