Talatat: Portrait of Nefertiti, c.1353-1347 BC (painted sandstone)

The son of Amenhotep III, Akenhaten, brought about the short-lived "monotheistic" revolution in Egyptian religion near the end of Dynasty XVIII. The young king constructed a temple complex to the Aten, the Sun Disk, at Karnak--from which these reliefs come--before he moved his capital to El Amarna. For reasons yet unknown, the figure of the Queen Nefertiti appears in these reliefs far more often that that of the king. Ironically, the Aten temples were dismantled anciently to be used as foundations and fill for additions to the Great Temple of Amun, whom the Aten had briefly displaced. Reign of Amenhotep IV, 1353-1337 BC (18th Dynasty).