Boundary Stela with Queen Nefertiti and Princess Maket-Aten
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Akhenaten and Nefertit: Art from the Age of the Sun King, Brooklyn Museum of Art, September 17-November 25, 1973; Detroit Institute of Arts, December 19, 1973-February 28, 1974.
The Sun Disk's Horizon: Life in the City of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, The San Antonio Museum of Art, October 1-November 30, 1992.
Mistress of House, Mistress of Heaven: Women in Ancient Egypt, Cincinnati Art Museum, October 1996-May 1997, no. 45.
Echoes of Eternity: The Egyptian Mummy and the Afterlife, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, June 4, 1999-May 7, 2000.
Pharaohs of the Sun: Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Tutankhamen, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, November 14, 1999-February 6, 2000; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, March 19-June 6, 2000; Art Institute of Chicago, July 17-September 24, 2000; Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden, November 23, 2000-February 18, 2001, no. 37.
Akh-en-Aten's wife Nefert-iti and their daughter Meket-Aten appear here worshipping Aten. This relief belonged to a larger composition including Akh-en-Aten standing before them. Carved directly onto a cliff, it was a boundary marker of the pharaoh's new town, Akhet-Aten. His daughter's now-missing head had been carved on a separate stone (the cliff's rock was poor here) and added.
The relief's unprecedented artistic style reflects the radical newness of Akh-en-Aten's faith. Nefert-iti is portrayed with courtly elegance. Her jaw, ear, arms and fingers are brilliantly attenuated. Her lips are full; her hands, delicate. Meket-Aten's spindly legs emphasize her large thighs and hips, revealed-surprisinglyunder her nearly transparent dress.
This artistic style and heretical religion ended soon after Akh-en-Aten's death. The relief of Ramses II to your right reflects the subsequent return to Egyptian artistic traditions.
Stele N, Tell el-Amarna;
With Maurice Nahman (1868-1948), Cairo, by 1932;
Purchased from Nahman by Dr. Jacob Hirsch, Galerie Ars Classica, Lucerne, Switzerland, by November 1, 1932;
With Hirsch, on joint account with Brummer Gallery, New York, stock no. H119, November 1, 1932–1944 [1];
Purchased from Hirsch and Brummer by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1944.
NOTES:
[1] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Cloisters Library and Archives, Brummer Gallery Records, Egyptian, Object inventory card number H119.
Carl Lepsius, Denkmaler der neuer Reiches 3 (Leipzig, 1890), 295, nos. 45, 48.
W. M. Flinders Petrie, Tell el Amarna (London: Methuen, 1894), 6.
Norman de Garis Davies, The Rock Tombs of el Amarna, pt. 5, Smaller Tombs and Boundary Stelae, Archaeological Survey of Egypt, Seventeenth Memoir (London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1908), 25, plates 33, 40.
John Cooney, “A Relief from Tell el-Amarna,” Art Quarterly 2 (1939): 70, figs. 2, 3; 71.
Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 20.
John Cooney, “Art of the Ancient World,” Apollo 96 (1972): 475, 477, fig. 4.
Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 28.
Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 113.
Anne Capel, “45. Relief: Nefertiti offering to the Aten,” in Mistress of the House, Mistress of Heaven: Women in Ancient Egypt, ed. Anne Capel and Glen Markoe, exh. cat. (Cincinnati: Cincinnati Art Museum, 1996), 112-13, no. 45.
Rita Freed, Yvonne Markowitz, and Sue D’Auria, eds., Pharaohs of the Sun: Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Tutankhamen, exh. cat. (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1999), 214, no. 37, (repro.).
Rita Freed, Yvonne Markowitz, and Sue D’Auria, eds., Farao’s van de Zon: Achnaton, Nefertiti, Toetanchamon, exh. cat. (Amsterdam: Ludion, 2000), 214, no. 37, (repro.).
Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 8, fig. 14.
