UPenn Museum to Give Tut's Childhood Home the Royal Treatment
A Special Exhibition Preview by Stan Parchin
The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia will be hosting a special exhibition on Egyptian art from the Eighteenth Dynasty's Amarna Period (ca. 1353-1336 B.C.) that opens almost three months before Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs takes up residence at the nearby Franklin Institute. Amarna: Ancient Egypt's Place in the Sun runs from November 12, 2006 through October 2007, closing after the show on Tutankhamun and his world concludes its American tour.
The Museum's marvelous mounting of more than 100 works of art and assorted artifacts will display objects from Akhetaten (present-day el-Amarna), the desert capital of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, Tutankhamun's "heretical" father later called Akhenaten. This state-of-the art presentation coincides with the institution's refurbishment of its Upper and Lower Egyptian galleries. The exhibition's rooms, situated near the Museum's Lower Egyptian gallery, were expertly designed by the McMillan Group (responsible for the current Tutankhamun show's first installation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art).
Gallery View: Amarna: Ancient Egypt's Place in the Sun
© McMillan Group
The visionary Akhenaten moved the Egyptian capital and his court from Thebes to an arid uninhabited region in Middle Egypt. The remote location's central cliffs are broken by an unusual gap whose shape resembles the Egyptian hieroglyph for the word "horizon" (akhet). Akhenaten's religious experiment called for Egypt's pantheon of traditional gods and goddesses to be abandoned and replaced by the single deity embodied in the sun's disk (Aten). The daily appearance of the sun through Amarna's unusual rock formation may have inspired the pharaoh to name his new capital city Akhetaten or Horizon of the Aten. In this environment of cultural upheaval, Akhenaten, the father of six daughters by the beguilingly beautiful Queen Nefertiti and founder of a new metropolis, sired Tutankhaten (later called Tutankhamun) by a minor wife often identified as Kiya.
Amarna (View from the South)
Photo credit: David P. Silverman
Akhenaten's short-lived radical revolution in religion was accompanied by one in the visual arts. The centuries-old strict formalism of ancient Egyptian art gave way to refreshingly relaxed and naturalistic sculpture. Artistic innovations, presumably sanctioned by the pharaoh, eventually led to pictorial exaggerations of the human form that emphasized its sensual curves. Amarna: Ancient Egypt's Place in the Sun will include statues of deities and the pharaoh's royal family, monumental relief sculpture, artisans' materials, gold jewelry and personal items that belonged to Akhenaten and his entourage. These objects date from before the advent of the Amarna Period to the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty, supplemented by digital recreations, elaborate illustrations, maps and photographs.
Gallery View: Amarna: Ancient Egypt's Place in the Sun
© McMillan Group
Central to this special exhibition is a tall vertical relief that depicts Pharaoh Akhenaten and a female member of his family. Carved in profile and facing to the right, the two figures' arms are raised upward in the direction of the Aten's solar disk, whose descending rays of light end in beneficent hands. The representations of both the deity and religious scene are standard examples of art from the Age of Amarna.
Monumental Wall Relief of the
Royal Family Worshipping Aten
Egyptian, Dynasty 18 (Amarna Period),
Reign of Akhenaten (1353-1336 B.C.)
Possibly from Amarna
Quartzite
H. 91 in., W. 26 in., D. 10 in.
© University of Pennsylvania Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology
Also included in the show is a remarkable bronze Statuette of Tutankhamun (1332-1322 B.C.). The boy-king who succeeded his controversial father kneels, probably before an Egyptian deity from a larger composition now missing. Produced during or after the restoration of Egypt's polytheistic religion, the young pharaoh's chest and headdress retain traces of gold. A work created after the mysterious disappearance of Akhenaten from the historical record, the statue's fleshy hips and thighs, the shape of its elongated face and comparison with similar works of art helped to determine the sculpture's identity as that of Tutankhamun.
Statuette of Tutankhamun
Egyptian, Late Dynasty 18 (Post-Amarna Period),
Reign of a Successor of Akhenaten (1332-1322 B.C.)
Black bronze with traces of gold
H. 9 in., W. 4 in., D. 6 in.
Photo credit: Tom Jenkins
© University of Pennsylvania Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology
The exhibition will be accompanied by a 200-page scholarly publication titled Akhenaten & Tutankhamun: Revolution & Restoration. Written by the show's co-curators, David P. Silverman, Josef W. Wegner and Jennifer Houser Wegner, the hardcover volume and its 140 full-color images describe the art, culture and history of the Amarna Age. The text is priced at $24.95. Dr. Silverman is also the national curator for the American tour of Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs.
In addition to the book, the Museum will be holding a number of public lectures and other activities as part of its Year of Egypt celebration. Updated news about these events can be found at www.museum.upenn.edu.
Click here for an additional image of a sculpture that will be in the exhibition.
For further reading:
Freed, Rita E., Yvonne J. Markowitz and Sue H. D'Auria (eds.), et al.
Pharaohs of the Sun: Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Tutankhamen (exh. cat.).
Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1999.
Arnold, Dorothea, Lyn Green and James Allen. The Royal Women
of Amarna: Images of Beauty in Ancient Egypt (exh. cat.).
New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996.
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From your Guide: Stan Parchin, Senior Correspondent for Museums and Special Exhibitions, is a specialist in ancient, late-medieval and Renaissance art and history, and a regular contributor to About Art History. You may read all of his Special Exhibition and Catalogue Reviews here.
