Amarna art

Akhenaten, Nefertiti and three daughters beneath the Aten, Berlin
Two of Akhenaten's daughters, Nofernoferuaton and Nofernoferure, c. 1375–1358 BC. This comfortable and intimate family setting is repeated in other pieces of Amarna art
Princess of the Akhenaten family, Louvre

Amarna art, or the Amarna style, is a style adopted in the Amarna Period during and just after the reign of Akhenaten (r. 1351–1334 BC) in the late Eighteenth Dynasty, during the New Kingdom. Whereas ancient Egyptian art was famously slow to change, the Amarna style was a significant and sudden break from its predecessors both in the style of depictions, especially of people, and the subject matter. The artistic shift appears to be related to the king's religious reforms centering on the monotheistic or monolatric worship of the Aten, the disc of the Sun, as giver of life.

Like Akhenaten's religious reforms, his preferred art style was abandoned after the end of his reign. By the reign of Tutankhamun, both the pre-Amarna religion and art style had been restored.


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