Hand Clutching an Olive Branch

Hand Clutching an Olive Branch

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In this fragment only the beautifully carved left hand of Akhenaten remains, holding a heavily laden branch of olives that appears to be caressed by the hands of the sun's rays. The entire scene would have shown the king standing directly beneath the sun disk, facing what appears to be the olive tree from which he may have cut the branch. The upper boughs of the tree are to the right along the lower edge of the block. The text in the upper right has been intentionally destroyed, leaving only a few traces of the hieroglyphs. This relief is currently on long-term loan to the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung in Berlin in exchange for two heads in plaster that were excavated at Amarna. These heads are on display in the Museum's Amarna gallery (gallery 17, Egyptian art).

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The Met collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 30,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from about 300,000 BCE to the 4th century CE. A signifcant percentage of the collection is derived from the Museum's three decades of archaeological work in Egypt, initiated in 1906 in response to increasing interest in the culture of ancient Egypt.