Attendants in a Procession

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This block comes from a scene of the king and the royal family processing to the temple, a popular subject in the reliefs at Amarna. The family is often accompanied by attendants carrying fans and sunshades, like the four men whose heads are preserved on the block at the upper left. The men appear to stand beside the king’s chariot, which the king himself drove; the reins extending between the chariot box and the horse’s necks may be seen across the bottom of the block. One man is depicted with a short haircut characteristic of Nubian mercenaries; his rounded chin without facial hair contrasts with the squared chins of the at least some of the other attendants, which are probably meant to indicate the short chin beards of individuals from Asia Minor.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art