Royal hand

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Amarna is the name that excavators have given to the site of King Akhenaten's residence in Middle Egypt, Akhetaten (the horizon of the god Aten). Akhenaten's reign (beginning ca. 1353 B.C.), including the years when the pharaoh resided at Amarna (ca. 1349-1336 B.C.), was characterized by a major revolution in ancient Egyptian religion and art. The king promoted worship of one sole god, the solar deity Aten. His artists, liberated from some of the confines of tradition, created works of hitherto unseen inventiveness and subtlety of execution. Relief decoration in the Amarna temples included naturalistic details, such as this one, and transitory gestures that are unique in Egyptian art. Here, the gesture of a queen's hand was captured at the moment she pointed out marsh fowl to the king during a hunting interlude. The languid grace of the bent wrist and the sensitivity of the long fingers - represented with an unusual sense of perspective that depicts the thumb and index finger in the foreground - express perfectly the essence of Amarna art.

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