Ritva Kurittu Wrote:
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> Hi Katherine,
>
> Somewhat o/t, but how exactly was the triad
> established to be AIII, Tiye and a princess
> (Beketaten, I assume) by Johnson?

From the article by Johnson:

Julia Samson, in her study of Amarna objects in the University College Museum, interprets UC 004 quite differently. She identifies the statuette as Akhenaten and Nefertiti, but sees in the fleshiness of their figures an indication of an earlier date for the piece. She describes the queen's figure as the 'taut upright body of a young woman' while the king's is 'fleshy like his father's in his later years'. She points out that the queen wears a Theban tripartite wig, with the lappets pendent over the breasts, a wig which Nefertiti consistently wears throughout the Karnak Aten complex, but only in her very earliest representations at Armarna. Samson identifies the small princess as probably Meritaten, the eldest of the royal couple's six daughters, and suggests that the statuette commemorates the arrival of the royal family at Amarna. Samson's iconographic analysis makes sense when viewed strictly within the parameters of Akhenaten's immediate family, but there are some interesting problems. Aldred is correct in associating UC 004 with votive statuettes that are stylistically late. The relaxed nature of the king's and queen's bodies displays no hint of the severe distortion of Akhenaten's earlier style; rather, the artist has represented two mature adults with the fuller, softer bodies of middle age, in the style of Berlin 21263 which represents an older Nefertiti. How then do we explain the seeming contradiction of iconography and style?

Samson notes two other details of the queen's figure unique to this statuette, which not only set it apart from other votive statuettes at Amarna, but also provide important iconographic clues to the identity of the person being portrayed. First are the two upward-curving lines at the base of the abdomen, just above the pubic area. Although Samson does not discuss it further, this artistic device is undoubtedly intended to indicate the effects of repeated childbirth on the female body, and thus underscores the maturity of the woman being represented. On other statues, Nefertiti, who bore at least six children, is usually shown with only a single curving line at the abdomen, as on the mature Berlin 21263 (in paint), or none at all, as on Louvre E. 15593.

The discrepancy becomes more significant when weighed with the second detail: the presence of a double line under each breast. No other known statue of Nefertiti has this detail, nor does any other published statue from Amarna. There are only two other monuments I can recall where the device occurs, and these are not at Amarna at all, but in Western Thebes, on the two Colossi of Memnon which still guard the entrance to Amenhotep Ill's great mortuary temple (pi. VII, 3). Queen Tiye, clearly named, standing at the side of her seated lord on each colossus, displays an identical double line under either breast. The detailing on the colossal statues is even clearer; between the two lines is a subtly raised area representing a discreet fold of fat. Whether this fold reflects a real physical attribute of Queen Tiye, or is simply an iconographic device to underscore her mature status, is not clear. But its presence on the mature queen figure of UC 004, combined with the double line under the abdomen and the tripartite goddess's wig that Tiye consistently wears at Amarna, strongly suggests that the queen represented here is not Nefertiti, but Tiye.

What then of the king and princess? The king's figure also exhibits stylistic peculiarities that set it apart from similar statuettes which represent Akhenaten. The most conspicuous is the shape of the thick upper body with its prominent breasts, and the unusual stomach, which is large and squarish. Statues of Akhenaten such as Brooklyn Museum 29.34 and Louvre E. 15593 (pl. VII, 1-2) represent the king with a flatter chest and a distinctive stomach shape that in profile resembles a teardrop; narrow at the diaphragm and gradually swelling out as it descends until, at a point past the navel, it curves in again at the belt line, protruding slightly over it. All of Akhenaten's statues display this teardrop stomach, from his colossal figures at Karnak in the early severe style, to the softened statuary of his later years. The king on UC 004 displays a markedly different upper body shape which Samson notes as being unusual for Akhenaten. The thick torso, stocky stomach of an older man, and round navel, details noticeably at variance with Akhenaten's teardrop stomach shape and triangular navel, suggest that the king represented is not Akhenaten at all, but his father Amenhotep III. One is immediately reminded of some of this king's later 'corpulent' sculpture, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art's black statuette 30.8.74 (pl. IV, 1-2), and two inscribed, larger than lifesize statues in Cairo, JE 33900 and 33901, found by Daressy in Amenhotep III's mortuary temple where the king is rendered with the same distinctive physique. The confusion over the identity of the royal couple of UC 004 has been exacerbated by the missing heads which would have exhibited physiognomies unlike those of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Fortunately, the bodies contain enough diagnostic information to provide an identification without the heads.
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Several conclusions can now be drawn. First, iconographic details linking UC 004 to statuary of Amenhotep III and Tiye suggest that the University College votive statuette represents Amenhotep III, Tiye, and a young princess, in all probability Baketaten, based on her association with the couple elsewhere at Amarna. As such, UC 004 is essentially a three-dimensional variation of the lintel scene in Huya's tomb, and received the same veneration at Amarna that statues of Akhenaten and his family received in house and garden shrines devoted to the cult of the royal family. The style of the sculpture is Aldred's 'late' style, exhibiting a relaxed, naturalistic rendering of the ageing bodies of the older royal couple. The small Boston head, MFA 11.1506, belonged to a painted and gilded statuette of Amenhotep III executed in the same style and at approximately the same scale, and may also have been part of a family group. The gilding and superb quality of the carving show that the statuette, despite its size, was an important object of veneration. Similarities of style and workmanship link UC 004 and the Boston head with the inscribed Louvre statuette of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, E. 15593. It is possible that all three pieces were produced in the same workshop, perhaps that of the sculptor Thutmosis, sometime after Akhenaten's Year 9, although the archaeological evidence indicates that votive statuettes of this sort were produced at various sculpture ateliers across the site. A fragment of a similar, unfinished sculpture group in limestone in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1936.658 (TA 35/563) (pi. VIII, 5), was excavated at Amarna by the EES in the 'Sculptors' area' of the Great Palace. Preserved is Nefertiti's roughed-out head with distinctive flat-topped crown and the complete width of the back pillar (7 cm across) with the attachment point for another head beside hers. Unlike Louvre E. 15593 and UC 004, Nefertiti's head is on the right.

The statuette UC 004 raises some other interesting questions, particularly concerning the identification of the tiny princess as Baketaten. The latter is known to us primarily from the tomb of Huya, Steward to Queen Tiye, where she is shown in the company of Amenhotep III and Tiye in the famous lintel scene, and with Tiye alone on several other occasions. A scene in the same tomb shows the overseer of the sculptors of Queen Tiye, Iwta, putting the finishing touches to a small statue of the princess. Baketaten is always shown relatively small in relation to Amenhotep III and Tiye in these scenes, consistently smaller even than Akhenaten and Nefertiti's eldest daughter Meritaten when they appear in the same scene. Her appearance as a toddler on UC 004, produced at least after Akhenaten's Year 9, and in the company of both Tiye and Amenhotep III, suggests a number of possibilities. Baketaten must have been born sometime after the beginning of Akhenaten's reign, after the point when some believe that Amenhotep III had died. Whether Baketaten was their daughter or granddaughter, all three are represented as alive in Huya's tomb and in the UC 004 statuette nine to twelve years after the beginning of Akhenaten's reign, and nine to twelve years after Amenhotep III's supposed death. Amarna art is famous for its sometimes painful truthfulness; it does not make sense that Amenhotep III would be depicted alive, holding hands with the living Queen Tiye and Baketaten, if he were actually dead. There were specific artistic conventions for depicting deceased individuals at Amarna: lying on a bier, as the deceased princess Maketaten and another individual are shown in the royal tomb; standing upright in statue form and crowned with a cone of scented fat in a vine- and papyrus-bedecked shrine, as is Maketaten and another individual in the royal tomb; and last, (at least for non-royal nobility) in mummified form crowned with a cone of scented fat. The figures of Amenhotep III from Amarna display none of the characteristics of a deceased individual found elsewhere in Amarna art.

(Johnson 1996: 75-79, bolding and underlining added for specific emphasis of Johnson's points)

Reference:

Johnson, W. R. 1996. Amenhotep III and Amarna: Some New Considerations. JEA 82: 63-82.

HTH.

Katherine Griffis-Greenberg

Doctoral Candidate
Oriental Institute
Doctoral Programme in Oriental Studies [Egyptology]
Oxford University
Oxford, United Kingdom