Breast from a Statue of Akhenaten New Kingdom, Amarna PeriodTell el-Amarna, Egypt
Description
Object Label: This plump, rounded breast belongs to Akhenaten, during whose reign the artistic tradition, religion, and written language experienced a radical change. For the brief period of his rule, Akhenaten became the divine representative of the god Aten on earth. Aten’s name appears in the deeply incised cartouches on the breast, emphasizing the king’s affinity with him. The feminine forms of the king’s depictions point to his androgynous divine status, rather than his actual appearance. Fragments of Amarna sculpture demonstrate the reaction to Akhenaten’s radical reforms. Almost immediately following his reign, his successors intentionally smashed most representations of the king and restored the traditional Egyptian religion. Caption: Breast from a Statue of Akhenaten, ca. 1352–1336 B.C.E.. Granite, 2 3/8 x 6 5/16 x 7 1/2 in. (6 x 16 x 19 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield, Theodora Wilbour, and Victor Wilbour honoring the wishes of their mother, Charlotte Beebe Wilbour, as a memorial to their father, Charles Edwin Wilbour, 16.580.89. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano
A machine reading of the photograph made Jul 2026: deities, names, signs and a description as the model saw them. Not curatorial; treat it as the model's best reading, not authority.
Cross-references (2)
- BKM-Accession 16.580.89 tier-2
- BKM-Object 9913 tier-2
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art.
- AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
- Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
- Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.