before painting on it. This procedure, in contrast to true fresco
painting on wet plaster (see “Fresco Painting,” Chapter 19, page
504), permitted slower and more meticulous work than painting on
wet plaster, which had to be completed before the plaster dried.
Fresco secco, however, is not as durable as true fresco painting,
because the colors do not fuse with the wall surface.
Another fresco fragment (FIG. 3-29) from Nebamun’s tomb
shows four noblewomen watching and apparently participating in a
musicale and dance where two nimble and almost nude dancing
girls perform at a banquet. When Nebamun was buried, his family
must have eaten the customary ceremonial meal at his tomb. They
would have returned one day each year to partake in a commemora-
tive banquet for the living to commune with the dead. This fresco
represents one of these funerary feasts, with an ample supply of wine
jars at the right. It also shows that New Kingdom artists did not al-
ways adhere to the old standards for figural representation. This
painter carefully recorded the dancers’ overlapping figures, their fac-
ing in opposite directions, and their rather complicated gyrations,
producing a pleasing intertwined motif at the same time. The profile
view of the dancers is consistent with their lower stature in the
Egyptian hierarchy. The painter still reserved the composite view for
Nebamun and his family. Of the four seated women, the artist repre-
sented the two at the left conventionally, but the other two face the
observer in what is a rarely attempted frontal pose. They clap and
beat time to the dance, while one of them plays the reeds. The
painter took careful note of the soles of their feet as they sat cross-
legged and suggested the movement of the women’s heads by the
loose arrangement of their hair strands. This informality constituted
a relaxation of the Old Kingdom’s stiff rules of representation.
The frescoes in Nebamun’s tomb testify to the luxurious life of the
Egyptian nobility, filled with good food and drink, fine musicians, lithe
dancers, and leisure time to hunt and fish in the marshes. But, as in the
earlier tomb of Ti, the scenes should be read both literally and allegori-
cally. Although Nebamun is shown enjoying himself in the afterlife, the
artist symbolically asked viewers to recall how he got there. Hunting
scenes reminded Egyptians of Horus, the son of Osiris, hunting down
his father’s murderer, Seth, the god of disorder. Successful hunts were
metaphors for triumphing over death and disorder, ensuring a happy
existence in the afterlife. Music and dance were sacred to Hathor, who
aided the dead in their passage to the other world. The sensual women
at the banquet are a reference to fertility, rebirth, and regeneration.
Akhenaton and the Amarna Period
Not long after Nebamun was laid to rest in his tomb at Thebes, a rev-
olution occurred in Egyptian society and religion. In the mid-14th
century BCE, the pharaoh Amenhotep IV, later known as Akhenaton
(r. 1353–1335 BCE), abandoned the worship of most of the Egyptian
gods in favor of Aton, identified with the sun disk, whom he declared
to be the universal and only god. Akhenaton blotted out the name of
Amen from all inscriptions and even from his own name and that of
his father, Amenhotep III. He emptied the great temples, enraged the
priests, and moved his capital downriver from Thebes to a site he
named Akhetaton (after his new god), where he built his own city
and shrines. It is now called Amarna. The pharaoh claimed to be both
the son and sole prophet of Aton. To him alone could the god make
revelation. Moreover, in stark contrast to earlier practice, artists rep-
resented Akhenaton’s god neither in animal nor in human form but
simply as the sun disk emitting life-giving rays. The pharaohs who
followed Akhenaton reestablished the cult and priesthood of Amen
and restored the temples and the inscriptions. The gigantic temple
complex at Karnak (FIG. 3-24), for example, was dedicated to the re-
The New Kingdom 733-30Akhenaton,
from the temple of
Aton, Karnak, Egypt,
18th Dynasty,
ca. 1353–1335 bce.
Sandstone, 13high.
Egyptian Museum,
Cairo.
Akhenaton initiated
a religious revolution,
and his art is also a
deliberate reaction
against tradition. This
curious androgynous
image may be an
attempt to portray
the pharaoh as Aton,
the sexless sun disk.newed worship of the Theban god Amen. Akhenaton’s brief religious
revolution was soon undone, and his new city was largely abandoned.
During the brief heretical episode of Akhenaton, however,
profound changes occurred in Egyptian art. A colossal statue (FIG.
3-30) of Akhenaton from Karnak, toppled and buried after his
death, retains the standard frontal pose of canonical pharaonic por-
traits. But the effeminate body, with its curving contours, and the
long face with full lips and heavy-lidded eyes are a far cry indeed
from the heroically proportioned figures of the pharaoh’s predeces-
sors (compare FIG. 3-13). Akhenaton’s body is curiously misshapen,
with weak arms, a narrow waist, protruding belly, wide hips, and
fatty thighs. Modern doctors have tried to explain his physique by
attributing a variety of illnesses to the pharaoh. They cannot agree
on a diagnosis, and their premise—that the statue is an accurate de-
piction of a physical deformity—is probably faulty. Some art histori-
ans think that Akhenaton’s portrait is a deliberate artistic reaction
against the established style, paralleling the suppression of tradi-
tional religion. They argue that Akhenaton’s artists tried to formu-
late a new androgynous image of the pharaoh as the manifestation
of Aton, the sexless sun disk. But no consensus exists other than that
the style was revolutionary and short-lived.1 ft.