id: 135658 accession number: 1959.188 share license status: CC0 url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1959.188 updated: 2023-03-20 14:14:12.899000 Talatat: Portrait of Nefertiti, c. 1353–1347 BC. Egypt, Karnak, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, reign of Amenhotep IV, 1353-1337 BC. Painted sandstone; overall: 22 x 22.7 cm (8 11/16 x 8 15/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1959.188 title: Talatat: Portrait of Nefertiti title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: c. 1353–1347 BC creation date earliest: -1353 creation date latest: -1347 current location: 107 Egyptian creditline: Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund copyright: --- culture: Egypt, Karnak, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, reign of Amenhotep IV, 1353-1337 BC technique: painted sandstone department: Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art collection: Egypt - New Kingdom type: Sculpture find spot: East Karnak catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS --- measurements: Overall: 22 x 22.7 cm (8 11/16 x 8 15/16 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Art from the Age of the Sun King opening date: 1973-09-17T04:00:00 Akhenaten and Nefertiti: Art from the Age of the Sun King. The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY (organizer) (September 17-November 25, 1973); The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI (December 19, 1973-February 28, 1974). title: Exposition Akhénaton opening date: 2008-10-16T00:00:00 Exposition Akhénaton. Musée d'art et d'histoire, Genéve 3, Switzerland (organizer) (October 16, 2008-February 1, 2009); Fondazione Palazzo Bricherasio, Turin, Italy (February 26-June 14, 2009). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS * Akhenaten and Nefertiti, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY (September 17-November 25, 1973); The Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, MI (December 19, 1973-Febuary 28, 1974). --- PROVENANCE Mrs. Paul Mallon, Paris, France, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art date: -1959 footnotes: citations: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH date: 1959- footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: This relief comes from the short end of a talatat, a limestone block of standardized size used during the 18th Dynasty reign of the Pharaoh Akhenaten in the building of the Aton temples at Karnak and Akhetaten. The standardized size and their small weight made construction more efficient. digital description: wall description: The son of Amenhotep III, Akenhaten, brought about the short-lived "monotheistic" revolution in Egyptian religion near the end of Dynasty 18. The young king constructed a temple complex to the Aten, the Sun Disk, at Karnak—from which this relief comes—before he moved his capital to El Amarna. For reasons yet unknown, the figure of the Queen Nefertiti appears in these reliefs far more often that that of the king. Ironically, the Aten temples were dismantled to be used as foundations and fill for additions to the Great Temple of Amun, whom the Aten had briefly displaced. --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS "Annual Report for the Year 1959." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 47, no. 6 (1960). page number: p. 132 url: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25142399 Cleveland Museum of Art, and Martha L. Carter. Egyptian Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, Ohio: The Museum, 1963. page number: p. 11, pl. 12, cover url: https://archive.org/details/EgyptianArt_80670 The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966. Published as: Akh-en-Aten. page number: Reproduced: p. 4 url: https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1966/page/n28 Cooney, John D. "Amarna Art in the Cleveland Museum." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 55, no. 1 (1968). page number: pp. 7-8, cover url: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25152189 The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969. Published as: Akhenaten. page number: Reproduced: p. 4 url: https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1969/page/n26 Cleveland Museum of Art, and Adele Zeidman Silver. Guide to the Galleries. 1971. page number: unpaginated url: Porter, Bertha, Rosalind Louisa Beaufort Moss, and Ethel W. Burney. Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs, and Paintings II, II. Oxford [etc.]: Clarendon Press, 1972. page number: p. 40 url: Aldred, Cyril. Akhenaten and Nefertiti; [Catalog of an Exhibition Celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences]. New York: Brooklyn Museum in association with the Viking Press, 1973. page number: no. 23 url: Kozloff, Arielle P. "Nefertiti, Beloved of the Living Disk." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 64, no. 9 (1977). page number: pp. 291-92, fig. 6 url: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25159548 The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. page number: Reproduced: p. 15 url: https://archive.org/details/CMAHandbook1978/page/n35 Aldred, Cyril. Akhenaten, King of Egypt. New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson, 1988. page number: pl. 29 url: Berman, Lawrence M., and Kenneth J. Bohač. Catalogue of Egyptian Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1999 page number: Mentioned and Reproduced: p. 243 url: --- IMAGES web: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1959.188/1959.188_web.jpg print: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1959.188/1959.188_print.jpg full: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1959.188/1959.188_full.tif