Folding altar from Cairo

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Folding altar from Cairo
GD-EG-Caire-Musée066.JPG
material limestone
Dimensions H. 43.5 cm; W. 39 cm;
origin Middle Egypt , Tell el-Amarna , house Q 47.16
time New Kingdom , 18th Dynasty , Amarna period
place Cairo , Egyptian Museum , JE 44865

The folding altar of Cairo is an altarpiece in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo on the king ( pharaoh ) Akhenaten , whose great royal wife Nefertiti and three of her children are depicted. The limestone altarpiece with the inventory number JE 44865 has a size of 43.5 × 39 cm and was discovered in 1912 in Tell-el Amarna in the city district, house Q 47, 16 by Ludwig Borchardt . Gustave Lefebvre chose this object on January 20, 1913 when the find was divided up instead of the Nefertiti bust for the Egyptian administration for antiquities ( Service d'Antiquités Égyptiennes ).

description

On the left you can see Akhenaten sitting on a stool. The eldest daughter, Meritaton , stands in front of him, and he hands her a piece of jewelry. Opposite him sits on the right side Queen Nefertiti, on whose lap two daughters are playing. They are Maketaton and Anchesenpaaton . In the upper field, in the middle of the altar, one finds the sun disk of Aten , whose rays end in hands that hold the sign of life ( Ankh ) and thus bring life to the person represented. In the image field there are various inscriptions that give the names and titles of the people depicted. The altar is framed on three sides by a tape and some of the hieroglyphs still contain the blue color with which they were painted. There are small holes on both sides of the base of the altar, which indicate that the altarpiece was closed with two wooden door leaves.

The so-called “instructive name” of Aton is mentioned here in its first version. The dating is based on the representation of the three daughters and the characteristics typical of this time of the Amarna period in the end of the first half of Akhenaten's reign.

Such altars are typical of the Amarna period in ancient Egypt and were mainly found during the excavations in Amarna, the then capital of Akhenaten, "Achet-Aton". These are altars that were set up in private chapels or houses and thus the royal family and the sun god Aton could be worshiped.

Alleged fake

In 2009, Der Spiegel took up anarticle publishedin 2008 by the Egyptologist Rolf Krauss in the English-language magazine KMT ( Why Nefertiti went to Berlin ). In connection with the thesis that the bust of Nefertiti is a forgery, he also considers the folding altar in Cairo to be a forgery. Of the total of nine reasons for his assumption, Krauss cited, among other things, that the word Maat ( truth ) was misspelled in four places in hieroglyphics. He also criticizes the fact that Akhenaten isdepictedas a left-hander , which, in his opinion,contradictsancient Egyptian iconography . The yellow weathering on the stone is only fake and no patina , as color analyzes have confirmed. Krauss found approval from the Egyptologist Christian Loeben , who described “the relief as a pasticcio , a fraudulent mishmash of styles”, as well as from Martin von Falck, who finds the reasons given by Krauss “convincing, to the altarpiece The former director of the Egyptian Museum Berlin, Dietrich Wildung, disagreed. Michael E. Habicht also dealt with this topic in his 2011 publication Nefertiti and Akhenaten. The secret of the Amarna mummies. , whereby he critically examined and refuted all nine suspicious factors mentioned by Krauss.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Wilfried Seipel in the exhibition catalog Nefertiti - Akhenaten. No. 47.
  2. ^ KMT - A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt . Volume 19, No. 3, 2008.
  3. ↑ Matthias Schulz: Crime about the queen . In: Der Spiegel . No. 22 , 2009, p. 134-135 ( online ).