Sotheby's Auction: Figure of an Amarna Princess

Stan Parchin

A fragmentary statue of an Amarna princess from ancient Egypt is expected to garner between $400,000 and $600,000 (US) at an upcoming Sotheby's auction in New York.

The sculpture (ca. 1347-1345 B.C.) measures 34.3 cm (13 1/2 in.) in height. It was carved from nummulitic limestone, a hard material composed largely of fossils dating from the Eocene Epoch (57.8 to 36.6 million years ago) and found abundantly in the Sahara Desert. The work most definitely comes from Akhetaten (modern-day Tell el-Amarna). It probably represents either Meretaten or Meketaten, one of six daughters sired by Akhenaten and Nefertiti, the pharaoh's beguilingly beautiful queen. What remains of the princess' right arm is tucked under her breasts. A hand resting on her right shoulder suggests that the statue was once part of a larger composition, the princess' sister presumably having once stood directly to her left. The sculptor's emphasis on the girl's pronounced pubic mound, most likely an overt reference to fertility and creation, is consonant with similar works from the same period.

The damaged yet recognizable Nummulitic Figure of an Amarna Princess was listed in the collection of Dr. Leo Mildenberg, Zurich and the inventory of Spink & Son, Ltd., London in 1960. Denys Miller Sutton (1917-1991), editor of the respected British arts magazine Apollo for nearly a quarter-century beginning in 1962, acquired the New Kingdom (ca. 1550-1070 B.C.) statue sometime thereafter. Acutely attuned to issues of art conservation and preservation (many addressed in his publication), the author and art collector ironically served as secretary of the international commission charged with the restitution of cultural property after World War II.

With the exception of the brief stylistic break dictated for religious reasons by the pharaoh Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten (r. 1353-1336 B.C.), ancient Egyptian sculptors adhered to a centuries-old canon of strict formalism. Their images were intended to perpetuate one's spirit in case of the body's corruption after death.

Beginning in the early years of the Old Kingdom age of the pyramids (ca. 2649-2150 B.C.), a hieratic scale dictated that men were depicted larger than women. Children were rendered smaller than their parents and appeared as miniature adults despite their actual ages, making many of their representations at best symbolic rather than realistic in terms of accurate portraiture.

The artistic strictures of previous ancient Egyptian eras were relaxed for some 17 years during Akhenaten's reign. While the visionary "heretic" pharaoh professed what appears to have been a revolutionary monotheistic creed dedicated to Aten or the solar disk, he encouraged an iconoclastic sense of naturalism in art, albeit extreme at points. In the absence of mummified remains, the exaggerated and sometimes androgynous physical features of statuary representing Akhenaten and his royal family continue to confound Egyptologists, art historians and pathologists to the present day.