It soon became clear that Akhenaton intended to completely reshape Egyptian religion, and thus Egyptian life. He ordered the closing of temples devoted to the gods as well as the seizure of the temples' property. Throughout the land, agents of Akhenaton destroyed statues and removed the names of rival deities. He even had all monuments to his father defaced, so as to remove the name Amon (also rendered as Amen) from “Amenhotep.”
As part of his radical revolution, Akhenaton moved the capital to what later became known as Amarna (ah-MAHR-nah), along the Nile River almost exactly halfway from Memphis to Thebes. For this reason, Akhenaton's reign is known as the Amarna Period. In his time, however, the city was called Akhetaton (ahk-TAH-tuhn), or “The Horizon of Aton.” Rather than take his old court with him from Thebes, Akhenaton surrounded himself with an entirely new group of associates.
In keeping with Akhenaton's radical departure from past ways, sculpture during the Amarna Period underwent a remarkable change. Prior to that time, Egyptian artwork had been very stiff and unreal-looking, with the pharaoh depicted as a man twice as tall as ordinary men. Amarna sculptors went in the opposite direction. To judge from their portrayals of their king, Akhenaton was not a handsome man. His hips and thighs were wide, his calves and arms skinny, his neck abnormally long, and his stomach flabby. For a time, this grotesque style of representation became the norm.
That he permitted such an unflattering depiction of himself says something about Akhenaton's complex personality. Sculptors of his time also produced numerous portrayals of Akhenaton and Nefertiti enjoying an ordinary family life. For instance, one such sculpture shows them playing with their children. Never before had pharaohs been depicted in such a human light.
World History
