The Workshop of the Sculptor Thutmosis

The far-reaching political changes which occurred intermittently throughout Egypt's long history represent a window onto the past and offer excellent archeological potential for modern scholaes. Thetasks of a royal residence or a necropolis demanded that, when a move was being contemplated, the officials in charge should make a decision about the quality of the items they took with them. Objects regarded as superfluous were left behind—such as the famous * papyri of Aburis,* administrative douc- ments of the mortuary priesthood at the epony- mous fifth-Dynasty pyramid complexes situated between Giza and Saqqara. These docments had become obsolete after the royal cemetery was transferred back to Saqqara under the last rulers of the Dynasty. The case of Akhetaten, the newly founded capital of Akhenaten in middle Egypt, is more complex. Shortly after the death of the so-called heretic king, an entrie city was abandoned, never again to be inhabited. Although the city- dwellers—wheather they were officials, priests or trades-men—took their personal property with them, specifi- cally religious objects were left behind as were, of course, houses, workshops and other functional buildings. The extir- pation of Akhenaten's memory and the Aten-centered faith he had propagated meant that not places of worship ultimately demolished in the Nineteenth Dynasty. Most of the royal stat- uray was also destroyed. It is only due to luck that the many images of Ahenaten and his family from the workshop of thutmosis escaped the per- section of the pharaoh's successors. Were just not considered important enough; most of them were bozzettos or components of atatus and as such either had no official character or were not yet cones- created for religious purposes. In the course of a normal change of government these pieces would usually have been disposed of because Sculptural wark would now de reserved for depictions of the new king. When the chief scuiptor, thutmosis, left has vast compex of workshops however, he did not bother to take this trouble, preferring to leave the now useless and ideologically embarrassing images of his dead mastretotheirfate. This,* negative choice,* combined with the fact that the city was never resettled, provided the German archeologist Ludwig Brochardt with a dramatic discovery . in December 1912, in room 19 houes 47.2 (the site's sober grid refrece), he unearthed the *workshop of thutmosis,* the establishment of the most trusted sculptor in Amarna. . Magnificent portrait bustes and other statue parts of the royal family—mainly of Nefertiti and the princesses---came to light in quick success- soin. They were generally made from yellowish to red-brown quartzite, the preferred material for royal sculptures during the Amarana period Alongside completed works were others whose unfinished state documented the artist's Working processes. All the sculptures in stone were made for so-called composite figures which meant that the head and extremities were inserted into an existing body made from a different type of stone. Other details, such as the crwn, could be made separately from faience, pate de verre or even precious metals and these gave the statues an indefinable air of divine majesty. Also of great interest were 20 model heads made from gypsum plaster; which included portraits of Akhenaten and their wives. One of the heads is claimed to be that of ay, eminence grise at the Amarana court and later king ( 1321—1319B.C.) only after intensive invest- tigations was it revealed that the plaster heads were in fact casts produced from clay models. They were kept in the studio and used as templates for manufacturing other status. The most magnificent of all the workshop finds is, without doubt, the world famous painted limesone bust of Queen Nefertiti. The harmonious features of the queen's face speak of a timeless ideal of beaty and bear no traces of the expressive images of the early Amarana period. She wears a high crown with diadem and uraeus—the so-called bonnet of Nefertiti—as well as a multi-reowed collar of stylized flowers. The left eye of the piece is missing, a flaw which emphasizes the character of the bust as a sculptor's model. Efforts by the German archeologists to locate the missing eye were ultimately unsuccessful; it had, fact, never been inserted in the first place. Already Borchardt had reached this conclusion when he wrote that *no trace of an adhesive can be detected in the hollow of the eye; also the back- ground is smooth and has not been carved in any way toreceive an inlay. * when the finds were officially distributed in 1913 by the Egyptian authorities, the Nefertiti bust went to the Berlin businessman, james Simon , who had financed the German Oriental society in Amarana. Simon gifted the piece to the Prussian state in 1920. Since then the bust of Nefertiti has become a treasured icon for the culture of ancient Egypt, a position she shares only with the pyramids in Giza and the boy-king Tutankhamun.