Statues of Akhenaten at Karnak

This article is from Ancient Egypt issue 151

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The area to the east of the Eastern Gate in the enclosure wall of Karnak Temple has long been used as a convenient dumping ground, where archaeologists could deposit the debris from their work inside the temple. In July 1925, Maurice Pillet, Director of Works at Karnak, was working there enlarging a drainage ditch. The ditch was dug around the temple to protect its buildings from the adverse effects of the rising water table, probably caused by the Aswan Dam. He uncovered two fallen colossi of Akhenaten in the curious style which is now familiar: a thin face, arms across the chest, a protruding stomach, and wide hips. The colossi were sent to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Henri Chevrier took over from Pillet in March 1926, working at Karnak for more than 20 years, during most of which he continued digging in east Karnak, eventually finding dozens of fragments of sandstone heads and torsos.

Donald Redford of the University of Toronto began new excavations in 1975. He concluded that the colossi originally stood in the Gem-pa-Aten, a sun-temple built by Amenhotep IV early in his reign, before he moved the royal court to Amarna and changed his name to Akhenaten. The Gem-pa-Aten seems to have been a huge open courtyard, about 130m by 200m, oriented towards the east. A mud-brick wall enclosed the complex, inside which a roofed colonnade of sandstone talatat blocks had been built. The colonnade had a decorated back wall and pillars spaced at 2m intervals to support the roof. Against each pillar was a standing colossus of the king, facing into the court. The open space inside the courtyard might have been filled with altars to be heaped with offerings directly available to the sun, or could have been used for activities associated with the king’s heb-sed festival, which he celebrated unusually in regnal year three, rather than after the usual 30 years on the throne. Perhaps he was indicating that his reign was a continuation of his father’s, Amenhotep III, who would be due another heb-sed at this point. Commentators are still undecided as to his motives.

Each of the colossi had been pushed over into the court and lay damaged on its face. To improve his photograph of the excavation trench from 1926, Chevrier has presumably re-erected the fragments in front of the piers.

Today, the area of east Karnak is again covered in mounds of rubble and debris where the colossi were found. The colossi themselves are exhibited in the museums of Luxor and Cairo, where their strange appearance contrasts dramatically with the more traditional statuary elsewhere on display.

Geoffrey Lenox-Smith, independent researcher and photographer