Egyptian Dreams

[Chrismackint]

Whats with this? It seems very strange to me that he would be holding onto/keeping a bust of a queen from amarna like this!

[Rozette]

Memphite head of Queen Nefertiti, brouwn quartzite (Egyptian Museum Cairo).
Clarence S. Fisher, excavator from the University of Pennsylvania found the piece near a Ramesside palace in the ancient captital of Memphis.

According to Dorothea Arnold there can be no doubt that the head found at Memphis was created by an artist of the Thutmose workshop at Amarna.

[Chrismackint]

It's a real enigma!

[anneke]

I thought this face was founf in the foundations of the palace? I got the impression it was used as "filler" in the building process.

I have also read that some people think this means that there may have been statues of Nefertiti in Memphis. There is mention of a temple dedicated to Aten in Memphis. There seem to be tombs found where some of the relatives are associated with a temple of the Aten in the general Memphis area.
I don't know if these people would have maybe worked in Heliopolis which should have been relatively close by or if a temple of Aten was built in or near the temple of Ptah in Memphis. Or maybe for the time being they re-dedicated the temple of Ptah to the Aten??
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Math and Art: http://mathematicsaroundus.blogspot.com/

[Chrismackint]

Merenptah did move back south after his father had established a new city in the delta....which seems very strange to me considering how his father had persecuted the aten family.....perhaps an aten connection could be the reason? Maybe Merenptah was interested in the aten cult and decided to re-dedicate the temple of Ptah to the Aten ?Makes a lot of sense considering his name is Merenptah and he would naturally have a connection with the Ptah temple?!

I always thought it strange how he moved from his fathers new capital,i mean why would he go back to the old citites when his father had made a new one for a new egypt?

[Osiris II]

This is a completely un-necessary discussion. As anneke said above, the bust was used as fill. Merenptah would not have known, and even cared less, that it was there.

[Robson]

Well, it looks remarkably with the pieces of the controversial Mansoor Collection

For example, this one:

[anneke]

This Mansoor piece is one of the ones that has always looked fake to me.
All the aunthenticated statues seem to show damage to the nose and ears. My guess is that this is just because those areas are the most fragile.

But the Mansoor piece has the nose and at least the one ear completely intact. And the smile on that statue looks more like a smirk
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Math and Art: http://mathematicsaroundus.blogspot.com/

[Osiris II]

I agree with you about the Mansoor collection, anneke. All of the pieces just look in too perfect of a condition to have been lost and buried for over 2000 years! You'd expect to see SOME damage, and usually shown in a statue's nose or ears. The smile on the shown piece does, indeed, look more like a sneer than a smile!

[Chrismackint]

I missed the bit where it was used as infill.....ok so no connection there.....i should have realised AE wouldn't bother to make a distinction between a stone bust and the palace stone work-both would work the same for the purpose of infill.

That Mansoor piece is, in my opinion, after all the amarna artwork i have looked at, definately suspicious.

Just the way the eyes have been carved out-the edges-there just not of the same standard as the bust found in merenptahs palace...and the Mansoor's looks as though a european artist has worked on it simply because of the nose.

[Chrismackint]

I just noticed the Mansoor bust has no lines on it's neck which all amarna art has....if they are not carved out then there should at least be two guide lines of black ink to indicate where the artist was going to carve-like the princess bust with the elongated head....even on the Merenptah bust,on whats left of her neck, you can see one of the lines on her neck....

[neferwiwi]

You will also notice on this piece from the Mansoor collection the ear is pierced only once.....

[kylejustin]

[ELISE]

Most telling of all, there don't appear to be any original designs in the Mansoor collection - they are all exact copies or near-exact copies of known works.