Statues of Amun

Works of art were what initially attracted the attention of scholars and laypersons alike to the Amarna Period, the era of pharaonic Egyptian history when the “heretic king” Akhenaten ruled. Archaeologists working at the site of the short-lived capital city he founded in middle Egypt uncovered many sculptures depicting Akhenaten and Nefertiti, his principal queen, which are famous today world-wide. But what of the aftermath of Akhenaten’s reign when sculptors were called upon to redress the damage inflicted on the cult of the orthodox King of the Gods Amun, which had suffered grievously during the iconoclastic phase of the king’s reign? The lecture presents representative examples from among more than 60 statues of Amun and his consorts, Mut and Amunet, created to replace the images destroyed. This corpus, compiled over three decades, forms the basis of a study in the final stages of preparation. The main focus of the lecture is the indispensable role connoisseurship plays in such a project – and what can result from failure to apply it.

Marianne Eaton-Krauss (PhD, 1978; Institute of Fine Arts) specializes in the art and archaeology of ancient Egypt. Her wide-ranging interests extend from ca. 3000 BCE and Early Dynastic times down to Christian art in Egypt of the Fourth Century CE. The primary focus of her work nowadays is the reign of King Tutankhamun; she has published monographs on the sarcophagus, the small golden shrine, and, most recently, the thrones, chairs, stools, and footstools from his tomb, as well as numerous articles about the events that immediately preceded and followed his reign. She lives in Germany and has taught at universities in Muenster and Marburg as well as in Berlin where she also participated in the Egyptian Dictionary Project of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science and the Humanities.

Admission to lecture closes 10 minutes after scheduled start time.

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