The Amarna Period, one of the strangest episodes in Egyptian history and art, occurred at the end of the 18th Dynasty between ca. 1353 and 1322 BCE, during the reigns of pharaohs Amenophis IV (Akhenaten), Nefertiti, Smenkhkare, and Tutankhamun. Prior to the Amarna period the most important god in the Egyptian pantheon was Amun, and his temple at Karnak near Thebes was the focus of the state cult.

Amenophis IV ascended to the throne ca. 1353 BCE. Early in his reign he began to build new shrines near the Amun temple, dedicated not to Amun but to the disk of the sun, an obscure deity called the Aten. The Aten was represented not as a human or animal-human hybrid, but as a symbol, a solar disk with radiating rays. In the fifth year of his reign, the king changed his name to Akhenaten (“He who is effective for the Aten”). He abandoned Thebes, Egypt’s religous center, and built a new city, Akhetaten, at Tell Al-Amarna (which gives the period its name). During Akhenaten’s reign, royal portraiture underwent dramatic changes. New figural conventions featured elongated heads, fleshy lips, long necks, thin upper bodies, large hips, pot bellies, and spindly legs. Human figures also appeared more relaxed, moving more naturalistically in space. What motivated these changes and how they might relate to Akhenaten’s religious ideas have never been satisfactorily explained.

Akhenaten’s devotion to the Aten angered many in power below him. He died in his sixteenth regnal year, and his son and successor, Tutankhamun (r. ca. 1332–1323 BCE), reversed his religious policies and brought back traditional practices. One of his successors, Horemheb (r. ca. 1319–1292), ordered the city of Akhetaten demolished and erased as much of the Amarna period as he could from official histories and monuments. Web resources here and here.

Akhenaten, Nefertiti and Three Daughters. Limestone. New Kingdom, Eighteenth Dynasty. Ca. 1348–1336 BCE. Egyptian Museum, Berlin.