Statue Fragment of an Arm

Part of a forearm from a life-sized royal statue carved in fine indurated limestone bearing incised hieroglyphic text with the earlier names of the Aten. The god's names are written in two cartouches: "May Re-Horakhte Live, Who Ascends from the Horizon in his Quality of Light, Which is the Solar Disc". Originally some of the royal buildings at the City of Tell el-Amarna were provided with statues of the royal family, often in hard stones. The largest group seems to have been in the Great Palace but others are known to have stood in the temples. After the death of Akhenaten these statues were deliberately smashed into pieces as a ‘damnatio memoriae’ in condemnation of a pharaoh who people now wanted to forget. Find number 31/410. Excavated outside the temenos wall (south eastern corner) of the Small Aten Temple (Pendlebury's ‘Hat-Aten’) at Tell el-Amarna during the 1935-1936 excavations of the Egypt Exploration Society.