The Amarna Triad

During the winter campaign 1932/33, the Egypt Exploration Society mission to Tell el-Amarna recorded a block decorated with relief on both sides. The figures facing each other under the radiant disc on one side, both intentionally damaged in antiquity, can be positively identified as Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Discussion of alternative reconstructions for the original composition includes reconsideration of reliefs in Brooklyn and Cairo showing the queen kissing one of her daughters. Inter alia, analysis of the design on a seal, documented by a fragmentary impression excavated by the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft at Amarna, figures in arguments put forward to support a new interpretation of the scene partially preserved on the block Louvre E 27150 which shows one person sitting on the lap of another.