Architectural Relief

Quartzite inscribed block decorated on one face with five scenes showing Akhenaten with his eldest daughter Meretaten. The block originally belonged to the pylon gateway of a royal "sunshade" or solar chapel dedicated to the worship of the Aten. This building was ornately decorated with inlaid faience, now missing, composing the figures of Akhenaten and Meretaten, as well as most other parts of the decoration. The sunshade chapel was a relatively small, probably single-chamber, building that would have originally stood on a raised podium inside of a larger building.The inscriptions state this building to have been located " in Akhetaten" - the capital city of Tell el-Amarna. This piece was part of what was once a larger block that included the door frame and lintel of the left side of the chapel pylon. It was cut down during the reign of Merenptah (Dynasty 19 ) when the block was reused as a plinth for a sphinx. Inscriptions on the edges of the block have the titulary of Merenptah and the epithet:"beloved of Ra-Horakhty in Heliopolis". The reused block must have stood in a temple at Heliopolis. It was reused a third time as a door threshold in Medieval Cairo. It was recovered from the Mousky area of Cairo in 1899 by the Egyptian Service des Antiquites and sold to Mr. Jones Wister of Germantown, Philadelphia.