Less stylized Amarna portraiture

 Less stylized Amarna portraiture

During Akhenaten's reign, royal portraiture underwent dramatic change, often depicting the pharaoh in an androgynous and highly stylized manner. Artists showed subjects with  elongation and narrowing of the neck and head, sloping of the forehead and nose, a prominent chin, large ears and lips as well as lowered eyelids. Each figure was also illustrated with a more elongated body than previous representations. In the new human form, the subject had more fat in the stomach, thigh, and breast region, while the torso, arm, and legs were thin and long like the rest of the body. The skin color of both male and female is generally dark brown (contrasted with the usual dark brown or red for males and light brown or white for females). Figures in this style are shown with both a left and a right foot, contrasting the traditional style of being shown with either two left or two right feet and fingers and toes are depicted as long and slender and are carefully detailed to show nails. 

The Brooklyn Museum points out that the unusual, elongated skull shape often used in portrayal of the royal family "may be a slightly exaggerated treatment of a hereditary trait of the Amarna royal family  given that "the mummy of Tutankhamun, presumed to be related to Akhenaten, has a similarly shaped skull." Some scholars, though, suggest that the presentation of the human body as imperfect during the Amarna period is in deference to Aten while others interpret this unprecedented stylistic break from Egyptian tradition to be a reflection of the Amarna Royals' attempts to wrest political power from the traditional priesthood and bureaucratic authorities.

However, some less stylized portrait sculpture has survived from this period including these portrait heads of Akhenaten and Nefertiti that I photographed at the Neues Museum in Berlin back in 2016. Although Akhenaten's portrait does feature the lowered lids, the skull shape and more normal anatomical appearance of the facial structures would seem to discount the presence of some of the more severe genetic disorders that have been proposed.

After Akhenaten's death, the new capital was abandoned, and traces of his monuments elsewhere defaced. Remains of Amarna art are therefore concentrated in Amarna itself, but some remains have been found at Karnak, where large reliefs in the style were dismantled, and the blocks turned round to face inwards when a later building was constructed using them. These were only rediscovered in recent decades. 

Image: Portrait heads of the royal couple Akhenaten and Nefertiti, 18th Dynasty, Egypt, 1340 BCE that I photographed at the Neues Museum in Berlin, Germany in 2016.

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Funerary Masks of the Mayan Classic Period

 Maya Classic Period rule (250-900 CE) was centred on the concept of the "divine king", who acted as a mediator between mortals and the supernatural realm. Kingship was patrilineal, and power would normally pass to the eldest son. A prospective king was also expected to be a successful war leader. Maya politics was dominated by a closed system of patronage, although the exact political make-up of a kingdom varied from city-state to city-state. By the Late Classic, the aristocracy had greatly increased, resulting in the corresponding reduction in the exclusive power of the divine king. The Classic period Maya political landscape has been likened to that of Renaissance Italy or Classical Greece, with multiple city-states engaged in a complex network of alliances and enmities. The largest cities had populations numbering 50,000 to 120,000 and were linked to networks of subsidiary sites.

In 378 CE, Teotihuacan decisively intervened at Tikal and other nearby cities, deposed their rulers, and installed a new Teotihuacan-backed dynasty. Tikal's great rival was Calakmul, another powerful city in the Petén Basin. Tikal and Calakmul both developed extensive systems of allies and vassals which were used to against each other. At various points during the Classic period, one or other of these powers would gain a strategic victory over its great rival, resulting in respective periods of ascendance and decline.

Classic Maya social organization was based on the ritual authority of the ruler, rather than central control of trade and food distribution. This model of rulership was poorly structured to respond to changes, because the ruler's actions were limited by tradition to such activities as construction, ritual, and warfare. This only served to exacerbate systemic problems that may have included overpopulation with resulting severe environmental degradation and drought. By the 9th and 10th centuries, this resulted in collapse of this system of rulership. In the northern Yucatán, individual rule was replaced by a ruling council formed from elite lineages. But, in the southern Yucatán and central Petén, kingdoms declined. In western Petén and some other areas, the changes were catastrophic and resulted in the rapid depopulation of cities. One by one, cities stopped sculpting dated monuments. The last Long Count date was inscribed at Toniná in 909 CE.

Image: Funerary Mask (Jade, Shell and Grey Obsidian) Calakmul, Late Classic (660-750 CE) at the Museo de Arquitectura Maya, Baluarte de la Soledad, Campeche, Mexico courtesy of Bernard Dupont (CC BY-SA 2.0) The Maya exhibited a preference for the color green or blue-green, and used the same word for the colors blue and green. Correspondingly, they placed high value on apple-green jade, and other greenstones, associating them with the sun-god Kʼinich Ajau. 

See more Maya funerary masks on Wikimedia Commons:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Maya_funerary_masks

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Kudurrus of ancient Babylon

A kudurrus is an ancient Babylonian stone with an inscription that records a land grant, usually between the ruling monarch and a subject.  It's name is derived from kudurru, the Akkadian word for boundary.  The only kudurrus excavated in ancient Babylonian sites were found in temples where they would have served to record the transaction and to protect the rights of owner by legal as well as divine means.

Inscriptions usually provided the location of the plot of land, the boundaries of its four sides, the name of the surveyor of the property and the names of witnesses to the transaction. To provide divine protection of the relationship, a kudurrus also often included many symbols of deities such as the crescent, symbol of the moon-god Sin, the solar disk of the sun god Shamash, and the eight-pointed star of the goddess Ishtar/Inanna.

A Kassite example I photographed at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago was cast from an original in the British Museum.  The Kassites rose to power after the fall of the Old Babylonian Empire and ruled from 1595 BCE until about 1155 BCE. The Kassites were members of a small military aristocracy but were efficient rulers and locally popular. Their 500-year reign laid an essential groundwork for the development of subsequent Babylonian culture. The chariot and the horse, which the Kassites worshipped, first came into use in Babylonia at this time. Kassite rulers in Babylon, though, were scrupulous to follow existing forms of expression, and the public and private patterns of behavior which was probably an important factor in their popularity.

Although the Kassite kings ruled conservatively, they were conquered in the 12th century BCE by the neighboring Elamites. They regained control briefly during Babylonian Dynasty V (1025-1004 BCE) but were then deposed by the Arameans. The Kassite people, however, survived as a dstinct ethic group in the mountains of Luristan long afterwards. Babylonian records describe how the Assyrian king Sennacherib on his eastern campaign of 702 BCE subdued the Kassites in a battle near Hulwan, Iran. During the later Achaemenid period, the Kassites, referred to as "Kossaei", lived in the mountains to the east of Media and were one of several "predatory" mountain tribes that regularly extracted "gifts" from the Achaemenid Persians, according to a citation of Nearchus by Strabo (13.3.6). However, they fought with the Persians against Alexander the Great in the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BCE. According to Diodorus Siculus (17.59) and Curtius Rufus (4.12), Alexander later launched a winter attack against the Kassites and put an end to their tribute-seeking raids.

Kudurrus recording a grant of land by Marduk-nadin-ahhe, King of Babylon to Adad-zer-iqisha 12th century BCE (cast) at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago (original in the British Museum)

There are more images of interesting kuddurru on Wikimedia Commons:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Kudurru

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