Message #109

[Bianca]

THE GROTESQUE PHARAOH                                                                        continued



Champollion had already employed the Italian term MORBIDEZZA (softness).

According to Alfred Wiedemann, these representations of the king "in a frightfully,
ugly form, with distorted features and a pendulous belly, are a complete caricature."

Walther Wolf invoked "sick ugliness and nervous decadence" in reference to the
colossal statues at Karnak, and many others have echoed this theme of caricature.

Naturally enough, modern writers have assumed that the contemporaries of the king
shared the horror that Schafer conjures up, and many have felt that Akhetaten want-
ed to shock, setting his repulsive ugliness in deliberate contrast to the beauty of tra-
ditional art. 



We shall not enter into a stylistic analysis of Amarna art here, but rather lay stress on
some criteria that can yield, over and above his artistic taste, an insight into the over-
all mentality of this reformer.