ARCE-Chicago: Discovering and Publishing Royal Statuary Fragments from Amarna by Kristin Thompson

Lecture Information

Photographed by Barry Kemp.

In the years after Akhenaten’s death, the destruction of his city at Amarna included not only the quarrying of his buildings for construction material but also the deliberate shattering of royal statues. Until recently a relatively small number of pieces have been known to the public and researchers through publications and displays in museums. Over the past two decades, however, Kristin Thompson has helped recover many hundreds of pieces from previous excavators’ dumps and researched their original provenances. Her visits to museum storerooms have revealed many additional unknown pieces unknown. This lecture surveys these discoveries and the resulting two-volume publication, Statuary from Royal Buildings at Amarna, which has been called a “landmark volume” of Egyptology.

Photographed by the speaker.

Speaker Bio

In 2001, Kristin Thompson joined the Egyptian Exploration Society’s expedition at Amarna. Initially tasked simply with registering shattered royal statuary fragments, she soon expanded to joining pieces, including the partial reconstruction of a granodiorite statue of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Once it became obvious that a publication of the statuary was vital, she visited thirty museums, tracing pieces dispersed by previous expeditions. She has had two fellowships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and has lectured at the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, and numerous ARCE meetings. Her essays have appeared in Festschrifts and conference proceedings, as well as the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, and the Amarna newsletters, Horizon and The Akhenaten Sun.