The “Window of Appearance” of the Egyptian New Kingdom royal palace is usually considered an indigenous architectural element. After a review of this assumption, it is suggested that it had been observed by emissaries of Amenhotep III in the Cretan palace of Knossos before the concept was imported to the Egyptian court. The Cretan context…
A Throne for Two: Image of the Divine Couple during Akhenaten’s Reign
A few representations of a divine couple enthroned, the female figure sitting in the lap of the male, have survived in Mesopotamian iconography, on terracotta and stone plaques, on the Ur-Namma stela from Ur, and on a Syrian cylinder seal of the 19th–18th centuries BCE. In Egypt, the motif is mostly restricted to the reign…
A Mnḫprrꜥ Scarab from Tel Abel Beth Maacah
During excavations at Tell Abil el-Qameḥ, identified as the biblical Abel Beth Maacah and located in the Upper Galilee on the modern border between Israel, Lebanon and Syria, a high-quality Mnḫprrꜥ scarab was found in an Iron Age I context, just above substantial Late Bronze IIB remains. Its typology suggests it to be a product from…
Wandering Rosettes: Qatna’s Key to a Misunderstood Motif
A golden inlaid rosette found in the royal tomb of Qatna and dated to the fifteenth to fourteenth century BCE sheds light on the evolution of the Egyptian rosette during the 18th Dynasty and on patterns of artistic exchanges between Near Eastern and Egyptian artists. Since cloisonné technique is uncommon in second millennium BCE pieces…