In this present work the author hopes to reopen, based on recent findings and old alike,
the question of Akhenaten for scholarly discussion. He has chosen to do so by concentrating on the artistic works from Amarna. The reader should realize that “Religion was the major patron of the arts, so we must learn to know the religious concepts that took form in that art”, for, with Akhenaten we find “the King had linked art indissolubly with his religious innovations.”
The common means of approaching Amarna art and religion in the first half of this century was to see it as a revolution. Indeed, to an archaeologist covering a period of time almost four thousand years ago, a period of even a century appears minute. But herein we shall adopt an evolutionary argument which dispels the mythical notion of one artistic style and religion one day, and another the next. The obvious argument against an evolutionary argument concerning Egyptian art is the fact that artists had few of their previous master‟s finished works to draw upon, as these were, for the most part, sealed away in tombs for eternity. But the inherent psychological disposition which created the art could not be silenced, and shows itself.
Thus Amarna art will reflect a stage in the history of man‟s consciousness, and the necessary
starting point of its stylistic medium in art lies in the Theban tomb paintings from a half-century prior to Amarna. This will disprove Aldred‟s claim that “Akhenaten‟s innovations were mostly in the choice of subject matter; style remained unchanged in its fundamentals and consisted in the faithful acceptance of all the old conventions with the willful distortion of some of them.”
As we shall see, this comment seriously under-estimated stylistic innovations at Amarna.