ABSTRACT
Outside the precincts near the east gate Akhenaten built a place of worship for the Aten and himself. Very little of it has been excavated at present, only the corner and part of the side of a hall of statues. Twenty-four emplacements of statues have been found, with fragments of the broken figures scattered in every direction. The King is represented as Osiris, holding the crook and flail in his crossed hands; the figures are of heroic size and are of the most pronounced and hideous type of Tel el Amarna art. The statues and the whole building have been subjected to a fury of iconoclasm to which Akhenaten’s own efforts in that direction are as child’s play. The use of the stones in Haremheb’s pylons point to him as the culprit, but there is no reasonable doubt that it was the priests of Amon who directed the destruction and wreaked their fury on the work of the Heretic. Haremheb must have given his consent, and to use another Pharaoh’s buildings as a quarry was an ordinary custom; he does not appear to have been a spiteful man, and he had certainly received benefits from Akhenaten. But the priesthood of Amon had every reason to hate and fear the Amarna religion and would be only too rejoiced to obliterate every trace of the heresy.
