During the Amarna Period, many things started to change. But the first thing to change was King Amenhotep IV. In the Eighteenth century, Amenhotep IV adopted a new religious way of thinking. His primary god was Aten who represented the sun disk. So King Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten, which meant “servant of the Aten.” Akhenaten’s beliefs changed from a polytheistic belief system to the worship of a single, all-powerful god. Akhenaten led a remarkable artistic revolution to go along with his religious change. The style he used has been called both naturalistic and expressionistic. Akhenaten’s new ideas and influence also posed a danger to the established priesthood and its traditions.
Something that happened after Akhenaten changed his name and religious outlook was that he effaced the names and images of other gods, as well as moving the capital down the Nile to escape the influence of priests. Akhenaten chose the site and the name for his new capital because the sun rising over the horizon resembled the hieroglyph for sunrise.
Nobody really knows the origin of Akhenaten’s ideas, but they know that he had a big influence on artistic style during his reign. Many statues that were done of him and his family are quite different than those of traditional pharaohs. He wears the combined hedjet and deshret crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt. Also Akhenaten showed himself as a priest of Aten and not a dominating king. Some scholars think that he had acromegaly, a condition caused by an overactive pituitary gland, resulting in enlarged hands, feet, and face. But on the other hand many people believe that these proportions showed changes that came along with his religious and social outlooks.
But new research argues that Amarna style reflects an exaggeration of Akhenaten’s actual appearance. Another picture is of Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti with their three children. The children are shown to look like small adults, but their behavior and movement...