Talatat with a Queen, Probably Nefertiti, Shaking a Sistrum

Before he moved his court to Amarna, Akhenaten built for his god, the sun disc Aten, at Karnak in Thebes, right beside the great temple of Amun. To build fast, his architects used small sandstone blocks of one standard size, about 52 centimetres long, which a single worker could carry. Archaeologists call them talatat. The walls went up quickly and were carved in sunk relief, and on them the king and queen take part in the ceremonies together.

After his death those temples were pulled down, and later kings packed the blocks into new gateways at Karnak, the second, ninth and tenth pylons, as fill. Hidden inside, many thousands of them survived, to be taken out and studied in modern times. This one was bought for the museum by the Rotary Club of Turin in 1969 and 1970, and the museum gives its origin as Karnak, with a question mark. It shows a queen in profile, her hand raised with a sistrum, the rattle shaken in the rites of the goddess Hathor, and in front of her the back of the king's figure. The museum names her, with caution, as probably Nefertiti.