Luxor - Museum of Ancient Egyptian Art - Wall of Akhenaten

Also on the upper floor is the museum's pièce de résistance, the so-called Wall of Akhenaten. 56ft/17.17m long and some 10ft/3m high, this consists of 283 sandstone blocks (talatat) covered with painted reliefs out of a total of 6,000 such blocks, originally belonging to Akhenaten's Temple of the Sun at Karnak, which were found built into Horemheb's Ninth Pylon during restoration work in 1968-69. On the right-hand half of the wall temple servants are depicted at their everyday tasks; on the left hand half Akhenaten, sometimes accompanied by his wife Nefertiti, is shown worshiping the Aten, the divine solar disc with rays ending in hands. Altogether some 40,000 of such talatat have been recovered, coming from the various temples which were built by Akhenaten in honor of the sun god and which were later pulled down.