Akhenatens Sed-Festival At Karna

In Akhenaten's Sed-festival at Karnak, Jocelyn Gohary makes a study of Akhenaten's celebration of the heb-sed or Sed-festival, an ancient Egyptian religious festival that can be traced back to the Archaic Period. Scenes of Akhenaten's Sed-festival were depicted on the walls of his temple at Karnak, and this volume makes available the hitherto unpublished record, with an analysis of Sed-festival scenes carved on the blocks known as the Akhenaten talatat. Originally incorporated in the Aten temple complex at Karnak, the blocks were reused after Akhenaten's death, and are now in the process of being correlated with the aid of computers, an enterprise initiated by the Akhenaten Temple Project. Dr. Gohary compares Akhenaten's Sed-festival with those of other pharaohs and draws conclusions relating to the religious aspects of the scenes and rites enacted and to the art styles used on the talatat. The material indicates that the temple of Akhenaten at Karnak represents an early stage of transition in the development of the cult of Aten, as well as in the innovation of artistic representation. Dr. Gohary's study thus establishes an extremely useful stage in the Akhenaten sequence, and provides an important core of material to which talatat recovered in the future can be related. Dr. Gohary's research also suggests that his celebration of the Sed-festival in a traditional manner lends weight to recent views of Akhenaten as less of a radical than has previously been thought.