The Greatest Monument Builders of All Time - The Atlantic:
In place of the heroic proportions and rigidity of royal tradition, statues of Akhenaten emphasized eccentric curves — narrow shoulders, swelling hips, carefully detailed sagging tummy flesh, and a face at once cadaverous and voluptuous. The writer Thomas Mann used the analogy of “an aristocratic young Englishman of somewhat decadent stock; spare, haughty, weary,” but the stylizations could reach buglike extremes. A stela included in “Treasures” shows Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and two of their daughters as wasp-waisted, with bulbous thighs and spindly arms. And yet the affectionate way the two little girls hold hands seems entirely natural. In the context of royal Egyptian art, such scenes of familial intimacy were a novelty, and remain touching.
I wrote about Akhenaten (and his curious preferences in self-representation) in my series of posts on Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers.