Princess Meritatón, the eldest daughter of Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV) and Nefertiti, was for years the second lady of the court and the most important woman in the country, only behind the Great Royal Wife, her mother. There are many representations in which she appears, accompanying her parents or her sisters. And most of these works of her show her with an oval shaped head.
The most surprising thing about her story is that, when she was still a girl, Akhenaten married her, a very rare example of royal incest in Ancient Egypt (only Amenhotep III and Ramses III married their daughters). Her story fades after the death of her father, which led to dark years. And there is even the circumstance that Tutankhamun's wife was not Meritatón, but the only one of her surviving sisters, Anjesenpaatón.
During her supposedly short life (it is speculated that she died at the age of 17), the princess lived in the North Palace in Amarna, a 160-square-meter rectangular structure surrounded by thick walls on three sides. Inside there were several patios and large halls with columns.
Precisely in one of these rooms was an authentic "masterpiece of ancient Egyptian art", a natural landscape so detailed that it has even allowed researchers to identify the key characteristics of the bird species that appear, such as shrikes (Laniidae) and the wagtails (Motacilla alba).
Archaeologists even speculate that the composition and detail of the work could have turned the room in which it was displayed into a relaxing place for the inhabitants of the palace.
Amarna was the capital city of Pharaoh Akhenaten (1347-1332 BC). Some excavations carried out in 1924 allowed us to find the palace belonging to Meritatón, with several luxuriously decorated spaces. One of these, the 'Green Room', has a rare depiction of birds in a wild papyrus swamp with no sign of human activity.
"They are considered masterpieces of ancient Egyptian art," say Dr Christopher Stimpson and Professor Barry Kemp. "Shown in these paintings are some of the most skillfully depicted naturalistic images and birds known from dynastic Egypt," they add.
Despite the quality of these images, they have received relatively little attention throughout history. Not all bird species, for example, had been identified in the nearly 100 years since it was found. “The art of the Green Room has not received as much attention as one might expect,” they point out.
"This may be because the original drywall didn't survive well," says Stimpson, an honorary associate at Oxford University's Natural History Museum. The reason is that attempts to preserve the painting in 1926 accidentally damaged and discolored the work.
That is why the two researchers set out to identify the birds, consulting data with modern ornithologists and obtaining a high-quality copy made in 1924 by Nina de Garis Davies from the original to identify the birds, as explained in an article published in the Antiquity magazine.
Stimpson and Kemp were eventually able to determine several species, including shrikes and wagtails. These join the kingfishers and pigeons identified by previous work. They also found that the artists may have included hints for former birders: migratory birds are annotated with a triangle, perhaps indicating a seasonal element.
The work may also indicate an ancient pigeon problem. Rock pigeons (Columbia livia) are represented, but are not native to the papyrus marshes, but are instead associated with the nearby desert cliffs. Perhaps, as in modern cities, these birds were drawn to the area by human activity.
Although the researchers do not rule out this extreme, they believe that the artists could have also included these birds to make the scene appear more wild and untamed, an atmosphere that seems to be designed. Experts suggest that these images of the natural world have made the Green Room a relaxing place.
“No one knows for sure, although that space was most likely a place of rest and relaxation. The illustrations in the rock tombs at Amarna possibly show similar settings where women relax, socialize and play music,” concludes Dr Stimpson.
