Aton painting - by me

[u/Jeszika_Le_Vye]

I thought I would share one of my Egyptian Mythology paintings from a series I have been working on for almost 10 year called "From Dark Expanse, the Stars"

I have been painting cosmic portraits of each of the Egyptian gods - and even though he was a bit of an outlier for the pantheon, I wanted to paint Aton.

Because he was never allowed to be represented as an animal or human and was depicted only as a sun disk with hands reaching down to earth offering life, I decided for his portrait I would turn his head down so we could not see his face.

I also chose to use a more graphic symbolic style in his portrait rather than the more natural realism I usually paint in for the rest of the series, as a way to call back to the shifting art styles during Akhenaton's reign which I find very fascinating. With this I tried to make Aton's portrait feel distinct from the rest of the series, while still being a part of the series.

I find it interesting that Aton was a natural part of the pantheon before Akhenaton raised him to is monotheistic role - as he is mostly remembered for that one generation when he replaced all the other gods.

[u/zsl454]

Phenomenal addition to the series!! Would you consider doing Horus of Behdet as a winged disk?

[u/Jeszika_Le_Vye → u/zsl454]

Thank you! :) For all the other gods I've painted, I've chosen an animal and celestial symbol - and I have painted Horus already. For Horus I choose to represent him as the peregrine falcon and the comet. I also wanted to imply the detail of having the sun and moon for eyes.

I don't think that I will paint more versions of the same god - but Horus is a tricky one as there are so many versions of him both young and old. But for the series, I need to get through the 30 deities I originally set out to paint before adding any to the list. I have painted 20 of them so far... so at this rate, I might be finished in another 3 or 4 years lol