Emory Kristof and Ahmed Yussef with art by Leslie Greener, Peter Bianchi, © National Geographic Society

Akhenaten guides his chariot beneath the rays of the Aten—the Sun-Disc—the one god selected from the Egyptian pantheon to receive Akhenaten’s adoration. Nefertity carefully holds on behind her husband. Using a computer data bank to record characteristics of each of the 45,000 decorated talatat uncovered at Thebes, the Akhenaten Temple Project identified these blocks as components of a single scene. Here they are placed as they were located on a wall of Akhenaten’s palace, in alternating rows of headers (narrow end facing out) and stretchers (wide end facing out).

Artists Leslie Greener and Peter Bianchi sketched in the missing parts after studying similar temple scenes. To date, scholars with the aid of photos and computer data, have put together 2,000 separate collages.