Outlooks on the International Koiné Style

The Near Eastern Late Bronze Age is known for heightened political and economic interconnectivity as kings of wealthy states like Egypt and Hatti competed in the pursuit of valuable commodities, raw materials and technologies. An outcome of this interaction is argued to be the creation of a shared elite visual culture, an idiom of kingship, that has been called the ‘International Style’ in scholarship. This dissertation critiques the model and investigates evidence for this so-called style from Egypt, in particular addressing artefacts from the tomb of Tutankhamen that have been associated with this style in the past. It challenges the model for a shared idiom of kingship from Egypt and instead proposes an internal value within 18th royal rhetoric.