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Why do Amarna portraits show members of the royal family with elongated heads and bodies?

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Sculpted head of Akhenaten, ancient Egyptian pharaoh, with elongated facial features and a tall, ornate headdress, displayed at the Alexandria National Museum. — Akhenaten Akhenaten, sculpture in the Alexandria National Museum, Egypt.

The distinctive, exaggerated features of the royal family in Amarna style art—such as elongated skulls, thin necks, heavy hips, and spindly limbs—have been the subject of significant scholarly debate.

One long-standing theory suggests these depictions were a naturalistic representation of a physical deformity or medical condition, such as Marfan syndrome, affecting Akhenaten and his family. However, many experts find this explanation unconvincing.123

A more widely accepted interpretation is that these formal exaggerations were symbolic rather than literal. Because the Aton was worshipped as the sun’s disk, the new artistic idiom was likely designed to reflect the metamorphic nature of the god's light. In this view, the radical departure from traditional Egyptian art was a deliberate stylistic choice intended to express the unique religious innovations of the king, who was personally involved in instructing his sculptors to develop this new visual language.213