A Beautiful One has Come
Posted on Friday 24 October 2003
Queen Nefertiti of Egypt's 18th dynasty never ceases to fascinate. Second only in fame to Cleopatra and through her most famous image, the bust made by Thutmose, even more admired for her beauty. It's remarkable to think that despite this, Nefertiti's name was hardly known in antiquity. To those who did remember her, as wife and joint ruler with the pharaoh Ahkenaten (1367-1350 BC) she became a reviled figure and after her death her images were systematically destroyed and cartouches bearing her name defaced. In a campaign of righteous fury and theological correctness, her memory deliberately erased.
A beautiful one has come
The
reasons for this hostility stem from the religious revolution enacted by
her husband, Ahkenaten, these days referred to as the Amarna Heresy
. King Akhenaten,
frankly speaking, was a bit of a nut. He was, however, a nut that was
way ahead of his time.
Early in his reign he decided to destroy the power of the priestly
class by declaring that all of the ancient deities of Egypt's pantheon
did not exist. The only one that did was the sun god Re, manifested as
Aten, the disk of the Sun. By banning the worship of the traditional gods and shutting down their
temples, Akhenaten in effect instituted the world's
very first monotheistic religion.
With no other god but the Aten, there was now no need for an entire
class of priests. The pharaoh was, in Akhenaten's scheme, the sole
mediator between earth and heaven, all worship was to be directed
through him. It was a vision of extraordinary megalomania (even by the
standards of the pharaohs) and because it denied a place for the
people's traditional gods, was also extraordinarily unpopular. When the
pharaoh died, his cult of monotheism died with him1.
But while Nefertiti played a prominent role in this revolution, she
mysteriously disappeared a number of years before the end of
Akhenaten's reign. In her place we find inscriptions dedicated to his
second wife, Kiya and Nefertiti's daughter Meritaten who, in true
Egyptian style, Akhenaten married. Theories abound that Nefertiti fell
from the King's favour and was divorced or banished. Others have it that
she simply changed her name and assumed the role of a priest-king in
order to become the pharaoh's immediate successor.
Whatever the true story, Nefertiti was forgotten for thirty three
centuries. It wasn't until the 19th century when the Ahkenaten's
abandoned city, Akhetaten was rediscovered and excavated that the
Queen's name and image once again became known. It was also here that
the studio of Thutmose, the royal sculptor, that the famous bust of
Nefertiti was unearthed by a team of archaeologists working for the
German Orient Society under Professor Ludwig Borchardt of Berlin.
Nefertiti
Dr. James Simon
(1851-1932), a Jewish Berlin merchant, financed a Deutsche
Orient-Gesellschaft expedition to Amarna, where in December 1912, Ludwig
Borchardt unearthed the limestone bust of Queen Nefertiti (ca 1350 BC),
wife of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhnaton (Amenhotep IV). Simon initially
kept the bust in his home, and then lent it to the Königliche
Preußische Kunstsammlung in 1913. On July 11, 1920, he donated
Nefertiti to the Prussian State.
In 1933 the Egyptian government demanded
the return of the Nefertiti bust, which was on display in the Kaiser
Friedrich Museum. Hermann Göring suggested to Egyptian King Fu`ad I
that the German government might not object. But Hitler had other plans.
Through the ambassador to Egypt, Eberhard von Stohrer, Hitler informed
the Egyptian government that he was an ardent fan of Nefertiti:
I know this famous bust. I have viewed it and marveled at it many times. Nefertiti continually delights me. The bust is a unique masterpiece, an ornament, a true treasure!...Do you know what I’m going to do one day? I’m going to build a new Egyptian museum in Berlin. I dream of it. Inside I will build a chamber, crowned by a large dome. In the middle, this wonder, Nefertiti, will be enthroned. I will never relinquish the head of the Queen.In the plans for the museum, there was to be an even larger hall of honor, with a bust of Hitler.
Hitler’s message to Egypt alarmed Göring, who spoke of an "exceptionally precarious situation." But Nefertiti has remained in Berlin, despite many subsequent Egyptian demands. In solitary grandeur, she is enshrined in her own room, illuminated by a spotlight. James Simon's descendants who survived the holocaust live in England and Beverly Hills, California.
It's curious that the bust of Nefertiti, despite its obviously high degree of finish, strangely lacked something:
Nefertiti's eye
The first person to lay eyes on Nefertiti's face in 3300 years was Mohammed Ahmes Es-Senussi. On December 6, 1912, he was digging in room 19 grid P_47 (the area was divided in grids measuring 600 square feet) when the rays of the sun lit up the gold and blue colors of the queen's necklace.
A shout from Mohammed brought all picks and shovels in the area to a stand-still. Professor Borchardt was sent for from his make-shift hut where he slumbered, on a canvas cot, after his mid-day meal. The statuette lay buried, head down, in the debris. Once uncovered, the sand-stone figurine stood twenty inches tall, and was in near perfect condition. The only visible damage was the chipped ear-lobes, and the in-lay of the retina of the left eye was missing.
As to the beauty of Nefertiti: it is timeless. Her face has become the best known in history, and her bust, which the German team smuggled out of Egypt to Berlin disguised as broken pieces of pottery, is the most copied and admired in the world.
The sand and dirt of room 19 (more than 30 cubic feet) was sifted again and again through a finer and finer mesh. All the ear pieces were found but the eye in-lay was never recovered. Only later, a closer examination revealed that it was never inserted.
Many theories, some likely and others far-fetched, have been advanced to explain this deliberate flaw in the masterpiece. It was suggested, for example, that the artist was interrupted at his work and left the work-shop with the in-lay in his possession, never to return. Or that the artist had fallen in love with the queen as she posed for him, was jilted by her, and in impotent revenge, refused to complete his masterwork. This is not as far-fetched as it first seems. The queen was known to be flirtatious. Another theory was that Nefertiti had gone blind in one eye. The artist had simply opted for realism over pharoanic dignity. Prevalence of eye disease in ancient Egypt was pointed to as well as the uniquely independent style of the artist. The graceful curve of the long neck, the arched eye-brow, and the hint of a smile on the queen's sensual full lips is a far cry from the symmetrical frozen immobility of the traditional Egyptian statuary.
This view too had to be abandoned, however, when new wall reliefs and other three dimensional figures were found. Some of these were clearly by the same hand that had carved the famous bust, and show the queen, some at an older age, with both perfectly good eyes. No satisfactory consensus has been reached to explain this archaeological mystery.
Since its discovery, the bust seems to have taken on a life of its own. Millions of replicas of the famous statue adorn homes and offices around the world. It is the key attraction of the Egyptian Museum in Berlin which receives some 500,000 visitors annually.
And in recent news the bust has even managed to sprout a body. Animatronics, surely, can't be far off.
But what became of the real Nefertiti? Just like Akhenaten, the whereabouts of her body has been a mystery. That's not to say that she has never been found, on the contrary, the problem seems to be that people keep finding her all the time!
|
|
Nefertiti. long considered one of the
most powerful women of Ancient Egypt |
10 June 2003
The mummy of Queen Nefertiti, a co-ruler of Ancient Egypt and stepmother to the legendary boy king Tutankhamun, may have been found, archaeologists have announced.
Dr Joann Fletcher of the University of York in England and leader of the expedition, said her team may have unearthed Nefertiti from a secret chamber in tomb KV35 in Egypt's Valley of the Kings in Luxor.
Nefertiti, which means "the beautiful woman has come", has long been considered one of the most powerful women of Ancient Egypt. Her tomb was found near that of King Tutankhamun, the teenage king who ruled Egypt in the 14th century BC and whose tomb was first discovered in 1922.
Virtually all traces of Nefertiti and her 'heretic' husband pharaoh Akhenaten, who ruled from 1353 to 1336 BC, were erased after his unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the pantheon of the gods to worship the Sun god Aton - among the earliest known practices of monotheism.
"After 12 years of searching for Nefertiti it was probably the most amazing experience of my life," said Fletcher. "Although we can only suggest the identity as a strong possibility, the findings certainly have some wide-ranging implications for Egyptology."
Nefertiti, whose likeness was sculpted in a limestone bust now in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, had an unusually high status during her husband's reign. Like her husband, Nefertiti's name was erased from historical records and her likeness defaced after her death.
The mummy was first discovered in 1898 and ignored. Fletcher was drawn to the tomb again during an expedition in June 2002 after she identified a Nubian-style wig worn by royal women during Akhenaten's reign. The wig was found near three unidentified mummies, two of them women and one a young boy.
One of the mummies, now believed to be Nefertiti, had a swan-like neck comparable to the queen, despite post-mortem blows to her face.
Fletcher also found other physical links, including the impression of a tight-fitting brow-band she once wore, a double-pierced ear lobe and shaved head. Nefertiti was one of only two of Egypt's royal women believed to have worn two earrings in each ear.
In an examination of the mummy in February 2003, scientists discovered a ripped-off right arm bent up with its fingers still clutching a royal scepter. Only pharaohs or queens were allowed to have their arms bent that way.
This evidence, including jewelry within the smashed-in chest cavity, fueled Fletcher's original belief that the mummy was Nefertiti.
"The identification is an interesting one, and will doubtless cause endless speculation," said Dr Salima Ikram, a leading expert on mummies at the American University in Cairo.
But Dr Susan James, an egyptologist who has long studied the three mummies, is skeptical. "What we know about [the mummy] would indicate that it is one of a young female of the late 18th dynasty, very probably a member of the royal family. However, physical evidence known and published prior to this expedition indicates the unlikelihood of it being the mummy of Nefertiti.
"Without any comparative DNA studies, statements of certainty are merely wishful thinking," she told the Discovery Channel, which funded the study for a special to air on 17 August 2003 in the United States.
Of course it's completely understandable why Dr Susan James is a little skeptical about this latest discovery. After all, she's the one who discovered the body of Nefertiti the last time. This is how it was reported on the Discovery Channel website in June 2001 (unfortunately the page is no longer available online).
Detective Work Finds Egyptian Queen
Nefertiti, the most famous queen of ancient Egypt except for Cleopatra, was 4 foot 8 inches (1.45 meters) tall, had long luxurious wavy hair, a hyperelongated neck and fine features that matched her legendary beauty.
The portrait emerged with the claim of Susan James, an Egyptologist trained at Cambridge, U.K., appearing in the current issue of KMT, A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt.
Little is known about the "Great Royal Wife" of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten, the immediate precursor — and, according to some scholars, the father — of Tutankhamun. No record survives to detail her death; no monument mourned her passing.
According to James, the long-sought mummy of Nefertiti has rested disguised under the catalog name of "mummy 61070." The mummy, better known as "Elder Woman," was discovered in 1898 by French archaeologist Victor Loret in a cache of royal mummies.
The female body was lying on the floor of a side room off the pharaoh's burial chamber along with two other mummies, a boy and a girl, all uncoffined and unwrapped.
Hair analysis led scientist to identify it as Queen Tiye, Tutankhamun's probable grandmother. But there are some discrepancies. Historical data show that Queen Tiye would have been at least over 40 when she died, while a recent skeletal dental study of the Elder Woman showed her to have died around the age of 29, plus or minus five years.
On the basis of Nefertiti's disappearance from official imagery, the queen might have died around 1336 B.C. at the age of 28 or 29.
The mummy bears a striking resemblance to various portrait heads of Nefertiti including the celebrated limestone bust on display at the Egyptian Museum in Berlin.
The relative narrowness of the mummy's skull matches closely that of the famous bust. Moreover, the philtrum — the groove between nose and upper lip — is very pronounced on both the Elder Woman's mummy and the busts of Nefertiti, while it is barely noticeable on other Tiye's portraits, according to James.
"These are interesting similarities. It would be fascinating to reconstruct the mummy face with forensic techniques and then match it with Nefertiti's known portraits," says Francesco Mallegni, an anthropologist at Pisa University who has reconstructed dozens of famous historical faces.
But Egyptologist John Taylor of the British Museum is skeptical: "It is very dangerous to treat sculpted images as reliable evidence in a study such as this. Egyptian human images can range from the idealistic to the naturalistic, but to what extent naturalistic images are 'portraits' is a moot point."
Both identifications hinge upon the discovery of a group of mummies by Victor Loret in 1898. In the tomb of Amenhotep, he found three unidentified mummies lying haphazardly on the floor and described them as the "Elder Lady" , the "Little Prince" and the "Young Man".
Taken by candlelight, this is a photo of three mummies. The mummy of the young boy is in the middle, flanked by the Elder Woman (on the left) and the Younger Lady (on the right). Notice the candles above the heads of the two women. The mutilated chest of the boy and the Younger Lady are visible. The raised arm of the Elder Woman is also apparent.
An unusually strange sight met our eyes: three bodies lay side by side at the back in the left corner, their feet pointing towards the door....
We approached the cadavers. The first seemed to be that of a woman. A thick veil covered her forehead and left eye. Her broken arm had been replaced at her side, her nails in the air. Ragged and torn cloth hardly covered her body. Abundant black curled hair spread over the limestone floor on each side of her head. The face was admirably conserved and had a noble and majestic gravity.
The second mummy, in the middle, was that of a child of about fifteen years. It was naked with the hands joined on the abdomen. First of all the head appeared totally bald, but on closer examination one saw that the head had been shaved except an area on the right temple from which grew a magnificent tress of black hair. This was the coiffure of the royal princes [called the Horus lock]. I thought immediately of the royal prince Webensennu, this so far unknown son of Amenhotep II
The last corpse nearest the wall seemed to be that of a man.
His head was shaved but a wig lay on the ground not far from him. The face of this person displayed something horrible and something droll at the same time. The mouth was running obliquely from one side nearly to the middle of the cheek, bit a pad of linen whose two ends hung from the corner of the lips. The half-closed eyes had a strange expression, he could have died choking on a gag but he looked like a young playful cat with a piece of cloth. Death which had respected the severe beauty of the woman and the impish grace of the boy had turned in derision and amused itself with the countenance of the man.
Later, it was determined that the "Young Man" was, in fact, a "Younger Lady".
So the current state of play is a tussle between two Egyptologists, in one corner Dr. Susan James of Cambridge University who backs the "Elder Lady" theory and Dr Joann Fletcher of the University of York (and the Di$covery Channel) who thinks it's really the "Younger Lady". On the sidelines are plenty of hecklers who think that both of them are wrong. Currently I don't think anyone is taking bets on the "Little Prince" having any residual nefertitiness
.
As Dr James says, there's really only one way to settle this: with DNA testing. But the chances of this occurring are apparently plenty slim:
It is unlikely that Egyptian authorities will ever allow the study of the mummy's DNA (even if it could be retrieved), since this raises many concerns about the mummy's possible ancestry. Researchers have applied to study the DNA of King Tut--and Atlanta's Rameses I), but the Egyptian Government has been steadfast in its refusal to permit this.
(According to London's Sunday Times, Egyptian officials may have blocked research on King Tut, because "they feared Israel would use the tests to suggest the boy pharaoh was related to Hebrew patriarchs." And in another article at Thetimes.co.uk, noted Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass is quoted as saying that DNA testing “is not always accurate and cannot be done with complete success when dealing with mummies. Until we know for sure that it is accurate, we will not use it in our research.” Is this a case of too much information may be a dangerous thing?)
Without a DNA study, however, it is unlikely that James or Fletcher will ever be able to determine which mummy is Nefertiti.
Elder Woman
See also:
Do we have the mummy of Nefertiti?
In this article, author Marianne Luban discusses the possibility (back as early as 1999) that Nefertiti is the "Younger Lady" mummy. Elsewhere she also discounts the "Elder Lady" theory.
1 - while it is generally thought that the very first monotheistic religion was completely stamped out in the backlash which reasserted the old gods, it's interesting to speculate about the impression it may have had on a certain group of Western Semites that were living right next door. Egypt at this time was an empire and collected tribute from the Levantine nations. Ramesses II, who by some chronologies is thought to have been pharaoh when Moses was born (and according to legend his foster father), ruled from 1279 BC. This was only 71 years after the death of Akhenaten.
Thanks once again, Peter.
