Solving the mystery of Nefertiti, ancient Egypt’s sleeping beauty
She was the beauty queen of ancient Egypt, her delicate cheekbones, sensuous lips and fine jaw balanced on a slender neck. And we may be on the brink of finding her final resting place.
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She was the beauty queen of ancient Egypt, her delicate cheekbones, sensuous lips and fine jaw balanced on an impossibly long, slender neck. Her name translates as “the beauty has come”.
Nefertiti is also recognised as a political regent, wielding power alongside her pharaoh husband Akhenaten for 12 years as they recast the focus of Egyptian religion.
No record exists of Nefertiti’s death or burial, but American archeologist Nicholas Reeves yesterday revealed she may be interred in a portal off the tomb of Tutankhamun, long considered her stepson.
Identified as Akhenaten’s son, genetic analysis indicated Tutankhamun’s mother was Akhenaten’s sister. French Egyptologist Marc Gabolde ignited a genetic debate in 2013 when he told an audience at Harvard University that Nefertiti was Tut’s mother. Gabolde said the genetic closeness of Tut’s parents did not necessarily indicate a brother-sister pairing, but resulted from three successive generations of marriage between first cousins.
Other Egyptologists suggest Akhenaten and Nefertiti saw themselves as personifications of Shu and Tefnut, twins of the god Ra, so could have been brother and sister.
The 3300-year-old bust of Nefertiti was discovered in 1912 by German archeologist Ludwig Borchardt at Tell el-Amarna. It was likely crafted by sculptor Thutmose in 1345BC as a model for portraits of the queen.
Scholarly glimpses into the sun-worship deity of Akhenaten and Nefertiti date to November 1828, when pioneering Egyptologist Jean-Francois Champollion visited Tell el Amarna, the upper Egyptian “garden” city they built as the centre of worship for their god, Aten.
Jesuit priest Claude Sicard in 1714 copied images from stelai, the 15 decorative columns that marked Tell el- Amarna boundaries, while English explorer J. Gardner Wilkinson found rocky tombs of Akhenaten’s officials in 1824. Champollion noted images on city stelae showed “King very fat and swollen, big belly. Feminine contours ... considerable softness”. Champollion’s letters from his brief visit to Tell el- Amarna, also known as Akhetaton, introduced Europeans to an unknown period in Egyptian art, later found to coincide with possibly the first founding of a religion.
Akhenaten, younger son of Amenhotep III and Chief Queen Tiye, assumed the throne in 1353BC as Amenhotep IV and ruled for about 17 years during Egypt’s 18th dynasty, dating from 1550-1292BC. At 21, possibly influenced by his mother or as a reaction to the tyranny of “the selfish and the strong” Amon priests, he renounced Egypt’s traditional multi-god religion in favour of worshipping the solar orb, Aten.
Taking the name Akhenaten, meaning “benevolent one of the Aten”, he made the sun disc that features in plaster relief images of the royal family the centre of Egyptian religious life. He moved the royal compound from Thebes to Akhetaton, his 12ha compound 400km north along the Nile in 1348BC, and had the names of Amun-Ra, a pre-eminent Egyptian god, and his consort Mut, erased from monuments and documents across his empire.
The origins of the woman who, as chief among his four wives, apparently stood equally with her husband are not recorded. Early Egyptologists believed she was a princess from Mitanni, now Syria. Circumstantial evidence suggests she was the daughter of Ay, a royal courtier and brother of Akhenaton’s mother, Tiy, meaning the two were cousins.
They married before or shortly into Akhenaten’s reign, and Nefertiti bore six daughters within 10 years. The elder three were born at Thebes, the younger three at Tell el-Amarna. Two of her daughters became queens of Egypt.
The earliest images of Nefertiti come from Theban tombs of royal staff, where she is shown with her husband. Images in a Theban temple showed Nefertiti usurping traditional kingly privileges to serve as a priest. Blocks found at Luxor show her joining ritual smiting of female enemies of Egypt. Most show her wearing a distinctly tall, straightedged, flat-topped blue crown.
Akhenaten and Nefertiti also revolutionised Egyptian art, replacing traditionally stiff, formal royal portraits with drawings showing intimate moments. In one image of the couple riding a horse-drawn chariot, they appear to be kissing each other as Aten’s rays shine on them. Others show them with their daughters, all drawn with cone-shaped heads and spindly bodies, basking in Aten rays.
But Akhenaten neglected domestic and foreign affairs, leaving the Egyptian economy on the verge of collapse when he died in about 1336BC.
Originally published as Solving the mystery of Nefertiti, ancient Egypt’s sleeping beauty
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