Nefertiti: Inside the hunt for a heretic queen
STRANGE echoes, indentations and touched-up artwork inside Tutankhamun’s famous tomb have revealed important new chambers.
STRANGE echoes, indentations and touched-up artwork inside Tutankhamun’s famous tomb have revealed secret chambers that may belong to his notorious mother — Queen Nefertiti.
She was Egypt’s most beautiful woman. She was married to its ugliest and most controversial Pharaoh — Akhenaten.
Together, they attempted to change the world with their notion of a single god.
But when God-King died, Egypt’s nobility set about erasing the heretical couple from history.
Nefertiti once again soared to fame a century ago when her incredibly fine featured face was pulled from Egypt’s desert sands. The 3300-year-old painted limestone bust was incredibly well preserved amid the ruins of the capital city her husband founded, Armana.
It has since become one of the most copied works of art in the world.
The queen is an object of fascination, both for her beauty and the incredibly complex family and religious politics in which she played a pivotal part.
While a vandalised mummy found among others tossed in the corner of Amenhotep II’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings is speculated to be hers, the conclusion is by no means certain. Nor has Nefertiti’s final resting place ever been found.
Now, Dr Nicholas Reeves of the University of Arizona has published a study titled The Burial of Nefertiti? in which he details his belief that the tomb of her son Tutankhamun may have been intended for her — and that her relics may still remain behind what may be the ‘ghosts’ of two sealed-off doors.
GHOSTS IN THE WALLS
Dr Reeves has been scouring ultra high-resolution scans of the famous tomb, discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter, for clues to its origins and constructions.
In particular, he’s been looking at the overlooked details in the painted walls of Tutankhamun’s inner sanctum, the burial chamber which contains his sarcophagus.
He’s found depressions and edges in the plasterwork which indicates the wall structure behind.
Among this is what he describes as two lintelled, walled-off passages which have long since been painted over with the scenes depicting Tutankhamun’s life and last rites.
“The implications are extraordinary: for, if digital appearance translates into physical reality, it seems we are now faced not merely with the prospect of a new, Tutankhamun-era storeroom to the west; to the north appears to be signalled a continuation of tomb ... and within these uncharted depths an earlier royal interment — that of Nefertiti herself, celebrated consort, coregent, and eventual successor of pharaoh Akhenaten,” Reeves writes.
Now, his suspicions have been ‘90 per cent’ confirmed.
“Clearly it does look from the radar evidence as if the tomb continues, as I have predicted,” he said.
“The radar, behind the north wall seems pretty clear. If I am right it is a continuation — corridor continuation — of the tomb, which will end in another burial chamber.”
Will it lead to Nefertiti?
“I think it is Nefertiti and all the evidence points in that direction,” Dr Reeves says.
But Egypt’s antiquities minister Mamduh al-Damaty disagrees.
Instead, he thinks it will be that of Kiya, a wife of the pharaoh Akhenaten — and King Tutankhamun’s most probable mother.
RECYCLED RESTING PLACE
Tutankhamun’s tomb has long been noted for being unusually small in comparison to those of other pharaohs. Much of its art is also unusually large — as if the painters did not have much time to complete their wall-spanning work.
There also has been speculation about the origins of many of its treasures. Some appeared to have been altered. Others appeared not to have his face. Even some of his funerary sarcophagi appeared inappropriately shaped and sized.
“It transpires that the extent of this recycling is far greater than previously recognised, with direct or indirect evidence of re-use now detected in an astonishing 80 per cent or more of the tomb’s core burial equipment (to include the large gilt shrines, sarcophagus, coffins, gold mask, and Canopic equipment),” Dr Reeves writes.
Were they recycled treasures from his outcast father’s tomb, or that of the little known Pharaoh Smenkhkare who may have been Tut’s brother?
Then there’s the even more mysterious Pharaoh of that era — Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten. This may have Nefertiti, desperately rebranding herself in an attempt to hold on to the reins of a fractured kingdom after the death of her husband.
Whatever the case may be, several short-reigned Pharaohs attempted to maintain Akhenaten’s new religion after his death.
Their treasures appear to have been co-opted for Tutankhamun. He helped restore the old religions and erase the embarrassing heretical uprising of his parents from history.
BEHIND THE SCENES
Both potential passages are positioned in the walls of Tutankhamun’s burial chamber. One sits near the head of the enormous stone sarcophagus, the other adjacent its feet.
Dr Reeves says the likelihood for a concealed treasure room and second burial chamber adds sense to the oddly skewed shape of Tutankhamun’s tomb’s floor plan.
The new rooms — if they are indeed rooms — would be in the correct position for an Egyptian Queen: To the right of the entrance shaft. It’s somewhat odd for Tutankhamun’s chamber to be where it is, prompting past speculation that it may have originally been little more than an antechamber for a much larger — incomplete — design.
Dr Reeves even argues one of the painted wall scenes originally depicted Nefertiti’s burial rites, not those of Tutankhamun.
Checking the validity of Dr Reeves’ claims has proven to be relatively easy.
Infra-red scans showed temperature ‘anomalies’ in the walls. Follow-up ground-penetrating radar then probed the walls and produced signals consistent with cavities, or even infilled passages, in the suspect areas.
“Each piece of evidence on its own is not conclusive, but put it all together and it’s hard to avoid my conclusion,” Dr Reeves says. “If I’m wrong I’m wrong, but if I’m right this is potentially the biggest archaeological discovery ever made.”
A TWO-FACED MASK
Dr Reeves has not been satisfied with the feminine features of Tut’s treasures or the traces of cavities behind his tomb’s walls.
He took the opportunity to test the origins of King Tutankhamun’s famous gold death mask after a museum worker accidentally snapped off its prominent beard.
The subsequent restoration work represents the first time in decades anyone has taken a close look at this, the most famous example of ancient Egyptian art.
TUT UNMASKED: Hidden name reveals iconic artwork was intended for another
Reeves focused his attention on the imprint of Tutankhamun’s name on the mask’s interior.
He claims he’s found evidence it has been stamped over an older name. And the surviving traces of those hieroglyphs conform with the mark of Nefertiti.
“Blinded by the piece’s sheer beauty and enormous bullion worth, however, the world has looked and yet has completely failed to see — that the gold mask had never been intended for Tutankhamun at all,” Reeves states.
FAMILY SECRETS
While Egyptologists are uncertain as to who exactly was Pharoah Tutankhamun’s mother, Nefertiti was the ‘supreme wife’ of his father Akhenaten.
But it also may have been Kiya, a little known woman who some argue was Akhenaten’s sister, who bore the future boy-king. This would explain a recent study of Tutankhamun’s remains which revealed he was likely crippled through the results of incest.
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Amid the fragmentary clues of this tumultuous time are some suggesting Nefertiti may have survived the passing of her husband. The noble titles she used contain hints that she may have attempted to become Pharaoh herself.
She may even have served as Tutankhamun’s regent until he came of age.
Nefertiti remains an enigmatic mix of mystery, power and beauty. Which is why the prospect of finding her tomb and confirming her remains excite so much speculation and interest.
THE ARMANA CRISIS
It’s a time mired by mystery, confusion and deliberate deception, which is why it entices such fascination.
Much of what belonged to Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their extended family has been destroyed.
But there is no doubt Akhenaten was odd.
Just as Nefertiti was incredibly beautiful, the pharaoh himself was beastly.
He is usually depicted as androgynous, with enlarged hips, sagging stomach, elongated head and narrow neck. Controversy remains as to whether this was merely a stylistic distortion, or a true representation of deformity.
Regardless, Akhenaten cast out the multitude of old Egyptian gods, and replaced them with a single supreme deity — the Aten, or sun god, which was both mother and father to the universe.
It was a move bound to upset the establishment.
But, somehow, Akhenaten managed to enforce his will long enough — a little more than 16 years — to move an entire capital city from Thebes to Armana.
Egypt experienced something of a cultural revolution under his reign: Everything from art through to architecture underwent a surge of vibrancy, creativity and change.
For the first time in Egyptian royal history, family was important: Wives and children suddenly appeared on images depicting everyday life.
The circumstances of Akhenaten’s death are uncertain.
What happened to Nefertiti afterwards even more so.
Akenaten’s mummified remains have not yet been firmly identified — though there is the suggestion that “Mummy 61074”, which was found in the unfinished KV55 tomb in the Valley of the Kings, may be his.
Amid the scattered remains of the era’s records are hints and traces of new pharaoh’s attempting to continue Akhenaten’s new religion.
But they did not have the heretic pharaoh’s charisma or power.
The old guard returned — with a vengeance.
NEFERTITI’S BID FOR POWER?
The exact succession of power after Akhenaten’s death is confused.
There is evidence Akhenaten had four wives, six daughters, and possibly two sons — Smenkhkare and Tutankhamen.
Nefertiti herself was sometimes shown in poses and activities usually reserved for Pharaohs, leading to speculation she held the status of Akhenaten’s co-ruler.
Upon Akhenaten’s death in 1336 or 1334BC, Smenkhakare seems to have ruled for about a year.
Then another name appears to take precedence.
Neferneferuaten.
Was this Nefertiti? Not enough evidence remains to be certain.
Whoever it was, it seems to have been a female pharaoh. She ruled for two years and one month.
Her successor was the child Tutankhaten — who would later capitulate to pressure to restore the old ways and cast aside the religion of his father, adopting the old-style pharaoic name Tutankhamun.
When the boy-king died, his successor — the regent Ay — set about destroying all evidence of Akhenaten’s heretical interlude in Egypt’s long history.
Particular care was taken to erase mention of Nefertiti.
Her identity — and that of her husband’s — was only rediscovered when the abandoned capital of Armana was unearthed in the late 19th Century.
@JamieSeidel
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