Queen Nefertiti: Statue Reconstructions Revealed
Hey everyone, and welcome back to MidGeos where we bring famous figures from the past to life with history and facial reconstructions. Today we are writing about the enigmatic queen Nefertiti, whose portrait bust has enthralled millions since its discovery.
Nefertiti: "The Beautiful Woman Has Come" - Fast Facts
we'll write about her history, ethnicity, a possible mummy and the question of this famous berlin bust being a forgery.
And, of course, we'll Reveal multiple statue recreations both past and modern this time or maybe one of the most beautiful women of all time.
So let's get started.
Nefertiti's history and legacy
Let's begin today with Nefertiti's history and legacy.
Queen Nefertiti meaning
The name Nefertiti means the beautiful one has come forth, which is such an apt descriptor for this queen of all Egyptian queens. She might be the most famous, or at least the most well-known. This is likely because she has so many surviving appearances on monuments and other works of art. She was born around 1370 bc.
We may know more about what she looked like than we do about her life and history. Her face is pretty Ubiquitous to most of us. At this point, however, she is also famous for another reason.
Queen Nefertiti husband
She and her husband Akhenaten worked together to change the face of Egyptian religion. She had more influence than other royal wives in Egypt and may have even ruled after her husband was gone as a pharaoh or under another name.
The great centre point of Nefertiti and Akhenaten's rule was the change of religion in Egypt. Akhenaten, previously known as Amun Hotep iv, re-centred the Egyptian pantheon of gods into one god, Aten, the sun god. This new age became known as the Amarna period, and it was such an interesting period in Egypt for art and culture.
Nefertiti and Naganatan see to be a couple of respect and even love. Images And carvings of the two together seem to show this genuine love and affection between them. They work together in ways that previous queen consorts had not worked with the pharaohs.
A group of blocks recovered from Karnak shows Nefertiti participating in the ritual smiting of the enemies of Egypt. She even wears her unique headdress, a tall flat blue crown, which can also be seen on the berlin bust. She adopts important religious roles and is depicted seated proudly next to her husband in many a stone relief.
Nefertiti children
Together They had six daughters over ten years.
- Meritaten
- Meketaten
- Ankhesenamun
- Neferneferuaten Tasherit
- Neferneferure
- Setepenre
All of whom shared unusual prominence during the reign of their father. This indicated a bit of a changing of gender norms and more emphasis on the royal family unit of Egypt itself. Never td mysteriously disappears from the historical record around the 12th Year of Akhenaten's 17-year reign.
Like I write, the only thing that's actually indicating Nefertiti's whereabouts and present are stone inscriptions, and at this time, they disappear. It's possible that she died, but some scholars have a different idea of what happened to Nefertiti At this time.
they say that she changed names to reflect a change in title and role to never-never want the official co-regent Of her husband, the pharaoh. Now officially in the historical record, Akhenaten was succeeded as a pharaoh, or maybe a co-regent of the pharaohs mink is. Some scholars, Even posit that this is also a possible alternate name for Nefertiti. Elaborate on this, and one theory is that, as the last symbol of love for his wife before his death, Akhenaten promoted Nefertiti from great royal wife to co-regent Making her nepher neferneferuaten.
Another theory is that, because Nefertiti's name disappears from the historical record, she may have just changed it, not only once but twice. This time, she is taking the name of the male heir mentioned earlier, Smenkhare. In this instance, she could have elevated her daughter, marinate, to the role of a great royal wife and made sure that her line of royalty was continued forever. Alright, so that's enough of her history For now.
The beauty that has captured millions
Let's know about the beauty that has captured millions. Let's talk about Nefertiti's appearance. The first question we'll get to is: does Nefertiti have a mummy? Has her body been found? Do we have any DNA for her? So as of yet, it seems that the consensus is that no, we do not have a body for Nefertiti. There is a mummy referred to as the younger lady found in a tomb called kv-35, and some egyptologists Suggest that this is the body of Nefertiti.
However, DNA suggests that this is not the body of Nefertiti, and also this young woman died by a huge blow to the face, which would have been a very sad ending for our queen and opened up a whole new can of worms In terms of her story and her ending.
So what was Nefertiti's ethnicity? Well, Nefertiti's parentage is unknown, meaning we don't have any surviving Records of her parentage recorded today. Most Egyptologists believe that she was the daughter of the powerful Egyptian courtier and one of his wives.
The rest is conjecture, but it's thought that Nefertiti was very likely 100%ethnically Egyptian. The idea has also been floated that she may have been part of maintaining, which is a region in modern-day Syria, but this is kind of a loose theory at this time. It doesn't have any concrete evidence to back it up. We have no mummy of Nefertiti at present. So DNA testing has yet to be undertaken to determine her exact heritage.
The current DNA studies and research of what ancient Egyptian populations looked like in terms of heritage shows them as having mixed heritage with a genome kind of close to populations of the Mideast. This makes a lot of geographic sense, considering that Egypt is next to Israel and Jordan. They probably looked similar to what modern-day Egyptians look like today.
Let's know about depictions and statues of Nefertiti from her reign.
As I write in the history portion, religion underwent this major upheaval in the Amarna period, and art and sculpture did.
So Nefertiti and Akhenaten move to this More naturalistic style of art, a style that's far more lifelike than what was seen in Egypt before.
As an artist, who does facial reconstructions. I love this period because it gives us more of a realistic glimpse into what they looked like. They were willing to show a more casual side of royal life. They put a lot more emphasis on the royal family unit.
So the couple is often depicted with their children, holding them, watching them play and interacting warmly with them, which was never shown before.
The couple was willing to show this affectionate and family-oriented side to the depictions of the royal household, which would never happen again in Egyptian history, along with looking less formal, the sculptures just show a more realistic depiction of what people look like. The berlin bust even shows normal facial features like slight eye bags lines around the mouth and even the actual tendons in her neck, so it just shows things that show up on an actual human face, Unlike these older stiff portraits of the Egyptian rulers.
What did queen Nefertiti look like
The use of elements of arts in the sculpture queen Nefertiti
There are a couple of sculptures of Nefertiti that all share these similar facial features and they're really consistent across them, so they show heavily littered large eyes, a pretty Small nose with a thin bridge, a long neck and full lips. A few of these even have laugh lines in common around her mouth. Even the bodies of Amarna period sculpture for both men and women are depicted more naturally with fuller, hips and thighs.
Although some scholars argue that this stylization was an attempt to showcase the principles of their new religion, generating new life, making them look healthy and fertile.
of course, we can't forget that almost all sculptures from the past of rulers serve some sort of political or propaganda purpose. This can be seen and the way that Nefertiti and Akhenaten actually end up looking kind of similar to each other in a lot of sculptures. She looks like him or we guess you could say he looks like her. and this could definitely be an attempt To display their unity as a ruling couple kind of propaganda.
"Look how well we work together, Look at what a unit we are." and we can't say that these sculptures are without their beautifications. Interestingly, a ct scan was conducted of the berlin bust found that the sculpture included a stone core with a stucco finish.
The original sculpture in itself was stone and it showed this bump on her Nose That was eventually smoothed over with the stucco suggesting that someone issued an order to have it smooth down. So while we would love to see the true face of Nefertiti, we're still definitely looking into an idealized face when we look at the berlin bust.
I want to address the berlin bust itself. Since that's what all of my depictions are based on. There have been a few questions raised in recent years about the authenticity Of the bust and whether or not it's actually a forgery d Silverman, an egyptologist suggests that the bust reflects a classical art style and is too far from the Amarna style to be authentic. A very big proponent of the theory that it's a forgery is swiss Art historian henry sterlin, who has done much research on it over the years.
Sterling's theory centres around the idea that the bust was just made as a Way to test ancient pigments and that it was created by an artist named Gerard marks on the orders of German archaeologist Ludwig both art. sterlin says that this test statue was then sitting in his home and was one day admired by a german prince who obviously thought it was real.
Sterling's theory is that Borchardt couldn't sum up the courage to ridicule his guest. and this is where it gets a little weird For me because, basically to save embarrassment, this german prince as his guest, orchestrates an entire photoshoot, makes the sculpture dirty, digs it up From the ground takes pictures of it, and everyone agrees that it's authentic.
That seems a little bit far-fetched to me, but I also fall on the side of it being an authentic work of art. The pigments themselves that are on the sculpture include lime, spar and red chalk, and they've been dated to be Authentically ancient.
It also greatly resembles the other images of Nefertiti from the time. and as I mentioned, it underwent this interesting ct scan analysis that showed two layers of artwork, so if it is a forgery, it's certainly an expert.