Yes, you’re not wrong… This sculpture sounds very familiar to you! Is Nefertiti. If you have not had the chance to see it live, you surely know it from textbooks, as it is one of the most famous works of art of all time.
Now… Have you ever wondered who this enigmatic woman was? What period of history do you think she belongs to? Why is this world-famous bust missing an eye?
Don’t worry! Right now you are going to discover a lot of things about this interesting topic.
Who was Nefertiti?
To know who Nefertiti is and what she represented for her time, we have to go back to one of the greatest civilizations of the past: the Ancient Egyptwhich developed on the banks of the Nile River from the year 3,000 BC until the year 31 BC when it was conquered by the powerful Roman Empire.
The Egyptian civilization He left an enormous mark on the history of humanity in fields such as mathematics, engineering and medicine. As for his cultural and artistic legacy, it is impressive and still full of enigmas. It is impossible not to remain speechless at the fabulous pyramids, the gigantic Sphinx of Giza or the wonderful and complex hieroglyphs.
During its 3,000 years of history, Egypt was ruled by different kings who accumulated all the power and were considered divine by their people: the pharaohs.
One of those pharaohs was Amenophis IV. He led the empire from 1353 to 1336 BC and, like the others, had several wives at the same time. Of all of them, only one was considered the official wife, the most important. Well, Nefertiti had the privilege of being the Great Royal Wife of Amenophis IV and together they had six daughters.
Nefertiti was, therefore, queen of Egypt. Everything indicates that her great personality made her shine with her own light during her reign and that she came to have a lot of political and religious power. In short, she commanded almost as much as the pharaoh, something that at that time was exceptional. She was even referred to as the goddess Nefertiti.
What was the time in which Queen Nefertiti lived?
Amenophis IV was not exactly a lazy and restless man, but quite the opposite. He stood out for being a revolutionary and innovative pharaoh who made great reforms during the 18 years he ruled. His wife Nefertiti supported him in all his decisions.
To begin with, he made religious changes that were very controversial. His subjects worshiped many gods but above all one, the great god Amon. Shortly after ascending the throne, Amenophis IV decided that from that moment on, he would be the god Aton the most important of all.
Immediately afterwards and in honor of him, he ordered the construction of a new city in the middle of the desert which he called Akhetaten (The horizon of Aton), today known as Amarna.
Pharaoh’s orders had to be followed, so everyone got to work. In a place where there was nothing, thousands of people worked tirelessly to build the new royal palace, new houses, new temples… A new city from scratch!
When everything was more or less ready, the pharaoh made it the capital of the kingdom and moved there with his entire family and the royal court. As if this were not enough, he decided to change his own name, Amenophis IV, to Akhenaten (also known as Akhenaten)which means “useful to Aton.”
But there were more changes. On an artistic level, he also insisted on breaking with the past and introducing new things. Let’s see what he did with the sculpture!
What reform did Pharaoh Amenophis IV make in the world of Art?
Since time immemorial, when the pharaohs commissioned a sculpture of themselves, they demanded to always be represented young and strong (even if they were not), looking straight ahead, rigid and showing no emotions. Look at the photographs of the pharaohs Ramses II and Mycerinus. They look as if they had swallowed a stick!
TO Amenophis IV (or Akhenaten, as he liked to be called) must have found it very boring to always see the same thing and decided to put an end to that tradition of so many centuries. He ordered the sculptors who worked in his service to completely change their style. From now on, both he and his family had to appear in a more realistic and natural way. He thought that if they had physical defects, there was no reason to hide them, and in fact, they were even exaggerated a bit.
For this reason, his statues represent him similar to what he was: a man with a very long face, an endless nose, a prominent chin, and a slightly flabby belly. Yes, let’s not fool ourselves… He wasn’t handsome nor did he have the body of an athlete, but it’s clear that he didn’t care.
The queen, on the other hand, came out ahead, because at that time she was a young woman, in her twenties and incredibly beautiful. Not in vain does Nefertiti mean “beauty has arrived.” The bust you see shows us at the best moment of her life and reflects how beautiful she was in reality.
The bust of Nefertiti
The bust is made of limestone. The sculptor was carving the different parts of the face, and when he finished, he covered it with several layers of stucco, which is like a plaster mass that can be polished and allows to give a better finish to the forms. Finally, he painted it.
Do you want to know what Nefertiti was like physically? As you can see, it has fine features, delicate skin and a long neck that give it great elegance. Her face seems tanned and you can even see the tendons in the throat area. She smiles slightly and her head holds a tall, stylized blue crown that originally had the emblem of a cobra on the front.
The result is a woman who seems natural, modern and attractive. Her face looks like that of a model we see in magazines!
Why is Nefertiti missing an eye?
I imagine you’ve already noticed that the beautiful queen is missing her left eyeball. At first, the archaeologists who found it assumed that it had fallen away and put all their efforts into recovering it. Unfortunately, the quartz eye did not appear.
Another possibility is that she had lost her eye in life, but this theory was discarded because there are other sculptures and reliefs of her and only in this case does she appear without it.
Over time, the researchers verified that the cavity where it should be embedded was very smooth and there was no trace of glue, which at that time was usually beeswax. This was very strange, since it meant that the eye had not been lost, but had never been placed on the queen’s face.
How strange, right? What could be the reason?
Imagine the pharaoh and the queen commissioning the master sculptor to create lots of statues and reliefs with their faces. Too much work to do alone! Therefore, he ran a workshop where he worked side by side with assistants and young apprentices.
It is not known for sure, but many believe that he made this bust so that his workers and students would know what the queen looked like and could copy her face on other statues of her. That is to say, she was a model that perhaps the master sculptor left unfinished on purpose so that her students, in the process, could receive “practical classes” to learn how the eyes were inserted into the sockets.
On the other hand, it is difficult to think that such a beautiful and exceptional image could simply serve this function. The mystery is still not completely solved!
What happened to Queen Nefertiti?
It is not known what happened, but when the pharaoh had been in power for 12 years, his wife Nefertiti stopped appearing in documents, sculptures and reliefs of the time. It is as if the earth had swallowed her!
Perhaps she died young, perhaps she left the palace for some unknown reason… Today, the fate of this beautiful woman remains an enigma that is lost in the mists of time.
Akhetaten, the abandoned city
The reforms and changes of Amenophis IV did not last very long. As soon as he died, a new pharaoh succeeded him for a few months and then the famous Tutanham (also known as Tutakamun), who ordered the court to return to Thebes (the ancient capital) and restored the cult of the god Amun. Little by little, the artistic representations of the pharaohs returned to what they were before.
Akhetaten (Amarna) was abandoned forever and fell into oblivion.
Where was the bust of Nefertiti found?
In 1912, a German Egyptologist named Ludwig Borchardt led archaeological excavations in the ruins of the city of Akhetaten (Amarna).
To their surprise, they found the remains of a house full of figures and heads sculpted in stone of members of Akhenaten’s royal family. Thanks to an inscription, they came to the conclusion that it was the former workshop of a master sculptor named Tutmosethe favorite artist of Pharaoh Amenophis IV (Akhenaten).
Buried among all these pieces of great value, the bust of Nefertiti appeared. She was quickly identified by the blue crown that, as queen, only she wore.
Where is the bust of Nefertiti displayed?
If you want to see the bust of Nefertiti in person you will have to go to the Egyptian Museum in Berlin (Germany), where in addition to admiring the beauty of this queen, you can surround yourself with sarcophagi, papyri, mummies and many other vestiges of exciting Ancient Egypt.
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