06/09/2021
Queens of Egypt.
"Nefertiti"
Nefertiti, also called Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti, (flourished 14th century BCE), queen of Egypt and wife of King Akhenaton (formerly Amenhotep IV; reigned c. 1353–36 BCE), who played a prominent role in the cult of the sun god, known as the Aton.
Nefertiti had given birth to six daughters within 10 years of her marriage, the elder three was born in Thebes, the younger three at Akhetaton (Amarna). Two of her daughters became queens of Egypt.
Soon after Akhenaton’s 12th regnal year, one of the princesses died, three disappeared (and are also presumed to have died), and Nefertiti vanished. The simplest inference is that Nefertiti also died, but there is no record of her death and no evidence that she was ever buried in the Amarna royal tomb. Early Egyptologists, misunderstanding the textual evidence recovered from the Maru-Aten sun temple at Amarna, deduced that Nefertiti had separated from Akhenaton and had retired to live either in the north palace at Amarna or in Thebes. This theory is now discredited. Others have suggested that she outlived her husband, took the name Smenkhkare, and ruled alone as female king before handing the throne to Tutankhamen. There is good evidence for a King Smenkhkare, but the identification in the 20th century of a male body buried in the Valley of the Kings as Tutankhamen’s brother makes it unlikely that Nefertiti and Smenkhkare were the same person.
Nefertiti’s body has never been discovered. Had she died at Amarna?! It seems inconceivable that she would not have been buried in the Amarna royal tomb. But the burial in the Valley of the Kings confirms that at least one of the Amarna burials was re-interred at Thebes during Tutankhamen’s reign. Egyptologists have therefore speculated that Nefertiti may be one of the unidentified bodies recovered from the group of royal mummies in the Valley of the Kings.
In the early 21st century attention has focused on the
Younger Lady” found in the tomb of Amenhotep II, although it is now accepted that this body is almost certainly too young to be
Nefertiti.
Amarna was abandoned soon after Akhenaton’s death, and Nefertiti was forgotten until, in 1912, a German archaeological mission led by Ludwig Borchardt discovered a portrait bust of Nefertiti lying in the ruins of the Amarna workshop of the sculptor Thutmose. The bust went on display at a museum in Berlin in the 1920s and immediately attracted worldwide attention, causing Nefertiti to become one of the most recognizable Egyptian queen, and despite the missing left eye, she's still the most beautiful female figures from the ancient world.
