The Nefertiti Bust is a painted stucco-coated limestone bust of Nefertiti, the Great Royal Wife of Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten. It is on display in the Neues Museum of Berlin.
The work is believed to have been crafted in 1345 BC by Thutmose because it was found in his sculpture workshop in Tell-el Amarna, Egypt. It is one of the most-copied works of ancient Egypt. Nefertiti has become one of the most famous women of the ancient world and an icon of feminine beauty.
A German archaeological team led by Ludwig Borchardt discovered the bust in 1912 during an excavation of the sculptor's workshop. It has been kept at various locations in Germany since its discovery, including the cellar of a bank, a salt-mine in Merkers-Kieselbach, the Dahlem museum, the Egyptian Museum of Berlin and the Altes Museum. It is displayed at the Neues Museum in Berlin, where it was originally displayed before World War II. Egypt has called for the return of the bust, citing provisions that prohibited any items of great archaeological value from leaving Egypt. Egypt accuses Borchardt of "wrapping the bust to conceal its value and smuggling it out of the country".
It has been the subject of an argument between Egypt and Germany over Egyptian demands for its repatriation, which began in 1924, once the bust was first displayed to the public, and more generally it fuelled discussions over the role museums play in undoing colonialism. Today, Egypt continues to demand the repatriation of the bust, whereas German officials and the Berlin Museum assert their ownership by citing an official protocol, signed by the German excavators and the French-led Egyptian Antiquities Service at the time of the excavation.
History
Background
Nefertiti (meaning "the beautiful one has come forth") was the 14th-century BC Great Royal Wife (chief consort) of the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. Akhenaten initiated a new monotheistic form of worship called Atenism dedicated to the Sun disc Aten. Little is known about Nefertiti. Theories suggest she could have been an Egyptian royal by birth, a foreign princess or the daughter of a high government official named Ay, who became pharaoh after Tutankhamun. She may have been the co-regent of Egypt with Akhenaten, who ruled from 1352 BC to 1336 BC. Nefertiti bore six daughters to Akhenaten, one of whom, Ankhesenpaaten (renamed Ankhesenamun after the suppression of the Aten cult), married Tutankhamun, Nefertiti's stepson. While it was once thought that Nefertiti disappeared in the twelfth year of Akhenaten's reign because of her death or because she took a new name, she was still alive in the sixteenth year of her husband's reign according to a limestone quarry inscription found at Deir Abu HinnisAthena van der Perre, The Year 16 graffito of Akhenaten in Dayr Abū Ḥinnis. A Contribution to the Study of the Later Years of Nefertiti, Journal of Egyptian History (JEH) 7 (2014), pp. 67–108. "on the eastern side of the Nile, about ten kilometres [6 miles] north of Amarna", in today's Al-Minya Governorate Nefertiti may have become a pharaoh in her own right for a short time after her husband's death.Silverman, Wegner, Wegner pp. 130–33
The bust of Nefertiti is believed to have been crafted about 1345 BC by the sculptor Thutmose. The bust does not have any inscriptions, but can be certainly identified as Nefertiti by the characteristic crown, which she wears in other surviving (and clearly labelled) depictions, for example the "house altar".
Discovery and removal from Egypt The bust was found on 6 December 1912 at Amarna by an archaeological team funded by the German Oriental Company (Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft – DOG), a voluntary association founded by one of the wealthiest men in Prussia, James Simon, who exported more than 20,000 artefacts from Egypt and Iraq. The team was led by German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt. The bust was found in what had been the workshop of the sculptor Thutmose, along with other unfinished busts of Nefertiti.Siehr p. 115 Borchardt's diary provides the main written account of the find; he remarks, "Suddenly we had in our hands the most alive Egyptian artwork. You cannot describe it with words. You must see it."
A 1924 document found in the archives of the German Oriental Company recalls a 20 January 1913 meeting between Borchardt and a senior Egyptian official to discuss the division of the archeological finds of 1912 between Germany and Egypt. According to the secretary of the German Oriental Company (who was the author of the document and who was present at the meeting), Borchardt "wanted to save the bust for us", referring to Germany.
While Philipp Vandenberg describes the acquisition as "adventurous and beyond comparison",Breger p. 286 Time magazine lists it among the "Top 10 Plundered Artifacts". Borchardt showed Egypt's French chief antiques inspector, Gustave Lefebvre, a photograph of the bust "that didn't show Nefertiti in her best light". When Lefebre inspected the artifacts found in the investigation, the bust was already wrapped up in a box sitting in a dimly lit room. It is unknown whether Lefebre "went to the trouble of lifting the bust out of the box". Borchardt also wrongly claimed the bust was made of gypsum, instead of limestone. The German Oriental Society maintains that the finds of the dig were divided fairly, noting that Nefertiti was at the top of the exchange list and that "the inspector could have looked at everything closely at the time".
Description and examinations The bust is tall and weighs about . It is made of a limestone core covered with painted stucco layers. The face is completely symmetrical and almost intact, but the left eye lacks the inlay present in the right. The iris of the right eye is of inserted quartz with black paint and is fixed with beeswax. The background of the eye-socket is unadorned limestone. Nefertiti wears her characteristic blue crown known as the "Nefertiti cap crown" with a golden diadem band looped around like horizontal ribbons and joining at the back, and an Uraeus (cobra), which is now broken, over her brow. She also wears a broad collar with a floral pattern. The ears have suffered some damage. Gardner's Art Through the Ages suggests that "With this elegant bust, Thutmose may have been alluding to a heavy flower on its slender sleek stalk by exaggerating the weight of the crowned head and the length of the almost serpentine neck."
According to David Silverman, the bust reflects the classical Egyptian art style, deviating from the "eccentricities" of the Amarna art style, which was developed in Akhenaten's reign. The exact function of the bust is unknown, though it is theorized that the bust may have been a sculptor's modello to be used as a basis for other official portraits, kept in the artist's workshop.
Colours Borchardt commissioned a chemical analysis of the coloured pigments of the head. The result of the examination was published in the book Portrait of Queen Nofretete in 1923: Blue: powdered frit, coloured with copper oxide Skin colour (light red): fine powdered lime spar coloured with red chalk (iron oxide) Yellow: orpiment (arsenic sulfide) Green: powdered frit, coloured with copper and iron oxide Black: coal with wax as a binding medium White: chalk
Missing left eye When the bust was first discovered, no quartz to represent the iris of the left eyeball was present as in the other eye, and none was found despite an intensive search and a then significant reward of £1000 being put up for information regarding its whereabouts. Borchardt assumed that the quartz iris had fallen out when Thutmose's workshop fell into ruin.Joyce A. Tyldesley, Nefertiti: Egypt's sun queen, Viking, 1999, p. 196. The missing eye led to speculation that Nefertiti may have suffered from an ophthalmic infection and lost her left eye, though the presence of an iris in other statues of her contradicted this possibility.Fred Gladstone Bratton, A history of Egyptian archaeology, Hale, 1968, p. 223.
Dietrich Wildung proposed that the bust in Berlin was a model for official portraits and was used by the master sculptor for teaching his pupils how to carve the internal structure of the eye, and thus the left iris was not added. Gardner's Art Through the Ages and Silverman present a similar view that the bust was deliberately kept unfinished.Silverman, Wegner, Wegner pp. 21, 113 Zahi Hawass, former Egyptian Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs, suggested that Thutmose created the left eye, but that it was later destroyed.
CT scans The bust was first CT scanned in 1992, with the scan producing cross sections of the bust every .For comparative analysis between 1992 and 2006 CT scans: In 2006, Dietrich Wildung, director of Berlin's Egyptian Museum, while trying a different lighting at the Altes Museum, where the bust was then displayed, observed wrinkles on Nefertiti's neck and bags under her eyes, suggesting the sculptor had tried to depict signs of aging. A CT scan confirmed Wildung's findings; Thutmose had added gypsum under the cheeks and eyes in an attempt to perfect his sculpture.
The CT scan in 2006, led by Alexander Huppertz, director of the Imaging Science Institute in Berlin, revealed a wrinkled face of Nefertiti carved in the inner core of the bust. The results were published in the April 2009's Radiology. The scan revealed that Thutmose placed layers of varying thickness on top of the limestone core. The inner face has creases around her mouth and cheeks and a swelling on the nose. The creases and the bump on the nose are leveled by the outermost stucco layer. According to Huppertz, this may reflect "aesthetic ideals of the era". The 2006 scan provided greater detail than the 1992 one, revealing subtle details just under the stucco.
Later history The bust has become "one of the most admired, and most copied, images from ancient Egypt", and the star exhibit used to market Berlin's museums. It is seen as an "icon of international beauty." "Showing a woman with a long neck, elegantly arched brows, high cheekbones, a slender nose and an enigmatic smile played about red lips, the bust has established Nefertiti as one of the most beautiful faces of antiquity." It is described as the most famous bust of ancient art, comparable only to the mask of Tutankhamun.
Nefertiti has become an icon of Berlin's culture. Some 500,000 visitors see her every year. The bust is described as "the best-known work of art from ancient Egypt, arguably from all antiquity".Siehr p. 114 Her face is on postcards of Berlin and 1989 German postage stamps.
Locations in Germany