1912, NEFERTITI BUST IS DISCOVERED IN AMARNA (EGYPT)

Nefertiti bust, Neues Museum, Berlin

Today, The Grandma has received the grateful visit of her closer friend Joseph de Ca’th Lon. They have visited El Museu Egipci de Barcelona (Barcelona Egyptian Museum) together. Joseph is a great expert in History and The Grandma loves visiting museums and expositions with him. They have chosen this amazing museum sited in the downtown of the city to commemorate that on a day like today in 1912, Nefertiti Bust was discovered and also the 25th anniversary of the Museum that is a private foundation.

The Clos Archaeological Foundation is a private not-for-profit entity founded by Jordi Clos Llombart in 1992. Its mission is to promote and disseminate art in general and archaeology, in particular Ancient Egypt.

Before visiting El Museu Egipci, The Grandma has read a new chapter of Mary Stewart's This Rough Magic.

The Nefertiti bust is a painted stucco-coated limestone bust of Nefertiti, the Great Royal Wife of Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten.

The work is believed to have been crafted in 1345 B.C. by Thutmose because it was found in his workshop in 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.

More information: Neues Museum-Staatliche Musen zu Berlin

A German archaeological team led by Ludwig Borchardt discovered the bust in 1912 in Thutmose'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 in Charlottenburg, and the Altes Museum. It is currently on display at the Neues Museum in Berlin, where it was originally displayed before World War II.

The Nefertiti bust has become a cultural symbol of Berlin as well as ancient Egypt. It has also been the subject of an intense argument between Egypt and Germany over Egyptian demands for its repatriation, which began in 1924 once the bust was first displayed to the public. Egyptian inspectors were not shown the actual bust before they let it out of the country.

Visiting El Museu Egipci, Barcelona

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.

Nefertiti was thought to have disappeared in the twelfth year of Akhenaten's reign, though whether this is due to her death or because she took a new name is not known. She may also have later become a pharaoh in her own right, ruling alone for a short time after her husband's death. However, it is now known that she was still alive in the sixteenth year of her husband's reign from a limestone quarry inscription found at Dayr Abū Ḥinnis. Dayr Abū Ḥinnis is located on the eastern side of the Nile, about ten kilometres north of Amarna.

More information: The Guardian

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.

The Nefertiti bust was found on 6 December 1912 at Amarna by the German Oriental Company (Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft-DOG), led by German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt.

It was found in what had been the sculptor Thutmose's workshop, along with other unfinished busts of Nefertiti. 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.

Nefertiti, Neues Museum, Berlin

A 1924 document found in the archives of the German Oriental Company recalls a 20 January 1913 meeting between Ludwig 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. Borchardt is suspected of having concealed the bust's real value, although he denied doing so.

The bust of Nefertiti is 48 centimetres tall and weighs about 20 kilograms. 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 pupil 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) over her brow -which is now broken. She also wears a broad collar with a floral pattern on it. The ears also have suffered some damage.

More information: Al Arabiya

The Nefertiti 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 be a sculptor's modello to be used as a basis for other official portraits, kept in the artist's workshop.

Ludwig 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 colored 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

When the bust was first discovered, no piece of 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 of the left eye had fallen out when the sculptor Thutmose's workshop fell into ruin. The missing eye led to speculation that Nefertiti may have suffered from an ophthalmic infection, and actually lost her left eye, though the presence of an iris in other statues of her contradicted this possibility.

Nefertiti, Neues Museum, Berlin

The bust of Nefertiti 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 Nefertiti every year. The bust is described as the best-known work of art from ancient Egypt, arguably from all antiquity". Her face is on postcards of Berlin and 1989 German postage stamps.

The Nefertiti bust has been in Germany since 1913, when it was shipped to Berlin and presented to James Simon, a wholesale merchant and the sponsor of the Amarna excavation. It was displayed at Simon's residence until 1913, when Simon lent the bust and other artifacts from the Amarna dig to the Berlin Museum. Although the rest of the Amarna collection was displayed in 1913–14, Nefertiti was kept secret at Borchardt's request.

In 1918, the Museum discussed the public display of the bust, but again kept it secret on the request of Borchardt. It was permanently donated to the Berlin Museum in 1920.

Finally, in 1923, the bust was first revealed to the public in Borchardt's writings and in 1924, displayed to the public as part of the Egyptian Museum of Berlin. The bust created a sensation, swiftly becoming a world-renowned icon of feminine beauty, and one of the most universally-recognised artifacts to survive from Ancient Egypt.

More information: The Spectator

 

The Nefertiti bust was displayed in Berlin's Neues Museum on Museum Island until the museum was closed in 1939; with the onset of World War II, the Berlin museums were emptied and the artifacts moved to secure shelters for safekeeping.

Nefertiti was initially stored in the cellar of the Prussian Governmental Bank and then, in the autumn of 1941, moved to the tower of a flak bunker in Berlin. The Neues Museum suffered bombings in 1943 by the Royal Air Force. On 6 March 1945, the bust was moved to a German salt mine at Merkers-Kieselbach in Thuringia.

In March 1945, the bust was found by the American Army and given over to its Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives branch. It was moved to the Reichsbank in Frankfurt and then, in August, shipped to the U.S. Central Collecting Point in Wiesbaden where it was displayed to the public in 1946.

In 1956, the bust was returned to West Berlin. There it was displayed at the Dahlem Museum. As early as 1946, East Germany (German Democratic Republic) insisted on the return of Nefertiti to Museum Island in East Berlin, where the bust had been displayed before the war.

In 1967, Nefertiti was moved to the Egyptian Museum in Charlottenburg and remained there until 2005, when it was moved to the Altes Museum.

The bust returned to the Neues Museum as its centerpiece when the museum reopened in October 2009.

More information: NZ Herald

People who know very little about ancient Egypt are most likely,

if they know anything at all, to have at least a vague idea about the Pharaoh Akhenaten and be able to recognize

the face of his beautiful wife, Nefertiti.

Pamela Sargent