Nefertiti: A beauty and a beast all at once
Surprising truths have come to light in this exploration of a cultural icon, writes Christopher Hart.
The painted bust of Queen Nefertiti, consort of Akhenaten, is one of the most famous images from the ancient world. A woman who lived more than 3000 years ago seems extraordinarily alive before us, beautiful, regal and serene. But what are we to make of this uncanny survival, buried in the dust of Egypt for millennia and now to be seen, and revered as ‘‘art’’, in Berlin’s Neues Museum?
It is remarkable that she survived at all, given Egypt’s numerous invasions, including by Arab Muslims and European imperialists, keen to carry off the treasures of Egypt for cash and kudos – and, to be fair, delicate preservation and scholarly investigation, too.
The Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley sets about telling us what we actually know of Nefertiti. She was married to Akhenaten, who reigned from 1352-36BC. Her name means A Beautiful Woman Has Come. She lived most of her life in Amarna, and bore her husband at least six daughters. ‘‘We know that she fades from our view at the end of her husband’s reign. And that is more or less it.’’
Much of the book, therefore, becomes a teasing out of what else we might surmise. The great drama of Nefertiti’s life was Akhenaten apparently rejecting the animalheaded pantheon of Egyptian gods and declaring himself a monotheist, devoted to the Aten, the disc of the Sun.
In recent times, a lot of guff has been written about Akhenaten and Nefertiti. But ‘‘in stark contradiction of the popular modern conception of Akhenaten as a pacifist, we can see both Akhenaten and Nefertiti killing Egypt’s enemies in scenes carved at both Amarna and Karnak’’. Images of Nefertiti also smiting female prisoners offer a unique picture of queenly violence in Egyptian carving.
The bust of Nefertiti starts to look rather different after this. Ancient Egypt was a ‘‘totalitarian regime’’, Tyldesley reminds us, and it is fanciful to see Akhenaten and Nefertiti as presiding over some golden age of ‘‘freedom and tolerance’’.
This is a fine summary of what we know, and what we don’t. We can’t even assume that the historical Nefertiti looked like her bust. Royal portraits are often idealised, conveyors of political meaning as much as representations. On the other hand, Ancient Egypt’s supreme ruler had his pick of the ladies, so she might well have been a stunner. Just as long as we don’t imagine she was a liberal democrat. She was more like a dictator’s Wag – but her portrait remains an object of remote, astonishing beauty, for all that. – The Sunday Times