New Theory About the Location of Queen Nefertiti's Tomb

If there is any water to this, HOLY HATHOR!  I have deleted some of the more sensationalist information included in the article that was not on point, but could not resist keeping the information about Dorothy Eady, who believed she was a reincarnated Egyptian priestess, intact :)

Archaeologist believes he may have found remains of ancient Egyptian queen Nefertiti — hidden in King Tut’s tomb 

Nefertiti — she’s an ancient Egyptian queen and the source of a fantastic mystery regarding the iconic remnants of long-lost royalty. For decades, archaeologists have speculated on the location of the queen’s remains, the last royal mummy missing from the dynasty of the famous King Tutankhamun, better known as King Tut.

But now, an archaeologist claims that he has found her secret tomb in the Valley of the Kings, hidden just beyond a wall near the resting place of the boy-pharaoh. Nicholas Reeves of the University of Arizona, theory is based on an analysis of detailed scans of Tutankhamun’s tomb. The scans reveal the texture of walls beneath their layers of paint, and Reeves believes he found a number of cracks indicating two previously concealed doors.

One of these doors would possibly lead to a storeroom, Reeves said. But the larger door on the north side of the burial chamber, he suggests, could lead to another room holding the remains of Nefertiti, believed by some to be the mother of Tutankhamun.

“I have been testing the evidence ever since, looking for indications that what I thought I was seeing was, in fact, not there,” Reeves told the BBC. “But the more I looked, the more information I found that I seemed to be looking at something pretty real.”

Archaeologists have expressed cautious excitement over Reeves’s conclusion, although they have yet to embrace it fully, as expected. The theory would take many more tests to confirm, although a radar scan could quickly reveal any hollows, an archaeologist told the Economist. “If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. But if I’m right this is potentially the biggest archaeological discovery ever made.”

To find Nefertiti would be a huge win for archaeologists, and may be able to solve some of the mysteries of King Tut’s tomb. The queen, famed for her beauty and her uniquely realistic bust at the Egyptian Museum of Berlin, served as co-regent to King Akhenaten, her husband, and may have been a pharaoh after his death. That means the contents of her tomb, if it exists, would be just as fantastic as Tutankhamum’s — perhaps even more fantastic.

Tutankhamun is believed to have only ruled for nine years, taking power only as a young boy. His remains show that he was a fragile child, with buck teeth and a pronounced overbite. Thanks to rounds of royal inbreeding, he had a club foot and could only walk with a cane.

His reign was overshadowed by much more prominent pharaohs who came before him, including Ramses II, Khufu and his father Akhenaten. Still, the magnificence of the treasures found in his tomb has made it one of the most celebrated archaeological finds in the world. His famous gold funeral mask — which mysteriously depicts him more femininely than other pharaohs — is considered one of the most recognized artifacts ever.

There’s also the bizarre story of Dorothy Louise Eady, who served as a researcher at the Department of Egyptian Antiquities. Eady, better known as Omm Sety, openly believed that she was an ancient Egyptian priestess in a past life who had been reincarnated in the modern age. Her beliefs, detailed in a number of biographies,were supposedly awakened in her after falling down stairs at 3 years old. She grew up dreaming about her experiences in ancient Egypt, and eventually moved to Egypt to become close friends with a number of prominent archaeologists. She made a number of Egyptological discoveries based on what she said were memories, not research.

At one point, she reportedly said she knew where the tomb of Nefertiti was located based on a conversation in another life with a pharaoh, according to a biography titled “Omm Sety’s Egypt.” It’s in the Valley of the Kings, and it’s quite near to the Tutankhamun tomb,” she said, according to the biography. “But it’s in a place where nobody would ever think of looking for it. And apparently it is still intact.”

Eady died in 1981 at the age of 77.

More on the Nefertiti Bust Controversy

From The New York Times

Artistry of the Pharaohs

By MELISSA EDDYPublished: January 21, 2013   

BERLIN — When Ludwig Borchardt first held the life-sized bust of the ancient Egyptian queen Nefertiti in his hands 100 years ago, his immediate thoughts reflected a clear understanding of the magnitude of his discovery. “Really wonderful work,” he wrote in his diary immediately after unearthing the bust, now a star attraction at the Neues Museum here. “No use describing it, you have to see it.”



Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

Although the “life-sized painted bust of the queen, 47 centimeters (18.5 inches) high; with the blue wig cut straight on top, and garlanded by a ribbon half-way up,” as Borchardt went on to describe the head, has remained in German hands since its discovery 100 years ago last month, it has been the source of bitter disputes for nearly as long.
      

To mark the century since the Nefertiti took up residence in Berlin, an exhibition at the Neues Museum explores the short reign of the queen and her husband, the pharaoh Akhenaten, in the royal city they founded around 1346 B.C. Using hundreds of artifacts recovered by Borchardt and his team during the same excavation, “In the Light of Amarna” explores the artistry and craftsmanship of the era.

      

Equally important from a historical perspective, though tucked away in the lower level of the museum far from the Nefertiti, another part of the show examines the lore that surrounds the bust. Through archeological diaries, hand-drawn maps and sketches of the dig — and letters appealing to the Germans’ sense of morality about Nefertiti’s removal — various documents leave no doubt of Berlin’s position about who is entitled to keep the bust.

      

“The bust is without doubt rightfully in the ownership of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation,” Bernd Neumann, the minister for cultural affairs, said before the exhibition opened on Dec. 7. The foundation runs many of Berlin’s leading cultural organizations.

      

Just three years ago, Egypt’s chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, was claiming that Borchardt had swindled Egypt a century ago when he removed the bust from the country. The exhibition documents how — under the laws at the time that stipulated an equal division of all materials discovered — the bust was part of the Germans’ share, along with several hundred other artifacts.

      

Researchers said they believed that Borchardt was aware that the Frenchman who headed the Antiquities Service in Cairo, which was under French control from 1914 to 1936, was a philologist and had appeared to have weighted one group of findings more heavily with inscriptions. The other consignment consisted almost entirely of figures, including the Nefertiti. The French choose the group with the inscriptions.

      

Only after the bust was displayed in the Neues Museum in the 1920s did the magnitude of their loss become clear, initiating the first attempt to seek Nefertiti’s return. “Here is our point of view: The piece never should have left Egypt,” Pierre Lacau, then head of the Antiquities Service in Cairo, wrote to the German authorities in 1925. He urged the Germans to return the bust for “moral” reasons, and later offered two treasures from the Cairo Museum in exchange. The offer was rejected.

       

By 2009, Mr. Hawass had begun to raise questions about the bust’s removal from Egypt, writing letters to the cultural authorities in Berlin, who traveled to Cairo for discussions. The exchanges strained the cooperation on archeological and cultural issues between the countries to the point where Mr. Hawass turned down an invitation to attend the gala reopening of the newly renovated Neues Museum, which houses the Papyrus Collection and the Egyptian Museum, with Nefertiti as its star attraction.

      

The demands have petered out since the end of the Hosni Mubarak era in 2011. Concerns have shifted to safety issues at excavation sites around Egypt amid continuing turmoil around the country. “Since the election we have been to Cairo several times,” said Michael Eissenhauer, director of the State Museums of Berlin. “We have very good discussions and are seeking new avenues of cooperation.”

      

Excavations in the area around Amarna are leading to new discoveries. Dutch archeologists say they believe they have found evidence that Nefertiti, whose name means “The Beautiful One Has Arrived,” was still queen 16 years into her husband’s reign; many experts thought that she had died or had disappeared 12 years into his reign.

      

The limestone and plaster bust — with its elegantly arched neck and eyebrows, chiseled cheekbones and mysterious smile — has tiny, fine lines around her eyes, a hint that she lived to be a mature woman. A later likeness includes heavier lines around her eyes and mouth.

      

The items in the exhibition reflect Amarna in her lifetime as enlightened and peaceful. The works include faience jewelry, ceramic vases delicately painted with light blue flowers, and tiles decorated with birds and fish. A limestone relief shows Nefertiti as her husband’s equal, sitting face-to-face with him, surrounded by their daughters.

      

Many of the objects in the exhibition, which runs through April 13, are on display for the first time since Borchardt brought them back to Berlin.

      

In defending Berlin’s position on refusing to give up the bust, Mr. Neumann stressed the importance of allowing such treasures to remain available for research and study of all those who are interested. “Instead we should make clear that such a work of art belongs to a universal, global cultural heritage of a people, regardless of where it is,” Mr. Neumann said. “It should be made available to as many people as possible.” [And not highjacked by the Islamists now in power in Egypt.  You can bet your sweet bippy that the second they got their hands on it, it would be swapped for a plaster of paris look-alike that would be placed into the Cairo Museum under heavy guard and the REAL Nefertiti would be sold for countless millions, maybe even a billion, on the illegal antiquities market.]      

A version of this article appeared in print on January 22, 2013, in The International Herald Tribune.      

Nefertiti's Not-So-Extreme Make-over

SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes;
Byron

This has been in the news before so it's not "news" per se, but I thought it was entertaining how the "television historian"..."flew out to Egypt immediately after..." LOL! 
From The Independent co.uk
Nefertiti, recipient of the world's first successful facelift
Scan reveals that the Egyptian queen got a more fetching nose and some ancient Botox treatment
By Andrew Johnson
Sunday, 19 September 2010

Her name is synonymous with beauty; and unlike history's other renowned women, such as Helen of Troy, we don't have to take the classical historians' word for it. Nefertiti's reputation rests on hard evidence – an exquisite bust of the ancient Egyptian queen that survived for more than 3,000 years.

Now researchers have discovered that the bust, one of the world's most famous objects, which is housed in the Neues Museum in Berlin, was given the ancient equivalent of a Photoshop airbrushing.

The television historian Bettany Hughes told The Independent Woodstock Literary Festival yesterday that last week she was part of a team that carried out a CT scan on the bust – one of ancient Egypt's best-known objects after the death mask of Tutenkhamen, who some believe to be her son.

Inside the statue they discovered a second limestone likeness of the queen, who died around 1330BC aged between 29 and 38.

"That statue is still very beautiful," she said, "but not as beautiful. It showed her nose was bent, and that she had wrinkles around her eyes. It's a real portrait of a real woman. We're now going to a tomb in the Valley of the Kings where we think Nefertiti's sister is to see if the dynasty has the same features."

Ms Hughes, who flew out to Egypt immediately after yesterday's event, said the Nefertiti scan was likely to reveal much more about the dynasty, of whom Tutenkhamen is the most famous member.

Nefertiti – her name means "the beautiful one has come" – is renowned among Egyptian scholars as the Great Royal Wife of the Pharaoh Akhenaten. Together the couple, who ruled more than 3,000 years ago, revolutionised the ancient Egyptian world by turning their backs on the traditional gods and worshipping only the sun. She is believed to have had equal status to the pharaoh, and may have even reigned after his death.

Her tomb has never been discovered, but the new revelations of how she really looked raise the possibility that she could now be identified among several unknown mummies.

Much of the ancient queen's modern-day fame rests on the discovery of the bust by a German archaeological team in 1912 in the workshop of the ancient master Thutmose. The image is one of the most copied in the world. Ms Hughes revealed the research while speaking about her biography of the Greek philosopher Socrates – whom she described as a hippy who would have opposed the recent war in Iraq.

She also made an impassioned plea for classical history to be taught in schools. "All of life is in classical antiquity and articulated in the most beautiful, evocative and sensual way," she said. "We are denuding society if we don't allow young people to revel in that beautiful world."

See March 29, 2009:  Nefertiti got extreme makeover: Researchers

But - maybe not - depending upon hour you interpret the underlying limestone support structure:

April 1, 2009:  Nefertiti's 3,300-year-old royal makeover (has 'before' and 'after' photos)

Hey, even with a bump in my nose may I look so good after 3000 years.

More on the "Nefertiti Bust Is a Fraud"

Nefertiti Bust May Be 100 Years Old, Not 3,000: Martin Gayford May 12, 2009 (Bloomberg News) (Gayford believes the bust may be a fake) Egypt’s Rubbishes Claims that Nefertiti Bust is ‘Fake’ By Christopher Szabo Published May 12, 2009 (DigitalJournal.com) (Cites the official Egyptian stance through Zahi Hawas, Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, that the bust of Nefertiti is genuine)

Is the Nefertiti Bust a Fake?

(Image: Mrs. Borchardt, I presume?)

I'm catching up with stories now that I'm back home from New York. Still on vacation, don't go back to the office until the 26th, yippee! This next story from the guardian.co.uk is, frankly, just so far out there - but the book will probably sell because the subject is controversial. Is this Nefertiti – or a 100-year-old fake? Kate Connolly in Berlin guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 May 2009 19.24 BST Her elegant and chiselled features held proud and high on a swanlike neck, she has been smiling serenely for 3,400 years. At least that has long been the popular and scientific belief that draws half a million tourists to see her in Berlin every year. But now doubt has been thrown on the authenticity of the painted limestone and plaster bust of the 18th dynasty Egyptian queen Nefertiti by two authors who claim she is a fake. According to a Swiss art historian, the bust is less than 100 years old. Henri Stierlin has said the stunning work that will later this year be the showpiece of the city's reborn Neues Museum was created by an artist commissioned by Ludwig Borchardt, the German archaeologist credited with digging Nefertiti out of the sands of the ancient settlement of Amarna, 90 miles south of Cairo, in 1912. In his book, Le Buste de Nefertiti – une Imposture de l'Egyptologie? (The Bust of Nefertiti – an Egyptology Fraud?), Stierlin has claimed that the bust was created to test ancient pigments. But after it was admired by a Prussian prince, Johann Georg, who was beguiled by Nefertiti's beauty, Borchardt, said Stierlin, "didn't have the nerve to make his guest look stupid" and pretended it was genuine. Berlin author and historian Edrogan Ercivan has added his weight to the row with his book Missing Link in Archaeology, published last week, in which he has also called Nefertiti a fake, modelled by an artist on Borchardt's statuesque wife. Public and political enthusiasm about the find at the time gave the artefact its "own dynamic" and led to Borchardt ensuring it was kept out of the public gaze until 1924, the authors have argued. He kept it in his living room for the next 11 years before handing it over to a Berlin museum, since when it has been one of the city's main tourist attractions. The statue was famously admired by Adolf Hitler, who referred to it as "a unique masterpiece, an ornament, a true treasure". Recent radiological tests carried out on the statue by Berlin's Charite hospital supposedly proved that the bust is indeed more than 3,000 years old. The tests uncovered a hidden face carved into the statue's limestone core. But Stierlin has argued that while it is possible to carbon date the pigments, which appear to be ancient Egyptian, it is impossible to accurately date the bust because it is made of stone covered in plaster. Other aspects of the find, which he has claimed support his theory, are the facts that the bust has no left eye, which the ancient Egyptians would have considered a sign of disrespect towards their much-loved queen, and that the first scientific reports on the discovery were not written up for 11 years. Borchardt's diary entries remain the main written account of the find. He wrote: "Suddenly we had in our hands the most alive Egyptian artwork. You cannot describe it with words. You must see it." But Dietrich Wildung, the director of Berlin's Egyptian Museum, where Nefertiti is currently housed, has fiercely dismissed the allegations as an attempt to exploit the bust's popularity. "A beautiful woman and a putative scandal," he said. "That always sells." He said the claims could easily be dismissed because of the detailed computer tomography and material analyses that had been carried out on Nefertiti. In October, the bust is due to be moved back into the Neues Museum, which has been reconstructed from its war-torn remains by British architect David Chipperfield, and where Nefertiti was last on display 70 years ago. She is to hold court over a long gallery in the north cupola, where she will be set on a specially constructed pedestal. Over the decades Germany has rejected repeated requests from Egypt for her return. Sun queen The bust is said to portray the wife of the Sun King Akhenaten, with whom she is believed to have ruled Egypt between 1353 and 1336BC. It is thought to have been uncovered in the desert by the archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt in 1912. During the Nazi years, Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering planned to give it back to Egypt, but Adolf Hitler said the bust would have pride of place in a museum for Germania, the expanded Berlin that was due to be the capital of his Thousand Year Reich. Nefertiti means "beautiful woman has arrived". *************************************************************************** Hmmm, can anyone explain to me why it would be necessary to create a bust out of rock covered with plaster and sculpt it to perfection just in order to test out a recipe for Egyptian pigments? Why not make it out of clay coated with plaster? Why add the crown? Indeed, why make a test model after the queen at all? Could not the pigments have been tested on a palette made out of plaster-covered stone? Did Borchardt's wife, after whom it is alleged the bust modelled, really look so much like Nefertiti? We know what Nefertiti looked like from carvings and paintings on monuments that survived the purge after Akhenaten's death; I'm no expert but to my untrained eye the bust generally resembles those representations of Nefertiti, albeit rather idealized. We don't know what Borchardt's wife looked like - no photo accompanied the article so a reader cannot do a comparison. Her name isn't given in the article, so she cannot be easily tracked down, even supposing a photograph of Mrs. Borchardt exists from the time in question. For more information about Queen Nefertiti, see Judith Weingarten's blog.

Did Nefertiti Have a Bump on Her Nose?

So what if she did? Cleopatra (THE Cleopatra, I believe was Cleopatra VII), also had a pronounced "Greek" bump on her nose according to her images on ancient coins, but she is still reputed as one of the most "beautiful" women in the world ever, along with Nefertiti. (Image of Nefertiti Bust: Berlin Museum). Of course, "beauty" encompasses a lot of meanings. At the risk of being absolutely prosaic, there's a reason for that old saw "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with just physical beauty - whatever that means (it changes every other year, it seems). Anyway, this is a fascinating story - sort of CSI archaeology. The famous bust of Nefertiti housed in Berlin, the one that Zahi Hawass lusts after so much to be "returned" to Egypt, underwent a high-tech CT scan recently. The scan revealed that the stone "under-sculpture" that supports the outer layer of gesso forming the face of Nefertiti with which we are all familiar, shows some decided flaws that did not show up in the final bust/portrait. Oh my, what's an archaeologist to do??? LOL! I guess they just don't understand about "before" and "after" make-overs, do they? Heh heh heh. Coverage: AFP report at Google Yahoo! News (some photos which show the underlying stone sculpture and it's "flaws")

The Latest on the Nefertiti Fight

From Spiegel Online International February 13, 2009 EGYPTIAN QUEEN IN BERLIN Cairo Demands Clarification on Nefertiti Bust Egypt may renew its official demand for the return of the famous Nefertiti bust after a newly-surfaced document claims German archaeologists tried to trick Egyptian experts about its importance in 1913. A chief archaeologist in Cairo is leading the charge. "This time I mean it very seriously," is how Egypt's chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, characterized his fresh demand for the bust of Queen Nefertiti, which German archaeologists brought home in 1913. He was reacting to SPIEGEL magazine piece that suggested the Germans had tricked Egyptian experts about the true nature of the now-legendary bust. Hawass has long called on Berlin to return the bust of Nefertiti, which sits in the city's Egyptian Museum, but SPIEGEL revealed in this week's edition of the magazine that an obscure document from 1924 charged the German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt with "cheating" to secure the bust for Germany. "I immediately sent a letter to the German Oriental Institute demanding a copy of the document," Hawass told Agence France-Presse. "If it is authentic we will work with all our power with the German government to bring back the statue." He reiterated his position to the German radio station ARD and added, "This time I mean it very seriously." The secretary of the German Oriental Institute reported in 1924 on a 1913 meeting between Borchardt and a senior Egyptian official. Egypt and Germany had an agreement to split antiquities found by Borchardt's team "à moitié exacte," or 50-50, but the secretary reported in his memo that Borchardt "wanted to save the bust for us." The bust lay wrapped in a box in a dim room when the Egyptian official, chief antiquities inspector Gustave Lefébvre, looked over artifacts from the Borchardt dig. The secretary wrote that Borchardt presented Lefébvre with an unflattering photo of the bust and claimed it was made of gypsum, when in fact it has a limestone core under a layer of stucco. Whether Lefébvre went to the trouble of lifting the bust out of the box isn't clear. But the secretary, who witnessed the meeting, claimed there was "cheating" involved, since the Germans misrepresented the material. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation has possession of the bust and rejects any charge of cheating. The idea that the antiquities were not divided according to the rules in 1913 "is false," the foundation has claimed in a statement. Lefébvre, in other words, just overlooked the importance of the piece. The German Oriental Institute admits the existence of the document, but also maintains there was no serious breach of the rules. "Nefertiti was at the top of the exchange list," a spokesman for the company told SPIEGEL. "The inspector could have looked at everything closely.... It's not admissible to complain about the deal reached at the time." The well-preserved Nefertiti bust depicts the queen of Sun King Akhenaten, who was pharaoh of ancient Egypt at the peak of its imperial power almost 3,400 years ago. Egypt has demanded it back from Germany for various reasons since the 1930s. It's now a star attraction at the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, which receives half a million visitors per year. msm -- with wire reports

Nefertiti's Eyes

From Archaeology Magazine Volume 61 Number 2, March/April 2008 by Earl L. Ertman Did the queen's distinctive feature become a symbol of Egyptian royalty? All eyes were on the Valley of the Kings the morning of February 5, 2006, when our expedition first looked into the chamber now known as KV63, the first tomb found in Egypt's Valley of the Kings since that of Tutankhamun (KV62) in 1922. Press speculation was rampant over what the tomb might hold. Would our expedition find the mummies of royal women from the late 18th Dynasty, such as Queen Nefertiti, thought by some to be Tut's mother? Or the six princesses she bore to the pharaoh Akhenaten, including Tut's queen, Ankhesenamun? The mummies of these women have either not been found or identified. Perhaps they were removed from Akhenaten's capital at Amarna when a later king, presumably Tut, returned to the traditional capital of Thebes on the Nile opposite the Valley of the Kings. Did Tut rebury them in the Valley? After taking out several stones blocking the doorway from the tomb shaft into the chamber, we peered through the narrow opening. Inside, we could see many large ceramic jars and several wooden coffins, some with yellow-painted faces. The press speculation was incorrect on all counts. We found no mummies in any of the tomb's seven coffins and no inscriptions to tell us for whom these coffins were initially intended. But while studying the coffins, I discovered--in the eyes of faces painted on three of them--an intriguing link to Nefertiti, the queen whose name means, simply, "the beautiful one has come." While none of the coffins held Nefertiti's remains, the eyes may tell us something unexpected about her celebrated beauty. Was it in part the result of a genetic syndrome? If not a royal tomb, what was KV63? Finds include the seven coffins, a small gilt coffinette, two large alabaster vessels, floral garlands, pillows, natron (the natural salt used in mummification), and many ceramics. It seems to have been a cache of material used by embalmers, but including coffins, unused or salvaged from disturbed burials, suitable for upper-class, but not elite or royal, funerals. Although KV63 didn't yield the mummies of Nefertiti, Ankhesenamun, and the rest, the tomb is linked to Tutankhamun's time. Seal impressions found there match some discovered in Tut's tomb, which is just 50 feet away. KV63's date should fall within or close to Tut's reign (1343-1333 B.C.), but association with his burial is uncertain at this point. Perhaps we will gain further evidence for the date of KV63 from the contents of the remaining 16, of 28 total, storage jars that we plan to open this season. Otto Schaden, our expedition director, asked me, as staff art historian and object analyst, if any information could be gleaned from the coffins to narrow this date range. I began with the four coffins that had yellow-painted faces. The KV63 coffins were almost totally destroyed by termites, but the faces were made separately. Faces on coffins were often covered with thin plaster or gesso as a base for gilding or painting (as in the KV63 coffins). The termites seem to prefer untreated wood, so while the remainder of the coffins were mostly consumed, the gessoed and painted faces survived. In the art of the ancient Near East, including Egypt, females were generally depicted with lighter skin than males. Were the coffins with light yellow faces made for women? Two such coffins in museum collections, however, were inscribed for males. Furthermore, a painting in a tomb in Thebes shows coffins of Nebamun and Ipuky, sculptors who worked during the reigns of kings Amenhotep III and his son Akhenaten. Each of their black coffins has a yellow-painted face. So rather than indicating the coffins were for females, the yellow faces probably copied those of the very wealthy, who could afford gold faces on their coffins. With no inscriptions and the ambiguous nature of the yellow face color, I began looking at other characteristics that might prove helpful, such as the shape and details of the faces. In doing that, the eyes on three of the painted KV63 coffins brought me back to Nefertiti. Nefertiti is best known from the painted bust of her found at Amarna and now in Berlin. Her parentage is not entirely certain, but most Egyptologists believe she was the daughter of the powerful courtier Ay, who eventually succeeded Tutankhamun. The face of one, which we designated coffin A, had eyes rimmed with blue glass in a traditional shape, unlike the other three coffins with yellow faces, designated B, F, and G. What links the eyes of these three coffins, beside the fact that all are painted, is that the inner canthus--the corner of the eye near the nose--descends abruptly and abuts the upper lid, giving them an East Asian appearance. Nefertiti's famous bust illustrates this eye shape better than words. Both her proper right eye and the empty socket of the left show this form. What is the meaning of this eye shape? Art of the Amarna period, when Akhenaten and Nefertiti reigned, is noted for its naturalistic depiction of plants and animals and, in some cases, candid scenes of daily life. So one might suggest that the shape of Nefertiti's eyes may be an attempt to render her features as they actually appeared. One of the earliest appearances of Nefertiti's unusual eye shape is on a stela showing the royal family. Found at Amarna and now in Berlin, it is dated by an inscription to before years 8 through 12 of Akhenaten's reign, or around 1350 B.C. On the stela, however, Akhenaten's eye shape is "normal" and resembles those seen on sculptures of him in Thebes, but Nefertiti's is not. So this stela may show a real, physical condition. It could be that Nefertiti had an epicanthic fold, a piece of skin from the upper eyelid covering the inner edge of the eye. This feature is found not just in people of East Asian descent, but also in individuals with a number of different syndromes--groups of symptoms characteristic of an abnormality--some of which are genetically based. Some syndromes are debilitating, others less so, and still others are passed only from mothers to daughters. We are currently investigating the possibility that Nefertiti's eyes reflect such an underlying physical condition, but without her remains no diagnosis can be made (and the evidence may have been destroyed or altered during mummification). If a genetically based physical trait was the basis for this eye shape, did Nefertiti pass it on to her children and was it recorded in the appearance of their eyes in artwork? Images of Nefertiti show the trait more frequently and markedly than those of any other individual portrayed at Amarna. German excavators at Amarna in 1912 found many representations of Nefertiti and her daughters in the studio of an artist named Tuthmosis, including the painted bust of Nefertiti. Many of these representations are in various stages of completion, but their distinctive eyes are easily noticed. This is especially clear in a relief, now in the Brooklyn Museum, that may show Meritaten, the queen's eldest daughter. [Note: but if they're not sure it IS Meritaten, what good is this supposition?] It is possible that Nefertiti was Tutankhamun's mother. If so, it wouldn't be surprising if he were shown with an eye shape similar to hers. This is the case with some depictions, such as a wooden head of the young pharaoh that was found in his tomb. It shows his head, sprouting from a lotus bloom, with eyes that match those of Nefertiti. Other explanations for its appearance with Tut include the possibility that his mother was not Nefertiti but perhaps a woman of the extended royal family who also carried the trait. And it could even be that Tut did not have the eye shape himself, if his mother was a woman other than Nefertiti who did not have it or if the trait was passed only from mothers to daughters. In either case, Tut could be shown with it simply as an artistic continuance of the characteristic. If the sculptor Tuthmosis were responsible for recording and then re-creating this eye shape, perhaps he extended its use from those who actually had it to--as an artistic convention--a "royal marker" to distinguish images of the king and a few select nobles. For example, this eye shape is also seen on a representation of King Amenhotep III, Akhenaten's father, seated in a relaxed pose with his wife Queen Tiy on a stela found at Amarna, and now in the British Museum. Amenhotep III was Nefertiti's father-in-law, but this stela was probably carved after his death, so the eye shape does not predate its appearance on Nefertiti. It is also used in the 19th Dynasty, such as in depictions of the pharaoh Seti I at Abydos and of Nefertari, queen of Rameses II, who died around 1254 B.C. And this brings us back to KV63, with its upper-class coffins. Like the yellow faces meant to represent gilding, did the eye shape seek to portray a "royal marker" derived from Nefertiti's own eyes? And this brings us back to KV63, with its upper-class coffins. Like the yellow faces meant to represent gilding, did the eye shape seek to portray a "royal marker" derived from Nefertiti's own eyes? Earl L. Ertman is a professor emeritus at the University of Akron. An authority on art of the Amarna period, he is a member of the KV63 expedition. For news of the 2008 season at the tomb, see www.kv-63.com. The excavation is part of the Amenmesse Project, a mission of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. © 2008 by the Archaeological Institute of Americawww.archaeology.org/0803/etc/nefertiti.html ******************************************************************************* What does "East Asian" mean and what is an "East Asian" appearance? Chinese? Japanese? Jewish? What? Guess I'm missing the point of this article!

Oh oh - no no!

I don't like this, I don't like this at all. This could be the beginning of the slippery slope - the start of "political correctness." If the famous and fabulous bust of Nefertiti goes back to Egypt, you KNOW it will be the target of fascist Islamic radicals who would like nothing better than to destroy what they consider to be a "pagan" symbol of grace, beauty, dignity and sovereignty of the ancient Egyptian empire, which was the ANTIPATHY of all things Islamic. That Nefertiti is female makes her all the more a target, because Islamic radicals FEAR all things female, and HATE females above all other things. Bust of Queen Nefertiti may return to Cairo November 19 2007 at 02:02AM Cairo - Germany is willing to consider whether an ancient Egyptian statue at the centre of a row between the two countries can be returned to Cairo for display, Egypt's antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said on Sunday. Berlin has proposed to set up a joint committee with Cairo to examine whether the controversial bust of Queen Nefertiti currently housed in Berlin's Altes Museum can safely make the trip to Egypt for display within two years, he said." The letter that we received from Berlin says that the statue is very fragile," and that a joint Egyptian-German committee should decide if it can travel in the next two years, Hawass said. "The statue, in my opinion, is in good condition and should travel to Egypt within two years," Hawass said during a ceremony to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the German archaeological institute in Egypt. Cairo and Berlin have frequently clashed over the 3 400-year-old limestone bust, which was unearthed by German archaeologists on the banks of the Nile and taken to Germany under a 1913 agreement. Nefertiti, renowned as one of history's great beauties, was the wife of Pharaoh Akhenaton, remembered for having converted his kingdom to monotheism with the worship of one sun god, Aton. Hawass, the director of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, threatened earlier this year to ban future exhibitions of its ancient artifacts in Germany if Berlin refused to return the statue.Herman Panzinger, head of the German archaeological insitute, meanwhile told reporters that research was now under way in Berlin to determine "if one can transport Nefertiti or not". "When they have this result, they will discuss this with the Egyptians," he said. Hawass wants to display Nefertiti at the opening of the Akhenaton Museum in Minya, Upper Egypt. - Sapa-AFP