Nefertiti: biography of one of the most important queens of Egypt
She is mainly known for the famous bust of her that is kept in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin. Despite the fact that the sculpture is unfinished (it lacks the left eye), the one represented by her attracts attention due to her enigmatic beauty. Who is this woman? Who was Nefertiti? What role did she play in the religious revolution that her husband launched?
In this biography of Nefertiti you will find a summary of the life of this legendary queen, and we try to clarify the obscure points of her almost unknown existence.
Nefertiti: biography of a queen
The more Egyptologists insist on reconstructing the biography of this woman, the more questions arise. It seems that the mysterious Egyptian queen resists being discovered. It is not known when she was born, but neither is her provenance. Because, despite being the wife of one of the best-known pharaohs in the history of ancient Egypt, the fact is that everything points to the fact that Nefertiti was a foreigner.
Egyptian or foreign?
Various possibilities are being considered regarding her homeland of origin. Most experts agree that
it is most likely that she came from Mitanni, a powerful kingdom located very close to present-day Turkey. If this theory is true, Nefertiti would have been given, while she was still a girl, as a gift to the pharaoh, which could explain the Egyptian name she received, which means something like "the beautiful has arrived". According to some historians, Nefertiti would therefore be Taduhepa, a princess of Mitanni who lived during the reign of Akhenaten, although there are serious contradictions that question the veracity of this assumption.Whether it was Taduhepa or another Mitannian princess, the theory is sound considering not only the name, but also the diplomatic customs of the time. It was very common for the neighboring monarchs or allies of the pharaoh of Egypt to send their daughters to the harem real, with the aim of sealing alliances or, simply, expressing her sympathy and her good intentions. These girls (because, in most cases, they arrived pre-pubescent) could stay and live in the harem as a concubine or, if they were lucky, become one of the "official" wives of the Pharaoh. This seems to be the case with our protagonist.
However, other Egyptologists point to other theories. For example, the British Joan Fletcher, author of an interesting essay on the discovery of the supposed mummy of Nefertiti, assures that the queen had to be Egyptian by birth. Not only that; Fletcher argues that she, moreover, had to have belonged to a secondary branch of the royal family, since she would not otherwise have made it to Great Royal Wife by any means. Let us remember that the pharaoh of Egypt could have several wives, appropriately ranked according to rank, as well as hundreds of concubines.
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Harem rivalries
Although its origin is unknown, what is known with certainty is that Nefertiti married Akhenaten when she was about 10 or 11 years old.. From their union, we began to learn details of her existence. In fact, the Great Royal Wife begins to acquire a leading role, unusual until then among the pharaoh's women.
Until recently, the ascendancy that Nefertiti had over her husband was not discussed. However, recent discoveries have brought into focus a secondary character, apparently insignificant: Kiya, another of Akhenaten's wives, from whom Nefertiti supposedly would have been extremely jealous. And it is that some historians suggest that it was Kiya, and not Nefertiti, the true favorite of the pharaoh.
Of course, it is very risky to say so much without the necessary and sufficient evidence, but the truth is that Kiya carried quite significant titles, such as King's Favorite either much loved wife. It is more than likely, then, that Nefertiti was jealous of this annoying rival who, moreover, could give Pharaoh sons (Nefertiti had only had girls). In fact, the aforementioned Joan Fletcher goes beyond it and states in her book The riddle of Nefertiti that the queen could be behind the mysterious death of this secondary wife.
Actually, it is not known for sure if Kiya died during the reign of Akhenaten; simply, and as happens later with Nefertiti, her name disappears from the records, which could mean both a sudden death and a fall from grace due to unknown.
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Aten's revolution
On the death of Amenhotep III, her son ascends the throne as Amenhotep IV, Akhenaten's true name.. It was the period immediately before his political and religious revolution; a period of authentic splendor in the history of Egypt, characterized, among other issues, by the extraordinary power exercised by the priests of Amun.
Amun was one of the most important gods in the Egyptian pantheon. It was him dark lord, the mysterious creator of heaven and earth whose origin sank into the night of time. The center of his cult was the thriving city of Thebes, where a very powerful priestly caste lived, both economically and politically. Possibly to curtail the influence of these priests rather than for religious reasons, Amenhotep IV established a new and unique cult throughout the land of Egypt: the worship of the solar disk, the god Aton.
Aton was not an unknown divinity to the Egyptian people, but he was certainly not among the most important gods. And, above all, no god until then had enjoyed a monotheistic cult. Thus, the new pharaoh established an obvious parallelism between the only god, whom no one overshadowed, and the pharaoh. Pharaoh's power was absolute, and could not be disputed by anyone.. There would no longer be room for the political influence of the priests. Amenhotep himself (now already converted into Akhenaten, "the one who is loved by Aten") would be the main leader of the cults of the solar divinity. Him, and his beloved wife Nefertiti.
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A queen close to the people
The art of the period perfectly reflected these changes, and became the best propaganda vehicle for the pharaoh's new ideology. The traditional deities were replaced on family altars by statuettes of the royal family, to which the people devotedly worshiped. Akhenaten thus shortened the distance between himself and his people and thus made any intermediation impossible. The connection was established directly between the Egyptians and their king-god.
This propaganda required, of course, a new iconographic language to replace the majestic and distant effigies of previous monarchs. Akhenaten and Nefertiti are represented in a "humanized" way; artists purposefully distort their anatomies to make them appear more human and accessible. In the same way, the attitudes they take in these representations are very similar: the married couple lovingly hold hands, caress her daughters and play with them. The family element is very present in these representations, without forgetting the divine component: the entire family is shown worshiping the sun disk, which sends down its rays in the form of hands to bless them.
The most famous face of Egypt
But probably the best known representation of Queen Nefertiti is the one we cited in our introduction, discovered in the excavations that were carried out at the beginning of the 20th century in Amarna, in the remains of Akhet-atón, the new capital that Akhenaten ordered to be built in the middle of the desert. The temples and palaces had been practically destroyed, but numerous objects were found among the rubble that are an invaluable testimony of that troubled period.
Specifically, it was in one of the neighborhoods destined for the workers of the city where the discovery was made. More specifically, in the workshop of the sculptor Tutmose, where busts were found not only of Nefertiti, but also of her daughters. The naturalism that we discussed in the previous point is evident in these representations, although it is true that in the famous bust preserved in Berlin, the deformation of features that we do see in other representations of the queen is not appreciated, so we can deduce that this was her appearance real.
At the time the bust was made, Nefertiti must have been about 40 years old. Despite the obvious realism of her, the absolute perfection of her face suggests some kind of "retouching". The absence of the left eye draws attention; Did it come loose during the assaults on the city, or was she never there? This last version is the most probable, since the work has all the appearance of being a simple model, on which the other portraits of the queen would be based.
The pharaoh queen?
Unexpectedly, and after being present at all the demonstrations and documents, Nefertiti disappears from the records shortly after the completion of her bust. This is one of the greatest mysteries of Egyptology, which experts have not yet been able to decipher. Did the queen die? Did she fall out of favor and therefore her name was erased? These two theories are entirely plausible. However, there is a third, which is the most fascinating. Because this last hypothesis ventures the possibility that Nefertiti changed her name and became Smenkare... pharaoh of Egypt.
Indeed; just when the name of the queen disappears from the records, this young pharaoh appears who, in some representations, appears in an attitude very close to Akhenaten. And, although it could well be that, after the queen's death or fall from grace, the pharaoh sided with him, it could also be that this was none other than Nefertiti herself. In this case, it would turn out that the ambitious queen would have come to reign with her husband and would have taken from her, in this way, the attributes and appearance of a pharaoh, as happened years ago with queen Hatshepsut.
After the brief reign of Smenkare and the death of Akhenaten, the chaos that had caused the revolution attonian came to an end and the new monarch, the very young Tutankhamun, reestablished the ancient cult. Nothing would remain of Akhenaten's monotheistic religion, except for precious objects hidden under the dust and the ruins of what was his capital, Akhet-aten, "the horizon of Aten". As for Nefertiti, her ending is as cryptic as her beginning. There is still a long way to go to reconstruct the entire history of this fascinating woman, if it can be done one day.