Ageless beauty, thy name is Nefertiti.
Thirty-four centuries dead, this fabled Queen of Egypt has come to us again–on view in the suiting splendor of the exhibition halls of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
And this time, she brings her relations: her husband, Amenophis IV, or Akhenaten, the Egyptian philosopher-king who founded the world’s first monotheistic religion; her mother-in-law, the powerful Queen Tiye; her rival, Akhenaten’s “secondary wife” and “minor queen” Kiya; and her princess daughters, one of whom became wife to King Tutankhaten–famous to modern times as “King Tut.”
The history of mankind resounds with the names of women–Salome, Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Joan of Arc, Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great.
Whatever the reason for their claim on civilization’s memory, their images lie in our minds vaguely. Helen’s face may have launched a thousand ships, but we’ve no clear image of it.
Not so Nefertiti, Queen of Egypt.
Scholars may consider Nefertiti only the wife of Akhenaten, but the rest of us know her as perhaps the most beautiful woman of all time. More to the point, our image of her is vivid and exact. Thanks to the gifted royal Egyptian sculptor Thutmose and his artisans, her singular face has survived through the centuries in wonderfully crafted sculpted image, charming anew.
Her name means: “The beautiful one is here.”
There are 54 works in this exhibition: “Queen Nefertiti and the Royal Women: Images of Beauty from Ancient Egypt.” They include statues and statuettes, fragments of sculpture from columns and monuments, bas relief and sections of inlay decor from royal furniture.
For its time, it was revolutionary art, not merely depictions of royalty and deity but ambitious and successful efforts to recreate the artist’s royal subjects as they actually were and actually lived.
A statue of Nefertiti–it of course seems remarkable to our own time that she appears in the nude–reveals not only her incredible beauty but the need for some time on an exercycle of antiquity. Her Majesty, it seems, had a bit of a pot belly.
It is in the nature of court artists to flatter
But as we might judge by the preceding detail, Thutmose was no such courtier. The written record tells us Nefertiti’s attractions were extraordinary. To embellish them would be to falsify them.
Reality abounds in these pieces. A torso of one of Nefertiti’s royal daughters shows her pregnant.
The carved head of one of the princesses, possibly the same lady of the torso, shows a distinct family resemblance–and considerable loveliness–but her beauty does not equal Nefertiti’s.
“These exquisite portraits representing a group of remarkable women who lived more than 3,000 years ago bear witness to Egyptian art from the Amarna Period,” said Metropolitan Director Philippe de Montebello. “The narrative reliefs feature naturalistic details, transitory gestures, and poses never attempted before, while sculptures in the round render the subject’s physical appearance in a personalized manner of unprecedented subtlety and refinement.”
Akhenaten ruled between 1353 and 1336 B.C. Breaking with the more primitive, multiple-deity and animal worshipping religious faiths of the past, he formulated and established a religion with but one deity–the god he called Aten. The name he took for himself translates from to “Effective for the Aten.”
This was a marked and revolutionary departure, for it rendered him and his family less gods–as they had been held–than servants of God and translators of the faith.
Like his father, the mighty Amenhotep III, Akhenaten lived and ruled surrounded by women–women of strength, power and presence who played important religious and political roles in his kingdom.
His mother, Queen Tiye, was particularly powerful and noted in a variety of historical records as being very wise. This shows in the portrait head of her in this exhibition. Hers is the face of an unquestioned ruler, who doubtless was intimidated by little. Yet she came to her marriage with Amenhotep a commoner, the daughter of a high-ranking military figure.
Secondary wife Kiya had a child by Akhenaten and he obviously harbored some affection for her. She enjoyed a position almost as high as Nefertiti’s–interestingly, no artist ever depicted the two together–and she is seen in some artworks as attending very high religious and state functions.
Kiya is reputed to have been the daughter of King Tutankhaten, who married one of Akhenaten’s daughters by Nefertiti, but there is no official record of this.
She had a mysterious end. In the last years of Akhenaten’s reign, she disappeared. Reliefs and other artistic depictions of Kiya were reworked into images of Nefertiti’s daughters. The majestic coffin that had been prepared for her was eventually used instead by a male member of the family.
Nefertiti’s eldest daughter Meretaten, briefly reigned over Egypt as the wife of Smenkhkare, a distant relative who became king after Akhenaten, but died shortly afterward.
The beautiful Princess Ankhesenpaaten married Tutankhaten, Smenkhkare’s brother, and became queen when Tutankhaten assumed the throne. The king abandoned the monotheism established by Akhenaten and went back to the old religion, changing his name to Tutankhamun and his wife’s to Ankhesenamun.
When he died, the royal widow asked the King of the Hittites to send her a prince to marry. Apparently he set out, but never arrived. She was compelled to marry an old court adviser, her grandmother Queen Tiye’s brother, who became King Ay.
Some believe that Nefertiti was Ay’s daughter. Archaeologists say that life in the Egypt of this time–at least for those of high station–was full of languorous and sensual pleasures, but she did not content herself with this. According to artifacts, she held high position. She was present with Akhenaten at all royal occasions and her coffin bore the same royal inscribed prayers for the afterlife as his. For the last three years, she was ruler of all of Egypt outside the royal capital Amarna, and was called “Lady of the Two Lands.”
It is not known exactly when Nefertiti died, but most think it was near or shortly after her husband’s death. A statuette of Nefertiti was found in the Royal Tomb at the city of Amarna, suggesting she was buried with the great kings.
The Nefertiti show, which closes Feb. 2, is to be found in the museum’s antiquity exhibition chambers to the left of the main lobby. To the right, near the famous Temple of Dendur, the Metropolitan has reopened its permanent installation “The Amarna Galleries,” featuring Egyptian art from 1336 to 1295 B.C., including representations of members of Akhenaten’s family.
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THE FACTS
`Queen Nefertiti and the Royal Women’
When: Through Feb.2
Where: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 5th Ave. New York
Admission: $8 adults, $4 students and senior citizens (suggested)
Call: 212-535-7710
