Nefertiti tomb found

[nemesis]

I think you will like this brian http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2978710.stm

 

[Brian G Turner]

Yes! Absolutely superb news. Saw this fleetingly on the cover of the Yorkshire Post in the shops yesterday, but forgot to look up their website.

The whole Nefertiti thing has been an interesting mystery for some time, and even still, this article still shows there's a way to go before there's any conclusive proof as to whether it really is Nefertiti's mummy or not.

For those who don;t know who Nefertiti was - she just happened to be the primary wife of Amenotep IV - more famously known as Akenaten (US = Akhenaton). This was a pharoah who dismissed the polytheism of thousands of years of Egytian mythology and try to instill Monotheism - the worship of a single divnity, upon the Egyptians.

Of course it was only partly successful - temporarily as well. As soon as he died - through whatever means - his record was chipped out from the momuments of Egypt to deny him any existence. But his capital city - El Amarna - which was abandoned not long after his death - has provided a massive background to this enigmatic Egyptian Pharaoh.

In theological terms it's expected that Akhenaten's policies would have had an important effect on the peripheral states, and it has long been conjectured that the Jews were very influenced by this Egyptian teaching.

Unfortunately, we're not quite sure in what Biblical period this may have been. It could have been during the reign of Moses, or even in the reign of Solomon. It entirely depends upon the path of Biblical Arhcaeology being followed.

I actually sympathise greatly with David Rohl's chronology, not least because he does illustraet some silly errors in the traditional Egyptian chronology, which apparently has changed very little over the past couple of years.

There's a tentative connection through one of the Psalms - you can get more information here:

Akhenaten and the Hymn to the Aten

Oh - and one last thing - as a superb historical twist, the memory of Ancient History's greatest Heretic was especially preserved through the finding of the tomb of his first son - which happens to have been the most famously complete Pharonic tomb ever excavated. Yup, you guessed it - Akhenaten was the dad of Tutankamun.

 

[scifimoth]

I am actually planning on watching something on Discovery tonight that is about Nefertiti....I let you know how it was tomorrow.

 

[dwndrgn]

Shucks I missed that show, I wanted to see it - I am sure they will repeat it at sometime. I'll have to check out their website to see.

I have always been fascinated by Egyptian history, even though for some reason the dates and facts won't stick in my head. Maybe I've read too many of Elizabeth Peters' novels.

 

[scifimoth]

It was interesting...they threw out some new theories on how she lived her life and how she died. They did a facial recreation of the mummy in question. She was indeed a lovely woman (if they are right and they truely found her). They do not say that it is definetly her of course...but they do give some convincing evidence why it could be.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Actually, there's still a lot of debate about the mummy issue.

Here's a link to a site that deals with the concerns in more depth:

http://www.mummytombs.com/news/2003/6.egypt.nefertiti.duel.htm

And here's a quote from another site, detailing objection from the Egyptian authorities:

For his part, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Zahi Hawass totally refutes the idea, and describes it as "pure fiction". [He said that the] theory was not based on facts or solid evidence, "only on facial resemblance between the mummy and Nefertiti's bust, and on artistic representations of the Amarna period in which the queen lived".

Hawass asserted, moreover, that the physical resemblance is not significant, "because all the statues of the Amarna era have the same characteristics. Amarna art was idealistic and not realistic," he said, and pointed out that in the Egyptian Museum, there were five of six mummies with the same characteristics. Mamdouh El-Damati, director of the Egyptian Museum, mentioned that this theory was not new, this being the second time that a claim to have discovered Nefertiti's mummy within this group of mummies had been made.

Elaborating on his scepticism about the mummy being that of Nefertiti, Hawass told the Weekly that X-ray analysis carried out previously by himself and Egyptologist Kent Weeks indicated that it was the body of a 16-year-old girl, whereas Nefertiti is thought to have died in her 30s. He explained that, "Nefertiti was involved in the assassination of her husband's successor, Smenkhare, and was later in conflict with King Horemhab who overthrew the monotheistic cult of his predecessor and erased all traces of it. Horemhab would never have allowed Queen Nefertari to be buried in the Valley of Kings," he concluded.

Surprisingly, I missed a big bust-up in June over the Nerfititi bust in the Berlin museum, which apparently really offended the Eygptians:

Egypt angered at artists' use of Nefertiti bust
Jeevan Vasagar in Berlin
Thursday June 12, 2003
The Guardian

For more than eight decades, the serenely beautiful likeness of Queen Nefertiti's head has been the most celebrated exhibit in Berlin's Egyptian Museum, attracting thousands of visitors and resisting all attempts at repatriation.

But a conceptual artwork involving the 3,300-year-old limestone bust and the body of a scantily clad woman has provoked outrage in the queen's homeland and the accusation that Nefertiti is no longer safe in Germany.

The artwork is the brainchild of a Hungarian duo called Little Warsaw, and involved lowering the head of Nefertiti on to the headless bronze statue of a woman wearing a tight-fitting transparent robe.

A documentary of the encounter, together with the headless statue, will be the official Hungarian contribution to the Venice Biennale, which opens this weekend.

The Berlin museum's director, Dieter Wildung, defended it as "a homage to Nefertiti by means of contemporary art", but in Cairo the artwork is regarded as a calculated insult to Egypt's heritage and Islamic morals. "We don't agree with this, that the head of Queen Nefertiti should be subjected to an experiment by unknown artists, and could possibly be put in danger," Mohamed al-Orabi, the Egyptian envoy to Berlin, said yesterday.

"In Egypt, people are very upset. The head is a national treasure."

In Cairo, where censors remove pictures of naked bodies from imported foreign publications, there have been scandalised headlines about "Queen Nefertiti naked in a Berlin museum", while there have been jokes in the German press about "prudish Egypt".

But this is not just a clash over views of art or the representation of the female form, but over the attitude towards Nefertiti's bust itself. In Berlin, the queen is affectionately dubbed "Nofi" and her face features on postcards of the city, but in Egypt she is venerated.

The Egyptian culture minister, Faruq Hosni, has condemned the artists' actions as "unethical" and asked the foreign minister to make a formal protest.

The director of the Berlin museum yesterday described the row as a "misunderstanding" and insisted that Nefertiti was in safe hands.

"The bronze torso actually met the Berlin bust only for a short moment," Mr Wildung said in a statement.

"On May 26 [the torso] was united with the bust just for a few hours [in an] extraordinary moment of pure silence, without the public, exclusively under the eyes of the artists, the curator and the director of the Egyptian Museum."

The bust of Nefertiti was unearthed early last century by the German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt, who took it back to Germany, where it went on display in Berlin in 1922.

It was found during excavations at Amarna in Egypt, and is thought to have been made around 1350BC.

Egypt has frequently asked for the return of the bust but Germany cites a claim to the work based on a 1913 agreement that granted Nefertiti and a number of other priceless artefacts to their German discoverers.

And as to the actual bust itself - after a search, I'm afraid this is the only picture I can find:

 

[scifimoth]

As things are for now we will probably not know the truth...
I know that they did find x-ray evidence that suggested it might be a young girl...but at the same time they found other suggestions in the bones that she may also be older. Pinpointing age is one of the harder things to do...
Either way...anthropologists, archeologists and scientists in general thrive on arguing and proving each other wrong..LOL

 

[Brian G Turner]

Definitely true - especially as after I posted that I noticed Hawass claminig Nefertiti active after the death of Akhenaten - yet she disappears from the Amarna records around year 11-16 (sorry, I forget which exactly). The usual interpretation is that she had died. I have no idea where Hawass gets his intricate claims frmo about Smenkhare, who is barely a figure we can be sure of any details about. Then again, I've got a book on the murder of Tutankhamun downstairs that I still haven't read - I really ought to. Tutankhamun, of course, being the son of Akhanaten to another wife.

 

[scifimoth]

There are so many snarls and tangles in history....
It may be easier to follow a culture that has written records...but at the same time not everything that is written will be accurate and we have in many cases no way to follow up on some things we find...

 

[GnomeoftheWest]

She lived, she died. And so it goes.