365. Ancient Egypt: Who Was Nefertiti? (Ep 4)

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28:20Anita:Welcome back. So Aidan, you were talking us through this importance of Nefertiti and her depictions, that most famous one that we were talking about right at the top of this podcast, the bust of Nefertiti that is now in Berlin or has always been in Berlin. They won't give it back everyone wants it back they won't give it back there is um well first of all we should describe it just um give us an idea and paint us a picture aiden of what it is because i have questions okay well it is the bust of a woman quite very unusual for in egyptian art it simply is a standalone bust and probably was intended to be a masterpiece for sculptors to copy from They also found in the same place, albeit totally shattered, a parallel bust of Akhenaten.

29:08So it looks as though these two were set up at the end of the sculptor's workshop. And this was, OK, if you want to double check what he looks like or what she looks like, this is what you're using. It's made of limestone, but covered with a layer of plaster, which has allowed the features to be modelled in an exquisite kind of manner. she's wearing a tall blue flat-topped crown which is unique to Nefertiti no other queen ever uses this it has inlaid eyes but only one of those eyes is present the other one seems never to have been fitted they certainly they looked around on the floor for it hadn't fallen out and the skin is painted a distinctive pinkish hue which although very unusual Egyptian art is by no means unique.

30:02Anita:There is though a whopping great controversy over this because wasn't there a CT scan done of the bust? Now this is how I know the story. You tell me what you know to be true. A CT scan was done many years ago and it discovered that the actual core, the thing that was in the limestone, looked very different to the stucco outside. The stucco outside was that beautiful chiselled face that pop stars try to emulate and is on every tea towel that you buy if you're into Egyptology. The one underneath, though, has a slightly more sagging face, a bump on the nose. It is the face of a woman, a normal woman, not a perfect woman.

30:40Anita:So to me, this feels like a 3 ,000-year-old Photoshop could have been done at that time. I mean, is that a reasonable thing to suggest? Yeah. I think the problem is it's unclear quite whether that lower level was ever intended to be a definitive outer level, if you know what I mean. And that is simply what was the initial carving which then the plaster is then added on round it. The very fact that it's a very similar kind of setup with the parallel Akhenaten one suggests that this was intended that way and that it was never intended to be a naked limestone sculpture. I'm not an artist but I suspect that if you're going to do something like that you need to at least have the basic bone structure if you like in stone underneath to then be able to veer and haul on the plaster on the outside.

31:29Anita:I guarantee you we've got sculptors who listen to this, so do get in touch. Because the argument is that she was a normal woman in the sculpture and then this outward appearance of utter perfection is placed on top. Because faces don't look that pretty in real life, they just don't. and I know that there has been a there's been a request since I think it's the latest 2016 where there was a freedom of information request saying can we do a CT scan could we please have it and you know for studying and I think the museum said no because of merch because if you do put out this other image all our merch is going to be compromised.

32:10I've heard that story How true it actually is, I'm not 100 % sure. And also the wildcats of scanning being done in the museum gallery is physically impossible. It was admitted later on, the whole thing was a scam. So there's a whole lot of these stories around about the head, which one can't necessarily verify. Aidan, I'm fascinated by this idea that Egyptians could do ultra-realistic, could do what we recognise as sort of, you know, a photographic portrait of someone that actually looks completely like the person, but chose not to do it in the normal style of art, and particularly chose not to do it in what you call the revolutionary style of Akhnartan.

32:51But they could do it if they wanted it just to have a model for, sort of almost like a Polaroid to have in the studio. Yeah, and also actually it's not actually unique amongst them. There is an amazing unfinished quartzite head of Nefertiti, which is in Cairo, which was found by a British expedition about 20 years after the Berlin bust, which for me is the same face. And in some ways is even more gorgeous because it was going to be one with inlaid eyes, but they never got round to doing that. So you've just simply got the quartzite carved face with almost black eyeliner almost marking where they're going to be removing the stone from it.

33:31So I think that the Nefertiti one is particularly immediate because of its colouring, but there are also lots of other ones which have been produced which are perhaps less immediate because of the lack of colouring. What we think is a portrait, they look like portraits, but we can't be 100 % sure they are. They may simply be what people really wanted to look like. So therefore, she may not have been quite as beautiful as that, but this has been tweaked a little bit. So it looks amazingly naturalistic compared with a lot of Egyptian art, but it may still be a question of this is how she wanted to look to the public.

34:18I bet she did. Yes.

34:20Anita:Wouldn't we all? I mean, wouldn't, seriously. I would say that although everybody raves about the Berlin head, this Cairo one is my favourite, quite honestly. I've got it in front of me in your book. And again, that quartzite is this extraordinary, extraordinary. The cheekbones are even sharper. So why don't you show it to the camera for those who are watching on YouTube? Because they'll appreciate it. I have it here. Here we go. This is the one you're talking about? That's her, yes. Yeah, it's very beautiful. Every time I go to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, I must sort of go and sort of gaze into her, well, non-eyes, because I think she is utterly gorgeous.

34:57Anita:Into the slightly spooky spaces where I was aware. But it does show what the sculpts of this period can do. And also, we were talking about distortion. What's interesting at the beginning of the reign, when they first introduced the revolutionary style, it's very much in your face. And people are made to look ugly. Even Nefertiti is made to look ugly in those early ones. But then as we may move through the reign, they become more naturalistic. There's still the distortions of the body forms, but they're made more realistic. And I think I said earlier on that I thought there was a shock value. I tend to regard the early versions of the revolutionary style almost as the punk rock era of the art.

35:39Because if you think about punk and, well, those of us who were around at the time, how the whole idea was it was in your face. It wasn't purely about the music. It was almost about saying, hey, we're starting from scratch here. Then that moves on to new wave. So what I would see is that the early representations, some of these… I'm very impressed, Aidan, by your grasp of 1970s musical trends. One of my great regrets was not going to see the Sex Pistols when they played Slough College when I was at school. I saw the clash. Would you have to concentrate? In Rome, I was. Hello. Excuse me. But anyway, what I'm saying is that often with any kind of revolution, there is the, in your face, beginning of a revolution, but then that fairly rapidly becomes more softens to some degree and I think that's what happens with the art of this period.

36:33The first stuff is really you're in your face but by the time you move a decade on which is probably when the Nefertiti heads are being carved and the quartzite one is unfinished so it's probably right towards the end of the reign is that they've reconciled beauty with revolution and I think that's what we should see with those Nefertiti heads.

36:53Anita:I'm with you. You know, it's for a mass audience, if you like. It's a bit niche and now it's got public appeal. That's about it, yes. But what I don't get, and this is like the central mystery of your book, in fact, is you have this face that is everywhere, this face that is reproduced and reproduced and reproduced and suddenly Nefertiti disappears. the lady vanishes for around 12 years of Akhenaten's reign. She vanishes from the record as queen. Now, what's occurring here? Well, basically, for a long time, it was thought that she disappeared after about year 12. Then we found only a few years ago, and one of these things about Egyptian history is...

37:35A piece of graffiti. A graffito, yeah, which actually mentions her in year 16, because previously the last sighting, if you like, had been sometime after year 12. We've got a Year 12 representation of her, and then we've also got a representation at the funeral of her daughter, Meketartan, which, as Meketartan's also in this Year 12 representation, must be slightly after that. So we had that, and there was all kinds of ideas of what might have happened to her. In your earlier books, you give her a different fate. Now we've got a whole different story because of this one bit of graffiti. Yeah, and so we know that she's still around as queen in year 16 as a result of this graffito.

38:14And that's an important thing to recognise about Egyptian history, that one discovery can literally change history. That we have a version, then suddenly we have to revise it. For example, this discovery in 2012 meant that the book I wrote in 2009, when I did a new edition a couple of years later, I had to change 75 % of the pages. There was a ripple effect of one discovery, which is a really quite... That's an important thing to recognise, that Egyptian history can change overnight because so much of it is reconstructing from a tiny amount of evidence. And sometimes that new bit of evidence comes in and suddenly changes, it literally changes history overnight.

38:57So anyway, so he knew she's around at that point. But the most important recognition which is still not accepted by 100 % of Egyptologists we're an argumentative bunch and we never agree on anything but the vast majority are now agreed that the point was that Nefetes didn't disappear whatever date that last attestation as a queen is but she then transmogrifies into a female pharaoh and part of this was also a recognition that this female pharaoh which really was female not a male which was one of the other which was another issue around all of this so over here about 20 odd years this recognition that Nefertiti did actually continue on and continued on as a fully fledged pharaoh is something which has sort of changed history in the last 20 odd years quite why she is then promoted to female pharaoh is another matter for debate.

39:57It looks like it happens. Does this happen before her husband dies or after? A few months before. So one wonders whether it is that he is ill, expecting to be assassinated, or has some other premonition of death, that he decides he wants to make sure that there is an adult to carry on the revolution. Because at this point, he's got his heir, the future Tutankhamun, is only a child. And I think that Nacognauton's concern was that as death was staring him in the face, whether due to disease or whatever, his concern was that if he died and he had just a young son, that whoever was the regent might well then start to dismantle everything.

40:44So he thinks, aha, if I make my wife my co-ruler, who can then carry on as pharaoh after my death, and probably acting then as co-ruler with my son, hey, it'll all be fine. But therefore, there's an adult continuing revolution. Unfortunately for Akhenaten, we know that within three years, Nefertiti, now known as Nefer-Neferu-Aten, which is always part of a long name, but is now shortened as king, is dismantling his revolution. Amun is back and we're moving on. Now, Aidan, one of the other big developments in recent times has obviously been DNA. And people are testing mummies and finding relationships and so on.

41:30And you suggest that we might actually have Nefertiti's mummy. The mummy previously known, rather like Prince as the artist previously known, this is the mummy previously known as the Younger Lady KV35.

41:44Anita:It's catchy. Yeah. Okay. What it is here is that a number of anonymous mummies were found in the tomb of Amenhotep II, which seems to have been used as a store place for displaced mummies. Dumping rat. In 2010, the results of a whole series of DNA tests on mummies belonging to the Amarna period or suspected to belong were published. And the younger woman was proclaimed to be the mother of Tutankhamun. Also it was proclaimed in the publication of this That Tudankhamun was the offspring of a brother-sister marriage And that the DNA of the father Was that represented by a mummy Which some have been argued Some Smenkharé There's probably a whole podcast purely on the wrangling around this It's like an episode of dynasty Yeah Goodness me, what was going on here?

42:44To keep it very simple, the issue is that it was proclaimed that there was a brother-sister marriage and it was argued that Akhenaten and a sister were married and produced to Danhamu. There's a problem with that in that we have no sister of Akhenaten who is a potential candidate. And the amount of material we've got from Amarna, you'd expect her to be there. But if you're right, she was a cousin, would that be good enough? Now, that's the thing is that the publication in 2010 only gave preferred interpretations of the DNA, not the full range of them. And it was only subsequently that a French colleague got a tame DNA specialist to look at the results again.

43:28And the same genetic signature is produced by three generations of first cousin marriages, as would be produced by a brother-sister marriage. So for clarity's sake, it's now possible to believe that the younger lady, KV35, is Nefertiti, that she's the cousin of At-Nartan. She's not a sister marriage at all. Exactly. But that also would tie in with her father being a brother of Queen T, etc. So it works relatively well. It all ties up very nicely. Potentially, anyway. But again, this is all work. I have to emphasize with everything I talk about ancient age, this is a working hypothesis. I'm not saying this is the fact, but for me, the data suggests that this is probably the best working hypothesis we've got at the moment.

44:13Anita:Now, I want to bring us to the fact that she sits now in Berlin, in a Berlin museum, and this connection with Germany is completely fascinating as well, I think. Ludwig Brochard, the archaeologist, diplomat, nationalist, whatever you want to call him, who sort of first got his hands on the bust. He kind of walked into a workshop that seemed as if the sculptor just ran off into the night and left everything. Including his name. Whatever the equivalent of ancient sketchbooks are, but a lot of material in a workshop that was just left like that. The thing is, the reason why it was all left was that after Akhenaten's death, Amarna is abandoned fairly rapidly.

45:00Probably about three years after that, the royal family give up living there and return to their old palaces. And at that point, everything just shut up and left. Because of course, by this time, Akhenaten's dead. Nefertiti might be dead as well. So there's no actual point in taking this stuff with you. so they effectively just sort of lock the door and just leave it and it all then just decays over the next next few decades apparently it was reckoned that the bus had been on a wooden shelf which had then finally decayed a decade or so later on and it had fallen to the floor luckily by that time sand had blown into the workshop to break the fall whereas the corresponding Akhenaten one clearly didn't fall on a pile of sand and ends up shattering.

45:52You can actually still see it in Berlin. It looks fairly horrible because they've just had to try and stick it back together again with a few of the bits completely pulverised. There was no need for it anymore. It had been the master model for sculptors. Nobody was producing sculptors of Nefertiti anymore, so just leave it behind.

46:12Anita:Interesting. And tell us about the German man who discovers it because there's a little bit of slight of handery that goes on here with labelling it so that it does end up in a German collection rather than in Egypt? At that period, the basic rules were that the excavator got half their finds, the Egyptian government got the other half of the finds, except for exceptional pieces whereby Egypt had the first claim on those. And what would happen at the end of the season is that one of the Egyptian antiquities service inspectors would come and look at what had been found and would sign off yes or no, whether various things should stay or go.

46:52The story is that on the actual list that was given to the inspector, the Neftiti bust was listed as being made of plaster rather than being a sculpture, because there was a whole load of other plaster pieces. The other thing is that it's been suggested that he wasn't given a very good look at the stuff. Things were already in their packing cases, So he was having to peer into these things. He pulled a fast one.

47:19Anita:Totally pulled a fast one. Come off, Aidan. Come on. I think what basically happened was that, yes, I think he did pull a fast one. I know you'd fall out with a German museum, Aidan, but say it straight. No, but I think what Borchardt was doing was he was making sure that it was as difficult as possible for Lefebvre, who was the inspector, to look at the stuff. And also was hoping that Lefebvre wouldn't ask for stuff to be taken out of the crates. I think that was the point. It wasn't a complete... Maybe it's a French-German thing. Well, it's a German-German thing because it ends up the French don't get anywhere close to it, but it becomes this major thing for Germany.

47:55But I think what it was done was that it was made as difficult as possible for Lefebvre to inspect these things in detail, and he was keeping his fingers crossed that at no point would Lefebvre say, no, can I really get that out, please? I want to have a close look at it. Presumably, it was late in the day. Lefebvre wanted to go home, and therefore he signed it off. Have a nice pastis in the evening. Put his legs up. There is also a wonder whether or not actually there was a nice dinner waiting once he'd done that. So let's get the paperwork done and we can go and sit down and have a...

48:26Anita:You want to give him the benefit of that? That's fine. That's fine if you want to. I think it was skullduggery. But as a result of this, let's just... We haven't got much time left. I definitely want to crowbar this story because I find it so delicious. The bus arrives in Berlin in 1913. it doesn't get publicly exhibited for a decade. But the crowds go wild when the German press go nuts. They say the most beautiful woman in the world has arrived in Berlin and her face is everywhere. You know, like I'm saying, it's sort of, you know, on cigarette packets, on posters, on playing cards, everywhere.

48:57Anita:Do you know, well, of course you know, Aidan, but I'm telling Willie, do you know Hitler comes into this story? Hitler. I don't know Hitler. Can I tell you this Hitler story? Because I like it very, very much. So by 1929, when Germany was looking for friends and they were talking to the Egyptians, the Egyptians desperately wanted to get the bust back because they knew it was skullduggery what took it away from them. And so they've negotiated this. It's a successful negotiation. And right at the last minute, Hitler personally becomes involved because he sees the bust. And there is a quote attributed to him.

49:32Anita:he sends a message to Cairo saying, I am one of the big fans of Queen Nefertiti. She brings joy to my heart. He then said he intended to build a new Egyptian museum in Berlin in which his phrase, this wonder Nefertiti will be enthroned. The most beautiful face of the ancient world claimed personally by Hitler. Now there we are. So this, you know, this relationship was important to Germany and there have been so many attempts by the Egyptians to get her back which have all been rebuffed I mean she's not going anywhere is she I mean they're not going to let go the issue is that whether or not there was skullduggery involved the relevant form was signed off by an appropriate official so that so they can take a very very legalistic view of it and the thing was interesting the Germans would never do that never but actually when it was Because when the plan had been to return, it was actually negotiated by Hermann Goring.

50:31He was the one who sent it back.

50:34Anita:Goring was furious because he had to go back on his word. And Hitler just sort of trampled all over this delicate diplomacy that he'd just done with Egypt. The delicacy of it was it was being given to the Egyptian king for his birthday or for his anniversary of accession. So they weren't admitting that it shouldn't have gone. on. They were taking the view it had been legally exported to Germany, but now Germany was giving back, giving it to the king of Egypt as a present. So there were some important sort of subtleties involved in how the diplomacy was being done. Well, look, it's been a real ride talking about this, Aidan.

51:11Anita:We're so grateful to you. So the next time on Empire, we are going to be talking about the boy king Tutankhamun. Who was he really? How did he rule? How did he die? And we're going to have a bonus on the discovery of the tomb because all of that is very Raiders of the Lost Ark kind of stuff. It's very, very interesting. Full of mystery, full of drama, just like this one was. We look forward to seeing you then. Till we meet again, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnon. And goodbye from me, William Derumpel. And goodbye from me.