Often dubbed the Mona Lisa of the ancient world, the bust of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti is as immediately recognisable as the pyramids and the Rosetta Stone. Yet almost everything about this sculpture is mysterious at best, or bitterly controversial at worst, from the context of its creation to questions surrounding its acquisition by the Berlin Museum. The cultural and political capital of ancient culture is sharply in our awareness — think of the Elgin marbles or Palmyra — so writing a biography of Nefertiti’s bust requires the author to navigate hotly competing opinions.
Nefertiti was queen and consort to Akhenaten, a pharaoh who held power between about 1352 and 1336 BC; Egypt- ologists call this the ‘Amarna period’ after the new city he founded at Tell el-Amarna. By his fifth year, Akhenaten had promulgated a new religion focused around light. His god, called Aten, was depicted as a sun disc offering life to the king, Nefertiti, their daughters, and through them, to the world.
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