#Queen_Nefertiti

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A limestone sunk relief depicting Queen Nefertiti, the Great Royal Wife of King Akhenaten, who reigned circa 1353-1336 BCE during the 18th Dynasty of the New Kingdom. This piece was recovered from the remains of the Great Temple of the Aten at Amarna. It may have been a sculptor's practice model: a pattern that guided the craftsmen carving the walls of the temple. Or it may have been a trial piece: a practice 'sketch' executed by an apprentice sculptor. This object (JE 59296) is now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, Egypt. Photo: Kenneth Garrett.

The relief shows Nefertiti wearing her distinctive tall flat-topped crown from which hang two uraei, "... a headdress which identifies her with Tefnut. This goddess and her twin Shu were the offspring of Atum and the first sexually differentiated pair in the Heliopolitan cosmogony. Shu was linked with Akhenaten, and Amenhotep III [,his father,] was considered an incarnation of Atum; thus husband, wife, and father-in-law (whether deceased or still living) formed a divine trio." ― Hawass, Zahi, Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, The National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C., USA, 2005.

"The elaborate crowns worn by the queens of Egypt were, during the New Kingdom, intended to convey a symbolic message to the observer. The ancient Egyptians consistently made use of symbols as a means of communicating abstract concepts; it is this that makes their art so difficult for modern observers to understand at any but the most basic of levels." ― Tyldesley, Joyce, Nefertiti: Egypt's Sun Queen, Revised Edition, Penguin Books, London, UK, 2005.

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