Overview
For over a decade, Nefertiti, wife of the heretic king Akhenaten, was the most influential woman in the Bronze Age world: a beautiful queen blessed by the sun god, adored by her family, and worshipped by her people.
Her image and her name were celebrated throughout Egypt and her future seemed golden. Suddenly Nefertiti disappeared from the royal family, vanishing so completely that it was as if she had never been. No record survives to detail her death, no monument serves to mourn her passing, and to this day her end remains an enigma—her body has never been found. Fully revising her classic biography of Egypt’s sun queen, historian Joyce Tyldesley draws on a wealth of scholarly and archeological evidence to investigate the truth behind the life, times, and mysterious disappearance of the legendary Nefertiti.
Synopsis
In the tradition of her intriguing Hatchepsut, Joyce Tyldesley rescues another female ruler from the shadows of history c. 1350 b.c.: Queen Nefertiti (literally "a beautiful woman has come"). We know her from the exquisite painted bust in the Berlin Museum, discovered in 1912, which has made her ancient Egypt's most recognizable queen and a symbol of her country's history. Until now, however, she has remained largely unknown and unrecognized for her contributions to Egyptian society. Wife of Akhenaten, the monotheistic pharaoh, adored by her family, blessed by the sun god, and worshiped by her people, Nefertiti suddenly and completely vanished from the record. Was she banished by her husband or raised to rule as his equal? Did she reign, under another name, in her own right? Could she have been the áminence grise behind the young Tutankhamen, her son-in-law? Tyldesley synergizes archeological, textual, and artistic evidence in a detailed discussion of Nefertiti's life and times at the ephemeral and heretical Amarna court. Nefertiti is a radical re-creation of the woman who was the most influential in the Bronze Age world.
Publishers Weekly
If biographers choose their subjects based on interest, then Nefertiti, beloved queen of the heretic pharaoh, Akhenaten, is certainly a worthy one. But she's also scholar Tyldesley's (Hatchepsut, etc.) most elusive subject yet, since, as Tyldesley admits, there are only "meagre shreds of evidence" that can support a variety of interpretations about the sun queen. Drawing on a "random assortment" of archeological remains, a few historical documents and much religious and mortuary art and architecture, she presents an engaging portrait of what Egyptian life was like during Akhenaten's reign, as well as the time just before and after. But because nothing is known about Nefertiti's parentage (no one claimed to be related to her) or her exact role as queen, and no verifiable conclusion can be reached about her fate, the information here is closer to pure context or even a biography of Akhenaten himself. Even the artists of the 18th Dynasty weren't concerned with exact representation, making Tyldesley's job even harder. Ever since the Germans first put her now famous bust on display in Berlin in 1924, Nefertiti has become a symbol of the Egyptian world and of beauty itself. Unfortunately, due to the lack of other reliable records, this account of her life is mostly speculation, not established truth. (Mar.)