The exhibition “Queen Nefertiti and the Royal Women: Images of Beauty from Ancient Egypt,” to which this book serves as introduction and guide, came about through a fortunate coincidence involving two major collections of ancient Egyptian art. In 1995, a generous gift from Judith and Russell Carson enabled the Metropolitan Museum to undertake a much-needed gallery reconstruction and a totally new installation of the Museum’s collection of art from the Amarna and the post-Amarna Periods, that is, the reign of the pharaoh Amenhotep IV/ Akhenaten (ca. 1353-1336 b. c.) and the generation after him (ca. 1336-1295 b. c.). At virtually the same time, in May 1995, the Agyptisches Museum in Berlin opened the first comprehensive display since 1939 of that museum’s outstanding collection of Amarna art. This presentation was now possible because the reunification of Germany had brought together the two parts of the Berlin Egyptian art collection that World War II had divided into eastern and western sections. For the first time since the groundbreaking exhibition arranged in 1973 by Bernard V. Bothmer at The Brooklyn Museum, major works from Amarna could be seen together, with special emphasis on the finds from the studios of the sculptor Thutmose, which had been excavated by German archaeologists in 1912.
While studying our own collection, Dorothea Arnold, Lila Acheson Wallace curator in charge of the Museum’s Department of Egyptian Art, had come to realize the importance of female images among the extant works of Amarna art. This impression was strengthened during her visit to the new display in Berlin whose centerpiece is the famous painted bust of Queen Nefertiti. But the Nefertiti icon does not by any means stand alone. The Metropolitan head of Queen Tiye in red quartzite (here, figs. 42, 44) finds an exquisite counterpart in Berlin’s wooden head of the queen from Medinet el-Ghurab (figs. 23, 26), and the discourse on female beauty intriguingly opened by the artist of the Metropolitan’s yellow jasper fragment (figs. 27, 29) is carried on and expanded in the Berlin images of Queen Nefertiti (figs. 31, 65-69, 71, 72, 74) and her daughters (figs. 46-53). To unite—and in a way reunite—in an exhibition some of these remarkable sculptures under the common theme of the royal female image in Amarna art was an exciting possibility; and the thought that such an exhibition might accompany the opening of our own new Amarna display was irresistible. Indeed, both the new installation and the exhibition were initiated by Dorothea Arnold, to whom we are also indebted for this catalogue. Through the generosity of the Director of the Agyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Berlin, Professor Dietrich Wildung, the largest lender, and the cooperation of the General Director of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Professor Wolf-Dieter Dube, as well as the other lenders mentioned below, the idea materialized in the present exhibition. We are most grateful as well to Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman, whose financial support allowed us to proceed.
No major statement about ancient Egyptian art can be made, of course, without including at least some works from the rich collections of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. The Cairo museum’s General Director, Dr. Mohamed Saleh, was most cooperative and generous in allowing us to photograph and study the relevant works under his care. A number of crucial sculptures, above all the quartzite head of Nefertiti from Memphis (figs. 31, 65), the heads of princesses (figs. 50-53), an early head of Nefertiti (fig. 2), and two important sculptors’ relief models (figs. 62, 108) could thus be incorporated into the enterprise. The Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt and its Secretary General, Professor Abdel Halim Nur el-Din, also lent significant support, and I want to thank them most sincerely for their cooperation.
From elsewhere, other sculptures could be included, such as the magnificent torso and the princess’s bust from the Musee du Louvre. Paris (figs. 21, 22,117-119) and works in the Petrie Museum, London; the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen; The Brooklyn Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the University Museum, Philadelphia;
And the Regio Museo Archeologico, Florence, thanks to the kind collaboration of these institutions.
The pharaoh who ascended the throne of Egypt in about 1353 B. c. as Amenhotep IV and later changed his name to Akhenaten was forgotten soon after his death, his memory lost even to later historians in Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Only in the middle of the last century was Akhenaten rediscovered by travelers and Egyptologists who visited—and later excavated—the ruins of his city at present-day Tell el-Amarna, between el-Minya and Asyut in Middle Egypt. From the ruins at Amarna, from inscriptions, reliefs, paintings, and sculptures the image of a remarkable personality has been resurrected. Founder of the world’s oldest known monotheistic religion, Akhenaten propagated the belief in a single deity—the Aten, sun disk—whose ultimate manifestation was light itself Its emphasis on the visible and tangible reality of all things, the here and now in life, had a deep and far-reaching impact on the culture and art of Egypt. Narrative reliefs and paintings included naturalistic details and lively gestures that replaced the often static representations of earlier periods. Sculptures in the round rendered the physical appearance of the king and members of his family and court in a personalized manner of unprecedented subtlety and refinement. Significantly, not only the king and male officials but to a large extent also the queen, queen mother, and other female members of the royal family and court were portrayed in this way. Such is the immediacy of these images that one comes away from contemplating them with the impression of knowing intimately a group of remarkable women who lived more than three thousand years ago, and of discovering an approach to art of a refinement, expressiveness, and originality of absolutely the highest order.
World History
