AN ANCIENT BEAUTY

Southland Times, Issue 19458, 23 January 1925, Page 8

AN ANCIENT BEAUTY

BUST OF NEFRET-ITI. MYSTERY OF MISSING EYE. A woman whose amazing beauty enchants the eye and the mind, although she died in Egypt 3500 years ago, has recently been causing a sensation in the third Egyptian room of the British Museum. She is Queen Nefret-iti, wife of the Pharaoh Akhnaton, and mother-in-law of Tutankhamen. The almost life-size coloured bust which has been presented to the museum is a replica of the original found in the ruins of Tel-el-Amarna and now in the Berlin Museum. “She is the finest example of Egyptian portraiture,” said Dr. Hall, keeper of the Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum, to a newspaper reporter. CURIOUS CROWN. Famous archaeologists and artists who have seen the bust agree that the queen must have been the most beautiful woman of antiquity, and that as a work of art her portrait bust is the most living thing that has come down from the ancient world. Nefret-iti’s small head, set on a long, slim neck, is surmounted by the curious high crown which her husband, Akhnaton, evidently invented for her and her daughters. There is a sad half-smile on her face, and the general impression is that of a woman of great delicacy and breeding. Her personality is surrounded by mystery. Her face is not typically Egyptian. Somd experts think she was a Syrian, others even suggest that she may have come from Europe. A strange fact about this remarkable work is that the left eye socket is vacant. Archaeologists are divided between the belief held by Mr Arthur Wigall, the great authority on this period, that the queen was blind in one eye, or that the sculptor did not finish his work. ROCK TOMBS OF AMARNA. Nefret-iti is linked with the first royal love affair pictured by artists. Earlier and later queens of Egypt are sculptured beside their husbands in conventional attitudes, but Akhnaton commanded his artists at El Amarna to paint himself and his wife, not as king and queen of Egypt, but as human beings. The rock tombs of Amarna are full of realistic reliefs showing Akhnaton and his beautiful wife sitting together affectionately holding hands. There is one picture of Nefret-iti sitting on her husband’s knee. The history of the ideal City of the Sun built by Akhnaton 3500 years ago, so that he and his wife could experiment with Utopia, suggests that this delicate, aristocratic woman was also one of the first great lovers in history.