The iconic bust of Nefertiti is part of the Egyptian Museum of Berlin collection and currently on display in the Neues Museum. The Nefertiti Bust is a 3,300-year-old painted stucco-coated limestone bust of Nefertiti, the Great Royal Wife of the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten.
Martin Fox, an art historian stated, “The bust of Nefertiti is 47 centimetres tall and weighs about 20 kilograms. It is made of a limestone core covered with painted stucco (fine plaster) layers. The face is completely symmetrical and mostly intact, but the left eye no longer exists from ageing. The pupil of the right eye is quartz that has been inserted with black paint and fixed with beeswax. The background of the eye-socket is limestone. Nefertiti wears …show more content…
"We acquired a lot of information on how the bust was manufactured more than 3,300 years ago by the royal sculptor," said the study's lead author Alexander Huppertz, M.D., director of the Imaging Science Institute in Berlin, Germany. "We learned that the sculpture has two slightly different faces, and we derived from interpretation of the CT images how to prevent damage of this extremely precious art object." What was revealed under the stucco was a carving of a wrinkled woman with a bump on her nose, showing us the real Nefertiti. Thutmose had plastered different layers of stucco over the limestone and by the last layer he smoothed over the wrinkles and bump to reflect the “aesthetic ideals of the era," said Huppertz, whose research appears in the journal Radiology.
Carved on to a rock formation called The Boundary Stelae of Akhetaten is a eulogy to Nefertiti:
“And the Heiress, Great in the Palace, Fair of Face,
Adorned with the Double Plumes, Mistress of Happiness,
Endowed with Favours, at hearing whose voice the King rejoices, the Chief Wife of the King, his beloved, the Lady of the Two Lands,
Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti, May she live for Ever and
Martin Fox, an art historian stated, “The bust of Nefertiti is 47 centimetres tall and weighs about 20 kilograms. It is made of a limestone core covered with painted stucco (fine plaster) layers. The face is completely symmetrical and mostly intact, but the left eye no longer exists from ageing. The pupil of the right eye is quartz that has been inserted with black paint and fixed with beeswax. The background of the eye-socket is limestone. Nefertiti wears …show more content…
"We acquired a lot of information on how the bust was manufactured more than 3,300 years ago by the royal sculptor," said the study's lead author Alexander Huppertz, M.D., director of the Imaging Science Institute in Berlin, Germany. "We learned that the sculpture has two slightly different faces, and we derived from interpretation of the CT images how to prevent damage of this extremely precious art object." What was revealed under the stucco was a carving of a wrinkled woman with a bump on her nose, showing us the real Nefertiti. Thutmose had plastered different layers of stucco over the limestone and by the last layer he smoothed over the wrinkles and bump to reflect the “aesthetic ideals of the era," said Huppertz, whose research appears in the journal Radiology.
Carved on to a rock formation called The Boundary Stelae of Akhetaten is a eulogy to Nefertiti:
“And the Heiress, Great in the Palace, Fair of Face,
Adorned with the Double Plumes, Mistress of Happiness,
Endowed with Favours, at hearing whose voice the King rejoices, the Chief Wife of the King, his beloved, the Lady of the Two Lands,
Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti, May she live for Ever and