DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: We're in
the Neues Museum in Berlin. And we're looking at the
famous bust of Nefertiti. It is a life-size,
full-color image, and it's really impressive. DR. BETH HARRIS: It's the
treasure of this museum. And it's been placed in a
rotunda with a large dome. She's been placed slightly
higher than eye level, so we look up at her. She's fabulously beautiful. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: She's
virtually the sole work of art in this very large space. Clearly, she is the focal point. DR. BETH HARRIS: Yeah,
it's quite theatrical. And unlike so many other
Egyptian sculptures, she wasn't intended for a tomb. She was found in the studio
of the artist who made her, Thutmose. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: We think
that this sculpture was actually a model that he'd
created in order to work on other sculptures of her. That is, this sculpture
would function really as a three-dimensional sketch. DR. BETH HARRIS: As a prototype. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: That's right. And there are a few
reasons why that's thought. Not only was it
found in his studio, but it is incomplete
in a way that suggests that it was never
meant to be completed. If you look, for instance,
at the sockets of the eyes, that would generally be inlaid
with semi-precious stones. But only one eye
has any inlay in it. And in that case, it's a
temporary material, even wax, and so not the
kind of quality one would expect in a full-fledged
sculpture for the queen. DR. BETH HARRIS: Art
historians have discovered through scientific
analysis that she's made not just of
painted limestone but limestone
that's been covered with a very, very
thin layer of plaster. And that enabled the sculptor
to achieve really subtle effects modeling her face. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: But then the
neck and the headdress plaster gets much thicker, and it
would have been much easier to work and create that very
fine detail on the plaster rather than the coarser
material of the limestone core. DR. BETH HARRIS: And
that's so important where we see the lines,
very subtle movement around her cheeks. What's so remarkable
about the sculpture is how sensitively carved
she is, how we really get a sense of skin and bone
and these lovely movements around her face. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: She's
tremendously elegant, but even beyond the simple
elegance of the contours of her face, her
high cheekbones, the shallow of her cheeks. DR. BETH HARRIS: Her long neck. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
Beautiful symmetry. A way in which line is unified
throughout the entire portrait bust. For instance, follow
the lines downward that are constructed by the
contours of her headdress [? that ?] tapers as it
moves towards her chin. So her face and headdress
create a perfect triangle. But that's actually continued
by the lines of her neck below her chin. And it's accentuated by the
lighting in this museum. But it really does create
this sense of continuity from the top of the
sculpture to its base. DR. BETH HARRIS:
What we're describing is a new ideal of
beauty that's really different from the tradition
of ancient Egyptian sculpture. And that's because
Nefertiti was the wife of the pharaoh Akhenaten,
who established a new religion in ancient Egypt
which was monotheistic instead of the traditional
polytheistic religion. And with that, he created
a new ideal of beauty that we see in the
sculptures that were created during his reign. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: That's right. I think we see this sculpture
really as a perfect exemplar. Nefertiti is
especially interesting because we believe
she did not simply function as the
wife of the pharaoh. She is shown in
so many portraits with the accoutrements
of the ruler that we think that she
actually shared power. DR. BETH HARRIS:
It's interesting, this period that we call the
Amarna period of Akhenaten's reign, where we have two
powerful women-- his mother, Tiye, and his wife, Nefertiti. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: Both
represented as beautiful women, as powerful women, and
giving us a kind of insight into late Egyptian culture.