Free Republic

An ancient Egyptian queen regarded as the Mona Lisa of the ancient world may not have been such a looker after all, German scientists said on Tuesday. A delicately carved face in the limestone core of the famous bust of Nefertiti suggests the royal sculptor at the time may have smoothed creases around the mouth and fixed a bumpy nose to depict the "Beauty of the Nile" in a better light. The bust of Nefertiti was found in Egypt in 1912 at Tell el-Amarna, the short-lived capital of Nefertiti's husband, the Pharaoh Akhenaten. It is now housed in Berlin's Altes...

Discovered in 1912 at Tel-El-Amarna in what used to be the workshop of the sculptor Thutmose, the bust - depicting a woman with a long neck, elegantly arched brows, high cheekbones, a slender nose and an enigmatic smile played about red lips, has become the international symbol of beauty. However, a new examination of the famous bust has revealed visible wrinkles running down her slender neck, and puffy bags circling, leading experts to now believe that Nefertiti was an aging beauty. Dietrich Wildung, director of Berlin's Egyptian museum, who is part of the investigation, revealed that signs of aging had...

Queen Nefertiti: More than a pretty face German scientists have discovered that the world's most beautiful woman allowed herself to be sculpted with wrinkles to appear more beautiful. Maybe wrinkles are not so bad, after all, some German scientists have discovered. In ancient times, such laugh lines and wrinkles around the mouth improved the face of Nefertiti, the Egyptian queen acclaimed as the world's most beautiful woman. X-ray pictures of the bust by a computer tomography machine at the nearby Charite Hospital in Berlin revealed that the sculpture is a piece of limestone with details added using four outer layers...

Swiss art historian Henri Stierlin, author of a dozen works on Egypt, the Middle East and ancient Islam, says in a just-released book that the bust currently in Berlin's Altes Museum was made on the orders of Germany archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt on site at the digs by an artist named Gerardt Marks... He said he believed it was made to test pigments used by the ancient Egyptians. The historian said the archaeologist had hoped to produce a new portrait of the queen wearing a necklace he knew she had owned and also carry out a colour test with ancient pigments...

Two archaeological discoveries led to the identification of the creator of Nefertiti's bust. The first was uncovered at Tell el-Amarna near the artists' workshop where the bust was created. (The bust was unearthed in this workshop during excavations in December 1912.) Outside the workshop, the excavators discovered a horse's blinker -- used to prevent the horse from looking toward the rear and sometimes to the side -- inscribed with the name Thutmose, who was identified by the following titles: "favored by the King," "Chief of Works," and "seankh" (a designation that means "he who gives the final touch of life"2...

Archaeologists have discovered two ancient Egyptian skeletons, dating back more than 3,300 years, which were each buried with a toe ring made of copper alloy, the first time such rings have been found in ancient Egypt. The toe rings were likely worn while the individuals were still alive, and the discovery leaves open the question of whether they were worn for fashion or magical reasons. Supporting the magical interpretation, one of the rings was found on the right toe of a male, age 35-40, whose foot had suffered a fracture along with a broken femur above it. Unique rings in...