Nefertiti: Facial Reconstructions & History Documentary

hey everyone and welcome back to royalty now studios where we bring famous figures from the past to life with history and facial reconstructions today we are talking about the enigmatic queen nefertiti whose portrait bust has enthralled millions since its discovery we'll talk about her history her ethnicity a possible mummy and the question of this famous berlin bust being a forgery and of course we'll reveal multiple statue recreations both past and modern this time of maybe one of the most beautiful women of all time so let's get started [Music] let's begin today with nefertiti's history and legacy as always if you'd like to skip to the end to the recreations i've got it all bookmarked for you you can go right ahead born around 1370 bc the name nefertiti means the beautiful one has come forth which is such an apt descriptor for this queen of all egyptian queens she might actually be the most famous or at least the most well-known this is likely because she has so many surviving appearances on monuments and other works of art we may actually know more about what she looked like than we do about her life and history her face is pretty ubiquitous to most of us at this point however she is also famous for another reason she and her husband akhenaten worked together to change the face of egyptian religion she had more influence than other royal wives in egypt and may have even ruled after her husband was gone as pharaoh or under another name unfortunately we lack many details of nefertiti's life what we do know about her can be put together by dating images and inscriptions that refer to her the great center point of nefertiti and akhenaten's rule was the change of religion in egypt akhenaten previously known as amun hotep iv re-centered the egyptian pantheon of gods into one god aten the sun god this new age became known as the amarna period and it was such an interesting period in egypt for art and culture nefertiti and naganatan seem to be a couple of respect and even love images and carvings of the two together seem to show this genuine love and affection between the two of them they work together in ways that previous queen consorts had not worked with the pharaohs a group of blocks recovered from karnak shows nefertiti participating in the ritual smiting of the enemies of egypt she even wears her own unique headdress a tall flat blue crown which can also be seen on the berlin bust she adopts important religious roles and is depicted seated proudly next to her husband in many a stone relief together they had six daughters over 10 years all of whom shared unusual prominence during the reign of their father this indicated a bit of a changing of gender norms and more emphasis on the royal family unit of egypt itself never td mysteriously disappears from the historical record around the 12th year of akhenaten's 17-year reign like i said the only thing that's actually indicating nefertiti's whereabouts and present are these stone inscriptions and at this time they disappear obviously it's possible that she died but some scholars have a different idea of what happened to nefertiti at this time they say that she changed names to reflect a change in title and role to nefernefer uwatn the official co-regent of her husband the pharaoh now officially in the historic record akhenaten was succeeded as pharaoh or maybe a co-regent of the pharaohs minkaree some scholars even posit that this is also a possible alternate name for nefertiti to elaborate on this one theory is that as a last symbol of love for his wife before his death akhenaten promoted nefertiti from great royal wife to co-regent making her nepher neferwaten another theory is that because nefertiti's name disappears from the historic record she may have just changed it not only once but twice this time taking the name of the male heir mentioned earlier sminkare in this instance she could have elevated her daughter maritime to the role of great royal wife and made sure that her line of royalty was continued forever alright so that's enough of her history for now let's talk about the beauty that has captured millions let's talk about nefertiti's appearance the first question we'll get to is does nefertiti have a mummy has her body been found do we have any dna for her so as of yet it seems that the consensus is that no we do not have a body for nefertiti there is a mummy referred to as the younger lady that was found in a tomb called kv-35 and some egyptologists suggest that this is the body of nefertiti however dna suggests that this is not the body of nefertiti and also this young woman actually died by a huge blow to the face which would have been a very sad ending for our queen and opens up a whole new can of worms in terms of her story and her ending so what was nefertiti's ethnicity well nefertiti's parentage is unknown meaning we don't have any surviving records of her parentage recorded today most egyptologists believe that she was the daughter of the powerful egyptian courtier i and one of his wives the rest is conjecture but it's thought that nefertiti was very likely 100 ethnically egyptian the idea has also been floated that she may have been part matani which is a region in modern-day syria but this is kind of a loose theory at this time doesn't really have any concrete evidence to back it up yet as i mentioned most would agree that we have no mummy of nefertiti at the present so dna testing has yet to be undertaken to determine her exact heritage the current dna studies and research that we have for what ancient egyptian populations looked like in terms of heritage as it shows them as having mixed heritage with a genome kind of close to populations of the mideast this makes a lot of geographic sense considering that egypt is right next to israel and jordan they probably looked really similar to what modern-day egyptians look like today let's talk depictions and statues of nefertiti from her reign like i said in the history portion religion underwent this major upheaval in the amarna period and art and sculpture did too so nefertiti and akhenaten move to this more naturalistic style of art a style that's far more lifelike than what was seen in egypt before as an artist who does facial reconstructions i love this period because it gives us so much more of a realistic glimpse into what they looked like they were willing to show a more casual side of royal life as i mentioned they put a lot more emphasis on the royal family unit so the couple are often depicted with their children holding them watching them play and interacting warmly with them which was never shown before the couple was willing to show this affectionate and family-oriented side to the depictions of the royal household which would never happen again in egyptian history along with looking less formal the sculptures just show a more realistic depiction of what people look like the berlin bust even shows normal facial features like slight eye bags lines around the mouth and even the actual tendons in her neck so it just shows things that show up on an actual human face unlike these older stiff portraits of the egyptian rulers there are a couple sculptures of nefertiti that all share these similar facial features and they're really consistent across them so they show heavily littered large eyes a pretty small nose with a thin bridge a long neck and full lips a few of these even have the laugh lines in common around her mouth which i love even the bodies of amarna period sculpture for both men and women are depicted more naturally with fuller hips and thighs although some scholars argue that this stylization was an attempt to showcase the principles of their new religion generating new life making them look healthy and fertile of course we can't forget that almost all sculpture from the past of rulers serve some sort of political or propaganda purpose this can be seen in the way that nefertiti and akhenaten actually end up looking kind of similar to each other in a lot of sculptures she looks like him or i guess you could say he looks like her and this could definitely be an attempt to display their unity as a ruling couple kind of a propaganda look how well we work together look at what a unit we are and we can't say that these sculptures are without their beautifications interestingly a ct scan was conducted of the berlin bust found that the sculpture included a stone core with a stucco finish the original sculpture in itself was stone and it showed this bump on her nose that was eventually smoothed over with the stucco suggesting that someone issued an order to have it smooth down so while we would love to see the true face of nefertiti we're still definitely looking into an idealized face when we look at the berlin bust i want to address the berlin bust itself since that's what all of my depictions are based on there have been a few questions raised in recent years about the authenticity of the bust and whether or not it's actually a forgery d silverman an egyptologist suggest that the bust reflects a classical art style and is too far from the amarna style to be authentic a very big proponent of the theory that it's a forgery is swiss art historian henry sterlin who has done much research on it over the years sterling's theory centers around the idea that the bust was just made as a way to test ancient pigments and that it was created by an artist named gerard marks on the orders of german archaeologist ludwig borthart sterlin says that this test statue was then sitting in his home and was one day admired by a german prince who obviously thought it was real sterling's theory is that borchardt couldn't sum up the courage to ridicule his guest and this is where it gets a little weird for me because basically to save embarrassing this german prince as his guest he orchestrates an entire photo shoot makes the sculpture dirty digs it up from the ground takes pictures of it and everyone agrees that it's authentic that seems a little bit far-fetched to me but i also fall on the side of it being an authentic work of art the pigments themselves that are on the sculpture include lime spar and red chalk and they've been dated to be authentically ancient it also greatly resembles the other images of nefertiti from the time and as i mentioned it underwent this interesting ct scan analysis that showed two layers of artwork so if it is a forgery it's certainly an expert alright i'm so excited to get into the recreations of this sculpture some are my recent works and some are from last year this time i made both an ancient version and a modern version of nefertiti and i have a couple of modern versions so let's take a look at the recreations of queen nefertiti now [Music] [Music] [Music] i am so interested to hear everyone's thoughts on what they think of the berlin bust recreations you've seen here today it was such a pleasure talking the history of nefertiti with you if you like this content please support us by liking and subscribing and of course you can check out prints and bookmarks of nefertiti recreations on the etsy store link is in the description i will see you guys for the next video [Music] you

Channel: Royalty Now Studios

Views: 846,218

Keywords: Real faces of historical figures, What did famous historical figures look like, what historical figures looked like, what historical figures really looked like, world's famous statues, Famous historical statues, Nefertiti Documentary, Nefertiti Real Face, What nefertiti really looked like, Nefertiti Statue, Nefertiti History, Nefertiti Facts, Nefertiti Drawing, What did Nefertiti Look Like, What did Nefertiti do, Most beautiful women of all time, Most beautiful women in history

Id: Ocw9opvMX3c

Length: 12min 30sec (750 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 26 2021