Nefertiti: Egypt's Sun Queen

For over a decade Nefertiti, wife of the heretic king Akhenaten, was the most influential woman in the Bronze Age world; a beautiful queen blessed by the sun god, adored by her family and worshipped by her people. Her image and her name were celebrated throughout Egypt, and her future seemed golden. Suddenly Nefertiti disappeared from the royal family, vanishing so completely that it was as if she had never been. No record survives to detail her death, no monument serves to mourn her passing, and to this day her end remains an enigma. Nefertiti's body has never been found but her image, in the form of the exquisite painted bust housed in the Berlin Museum, has allowed her to defy the passage of time. Nefertiti is now a universally admired beauty, the most recognizable queen of Egypt and a symbol of her country's history. Joyce Tyldesley uses a combination of archaeological, textual and artistic evidence to provide a detailed discussion of the life and times of Nefertiti, Egypt's sun queen, set against the background of the ephemeral Amarna court.