Nefertiti Bust – Discover the Iconic Egyptian Bust of Nefertiti
The famous bust of Nefertiti, carved from limestone, portrays the Great Royal Wife of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten. The bust is thought to have been created around 1345 BCE, and is attributed to the sculptor Thutmose because it was found in his studio at Amarna, Egypt. The Queen Nefertiti statue is one of ancient Egypt’s most reproduced masterpieces, and it turned Nefertiti into one of the most celebrated women of the ancient world and an enduring ideal of feminine beauty.
The Nefertiti Bust (1345 BCE)
| Date Completed | 1345 BCE |
| Medium | Limestone and stucco |
| Dimensions | 48 cm |
| Current Location | Neues Museum, Berlin |
The bust was found in Thutmose’s workshop in 1912 by a German archaeological expedition. It has become a cultural emblem for both Berlin and ancient Egypt, and it was also the subject of a bitter dispute between Germany and Egypt over Egyptian requests for its repatriation.
This dispute started in 1924, when the bust was first publicly shown.
Thutmose: Sculptor of the Bust of Nefertiti
| Nationality | Egyptian |
| Date of Birth | c. 14th century BCE |
| Place of Birth | Egypt |
| Known for | Sculptor |
Thutmose was a sculptor in Ancient Egypt. He lived about 1350 BC and is thought to have been the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten’s official court sculptor in the latter half of his reign. In early December 1912, a German archaeological expedition digging in Akhenaten’s abandoned city of Akhetaten uncovered a destroyed residence and workshop complex. The structure was identified as Thutmose’s on the strength of an ivory horse blinker found in a rubbish pit in the yard, inscribed with his name and title.
The identification has held up because the inscription named the owner’s profession as “sculptor,” and the structure was unmistakably a sculpting workshop.
A handful of the pieces found at the studio show realistic portraits of elderly noblewomen. One plaster study depicts an older woman with wrinkles around her eyelids and a deeply lined forehead, showing a wider range of wrinkles than any earlier known portrait of a well-born Egyptian woman. It is generally read as an image of the wisdom that comes with age.
This was unusual in Ancient Egyptian art, which tended to favor idealized depictions of women as constantly youthful, slim, and attractive.
History of the Queen Nefertiti Statue
Pharaoh Akhenaten established Atenism, a radical religious system centered on the sun disc Aten that is often described as monotheistic, although scholars continue to debate how completely it excluded other deities. Nefertiti herself remains a mysterious figure: she may have been Egyptian royalty by blood, a visiting foreign princess, or the daughter of Ay, a top government official who later succeeded Tutankhamun as pharaoh.
She may have reigned alongside Akhenaten. The couple had six daughters, one of whom, Ankhesenamun, later married Tutankhamun, whose exact maternal parentage remains uncertain.
Scholars once assumed Nefertiti died or fell from favor around the twelfth year of Akhenaten’s reign, but a limestone quarry inscription found at Dayr Abu Hinnis, on the Nile’s eastern bank about ten kilometers north of Amarna, shows she was still active in his sixteenth year. After her husband’s death, Nefertiti may have briefly ruled Egypt in her own right.
Thutmose is thought to have created the bust around 1345 BCE. It carries no inscription, but the distinctive crown, seen in other surviving images of her, is taken as identifying it as Nefertiti.
Discovery
The German Oriental Company discovered the bust on December 6, 1912, at Thutmose’s workshop in Amarna, alongside other unfinished busts of Nefertiti. Ludwig Borchardt’s excavation diary is the earliest documented account of the find. He wrote, “Suddenly we had in our hands the most alive Egyptian artwork. You cannot describe it with words. You must see it.”
A document found in 1924 in the files of the German Oriental Company records a meeting between Borchardt and a senior Egyptian official on January 20, 1913, to negotiate the division of the 1912 finds between Germany and Egypt. Borchardt “intended to safeguard the bust for us,” the Company’s secretary noted at the time, and he has since been accused of downplaying the bust’s true value at that meeting, despite his own denials.
Time magazine later listed the episode among its “Top 10 Plundered Artifacts,” and biographer Philipp Vandenberg called it “adventurous and beyond comparison.”
Borchardt is said to have shown the Egyptian inspector a photograph that “didn’t show Nefertiti in her best light,” and the bust was kept packed in a box when the inspector arrived to examine the finds in person. According to the 1924 document, Borchardt described it to the inspector as a plaster piece of no special value.
Examination and Description
The bust of Nefertiti stands 48 cm tall, with a limestone core covered in painted stucco layers. The face is nearly complete and symmetrical, though the left eye lacks the inlay present in the right. The right eye’s pupil is quartz, painted black and set with beeswax, against a plain limestone backdrop.
Nefertiti wears the “Nefertiti cap crown,” a blue crown wrapped in a golden diadem band that meets at the rear, with a broken cobra over her brow and a floral-patterned wide collar at her shoulders.
The ears have also suffered damage over time. The weight of the domed crown and the long, slender curve of the neck give the bust a silhouette some describe as flowerlike, a heavy bloom balanced on its stalk. Stylistically, the bust favors the more naturalistic conventions of earlier Egyptian art over the elongated, exaggerated forms typical of Akhenaten’s Amarna style.
The bust’s exact function is unknown, though it may have served as a sculptor’s model, kept at the workshop as a reference for later portraits.
Missing Left Eye
When the bust was found, no quartz iris was present for the left eye as it was for the right, and none turned up despite a thorough search and a reward of 1,000 Egyptian pounds for information on its whereabouts. Borchardt assumed the iris had fallen out and been lost when Thutmose’s studio was destroyed.
The missing eye led to speculation that Nefertiti may have lost her own left eye to illness, but the presence of an iris in other sculptures of her ruled that theory out.
Dietrich Wildung, a former director of Berlin’s Egyptian Museum, argued that the bust was used as a template for official portraits and that the master sculptor left the left iris out so he could teach pupils how to render the eye’s interior anatomy. Others hold that the bust was simply left unfinished. The Egyptian archaeologist and former antiquities chief Zahi Hawass has suggested Thutmose did complete the eye, but that it was later destroyed.
CT Scans
The bust was CT scanned for the first time in 1992, producing cross-sections every five millimeters. Testing different lighting techniques at the Altes Museum in 2006, Dietrich Wildung made out wrinkles on the bust’s neck and bags under the eyes, suggesting the artist had deliberately worked in signs of age. A CT scan also showed that Thutmose had built up gypsum behind the cheekbones and eyes to refine the sculpture.
A 2006 CT scan led by Alexander Huppertz revealed a wrinkled face carved into the bust’s inner limestone core; the findings were published in April 2009.
The scan showed Thutmose built up layers of varying thickness over the limestone core. The inner face carries wrinkles around the lips and cheeks and a swelling on the nose; the outer stucco layer smooths these features away for a more idealized appearance.
The 2006 scan had far higher resolution than the one from 1992, picking up details just 1 to 2 mm beneath the stucco.
Later History
The Nefertiti Bust has become one of ancient Egypt’s most admired and imitated images, and the flagship exhibit used to promote Berlin’s museums. It is widely regarded as an international symbol of beauty: a woman with a long neck, gracefully arched brows, high cheekbones, a thin nose, and an enigmatic smile playing around crimson lips.
It is often called the most famous bust in ancient art, rivaled only by Tutankhamun’s death mask.
Locations in Germany
The bust arrived in Berlin in 1913 as part of the German share of the excavation finds and passed into the private collection of the banker James Simon, who kept it out of public view for years at Borchardt’s request. Its path through the city’s museums, interrupted by two world wars, can be traced through a handful of key dates.
| Year | Event |
| 1913 | Bust arrives in Berlin, held privately by James Simon |
| 1920 | Simon donates the bust and the rest of his Amarna collection to the Berlin museums |
| 1924 | First public display, at the Neues Museum; Egypt’s first repatriation requests follow immediately |
| 1933 | Hermann Göring proposes returning the bust to Egypt’s King Fuad I; Hitler blocks the move |
| 1939 | Bust moved to secure storage for wartime protection |
| 1945 | Recovered by American forces and held at the Central Collecting Point in Wiesbaden |
| 1956 | Returned to West Berlin; displayed at the Dahlem museum complex, later at the Altes Museum |
| 2009 | Neues Museum reopens after restoration; the bust returns to the building where it was first shown in 1924 |
Controversies
Egyptian officials have called for the bust’s return since its public debut in Berlin in 1924. In 1925, Egypt threatened to bar German excavation work in the country unless the bust was repatriated; in 1929, Egypt offered to trade other treasures for it, but Germany declined.
The Dispute at a Glance
| Egypt’s case for return | Germany’s case for keeping it |
| Borchardt misrepresented the bust’s value during the 1913 division of finds | The division followed the legal “partage” system in force at the time and was signed off on by Egypt’s own chief inspector |
| Archaeological finds belong in the country where they were made | The bust is now considered too fragile to transport safely |
| Officials have pressed the claim since 1924, including threats to bar German excavations and boycott loans to German museums | No court or international body has upheld a legal claim requiring its return |
Repatriation Requests
Despite Germany’s earlier opposition, Hermann Göring proposed returning the bust to Egypt’s King Fuad I as a political gesture in 1933. Hitler opposed the plan and told Egyptian authorities he would build a new Egyptian museum in the bust’s honor instead. “In the middle, this wonder, Nefertiti, will be enthroned,” Hitler is reported to have said.
While the bust was in American custody after the Second World War, Egypt again demanded its return; the United States declined, telling Egypt to take the matter up with the new German authorities. Egypt tried to restart negotiations in the 1950s, but Germany did not respond. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak visited the bust in Berlin in 1989 and called Nefertiti “the best ambassador for Egypt” in Berlin.
Zahi Hawass argued that the bust belonged to Egypt and had been unlawfully removed, and should therefore be returned.
Hawass contended that Egyptian officials had been misled about the 1913 division of finds and called on Germany to verify that the bust had left Egypt properly. In 2007, he threatened to suspend Egyptian antiquities loans to German museums unless the bust was returned, and later called for a broader boycott of loans to German institutions. He hoped Germany would lend the bust to Egypt for the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum near the Great Pyramids of Giza. Around the same time, the Hamburg-based cultural organization CulturCooperation launched a campaign called “Nefertiti Travels.”
They circulated postcards reading “Return to Sender” showing the bust, and sent Germany’s culture minister an opinion piece arguing that the bust should be loaned to Egypt.
German art historians have disputed Hawass’s claims, citing the 1924 document that describes the 1913 negotiations. The Times has reported that Germany fears a loan to Egypt might never be returned. In December 2009, museum director Friederike Seyfried gave Egyptian officials documents on the bust’s discovery, including a report signed by Borchardt at the time.
The document described the find as a painted plaster bust of a royal woman, though Borchardt privately referred to it as Nefertiti’s head in his own diary.
“This proves that Borchardt wrote this description so that his country can get the statue,” Hawass remarked. “These materials confirm Egypt’s contention that (he) did act unethically with intent to deceive.” However, Hawass has said Egypt does not consider the Nefertiti Bust a plundered antiquity outright, while still insisting, “I really want it back.”
Authenticity Allegations
Some authors have claimed the bust is a modern forgery. One theory holds that Borchardt made it himself to experiment with ancient pigments, and that when Prince Johann Georg of Saxony admired the piece, Borchardt declared it genuine rather than disappoint him. The Swiss art historian Henri Stierlin argued that the missing left eye would have been considered disrespectful toward the queen in ancient Egypt and questioned whether the limestone core itself had ever been independently dated. His forgery theory has been rejected by Egyptologists and museum specialists.
Ercivan, who shares Stierlin’s view, believes Borchardt’s wife modeled for the bust, and both writers argue it was kept from public view until 1924 because it was a forgery.
A separate claim holds that the bust on display was made on Hitler’s orders in the 1930s to replace an original lost during the war. Dietrich Wildung dismissed both theories as publicity stunts, citing radiological studies, extensive CT scans, and material analysis that support the bust’s authenticity; the pigments match those used by ancient Egyptian artists.
The CT scans, together with material analysis, ancient pigments, and the documented excavation context, strongly support the bust’s authenticity.
Egyptian officials have also dismissed Stierlin’s theory. “Stierlin is not a historian. He is delirious,” Hawass said.
Body of the Nefertiti Bust
In 2003, the Egyptian Museum in Berlin allowed the Hungarian artist duo Little Warsaw to place the bust atop a nearly nude female bronze torso for a video work shown at the Venice Biennale. The artists described their Body of Nefertiti project as a tribute to the bust and a statement about the continuing relevance of ancient art to contemporary work.
Egyptian cultural officials condemned the act as a travesty against “one of their country’s major emblems of history” and barred museum director Dietrich Wildung from further work in Egypt.
A freedom of information application was submitted to the Egyptian Museum in 2016 for access to a full-color scan of the bust made by the museum ten years earlier. The museum refused the request, citing the potential effect on gift shop sales. The Cultural Heritage Foundation that runs the museum later released the file, which is now publicly available, though not directly from the institution, with a disputed license attached to a piece that is in fact in the public domain.
Cultural Significance
The German press portrayed the bust as a queen in its own right by 1930. After Germany’s 1918 defeat, the bust helped restore a sense of imperial German identity, described in the press as “the most beautiful stone in the diadem” of the nation’s artistic treasures. Hitler called the bust “a unique masterpiece, an ornament, a true treasure,” and promised to build a museum to house it.
By the 1970s, the Queen Nefertiti statue had become a matter of national identity for both of Germany’s postwar states, East Germany and West Germany.
The bust first appeared on an election billboard for the Green party Bündnis 90/Die Grünen in 1999, as a pledge for a multicultural Berlin under the motto “Strong Women for Berlin!” According to the scholar Claudia Breger, another reason the bust became bound up with German national identity was its role as a rival to Tutankhamun, whose tomb was found by the British, then the dominant power in Egypt.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who Created the Nefertiti Bust?
The sculptor Thutmose, court sculptor to the pharaoh Akhenaten in the later years of his reign, is credited with the bust. His workshop at Amarna, identified by an inscribed ivory horse blinker found on site, contained the bust along with other portrait studies when German archaeologists excavated it in 1912.
Who Does the Nefertiti Bust Represent?
The bust portrays Nefertiti, the Great Royal Wife of the pharaoh Akhenaten. It is thought to have been made around 1345 BCE and takes its identification from the distinctive crown Nefertiti wears in other surviving images of her, since the bust itself carries no inscription naming her.
Why Is the Nefertiti Bust in Germany and Not Egypt?
The bust went to Germany in 1913 under “partage,” the standard system at the time for dividing archaeological finds between an excavating team and the Egyptian antiquities service. Egypt has argued since 1924 that the German excavator Ludwig Borchardt misrepresented the bust’s value during that division and has repeatedly asked for its return; Germany maintains the division was properly documented and has kept the bust in Berlin.
Why Is the Bust’s Left Eye Missing?
No one knows for certain. The most widely cited explanation is that Thutmose used the piece to show pupils how to construct an eye and never inserted the final quartz iris; other Egyptologists argue the bust was simply left unfinished, or that an iris was fitted at one point and later lost.
Is the Nefertiti Bust Genuine?
Yes. A small number of authors, most notably Henri Stierlin, have argued it is a modern forgery, but CT scans, radiological studies, and pigment analysis carried out by the Berlin museum have consistently supported its authenticity, and Egyptologists broadly reject the forgery claims.
Isabella studied at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English Literature & Language and Psychology. Throughout her undergraduate years, she took Art History as an additional subject and absolutely loved it. Building on from her art history knowledge that began in high school, art has always been a particular area of fascination for her. From learning about artworks previously unknown to her, or sharpening her existing understanding of specific works, the ability to continue learning within this interesting sphere excites her greatly.
Her focal points of interest in art history encompass profiling specific artists and art movements, as it is these areas where she is able to really dig deep into the rich narrative of the art world. Additionally, she particularly enjoys exploring the different artistic styles of the 20th century, as well as the important impact that female artists have had on the development of art history.
Learn more about Isabella Meyer and the Art in Context Team.
Cite this Article
Isabella, Meyer, “Nefertiti Bust – Discover the Iconic Egyptian Bust of Nefertiti.” Art in Context. May 22, 2022. URL: https://artincontext.org/nefertiti-bust/
Meyer, I. (2022, 22 May). Nefertiti Bust – Discover the Iconic Egyptian Bust of Nefertiti. Art in Context. https://artincontext.org/nefertiti-bust/
Meyer, Isabella. “Nefertiti Bust – Discover the Iconic Egyptian Bust of Nefertiti.” Art in Context, May 22, 2022. https://artincontext.org/nefertiti-bust/.
