Sydney Morning Herald
The bust of Queen Nefertiti housed in a Berlin museum and believed to be 3,400 years old in fact is a copy dating from 1912 that was made to test pigments used by the ancient Egyptians, according to Swiss art historian Henri Stierlin.
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.
"It seems increasingly improbable that the bust is an original," Stierlin told AFP.
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 found at the digs.
But on December 6, 1912, the copy was much admired as an original work by a German prince and the archaeologist "couldn't sum up the courage to ridicule" his guests, Stierlin said.
The historian, who has been working on the subject for 25 years, said he based his findings on several facts.
ArtInfo
It’s hard to imagine Queen Nefertiti speaking with a German accent, but a Swiss art historian is claiming that a delicate bust of the Egyptian monarch in Berlin that was thought to date back to 1347 BC is in fact a 20th-century imposter.
Henri Stierlin was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying the bust was made by an artist named Gerardt Marks at the request of Ludwig Borchardt, an archaeologist, for research purposes. On December 6, 1912, a German prince admired the statue as an original, the story goes, and Borchardt didn’t have the heart to correct him.
See the above page for the full story.
4 comments:
Excuse me, what book is that? His latest released March 2009 is about Egypt's monuments, at least that's what Amazon has listed.
I cannot find the title of the book. It is not listed on his own website at the moment, and I can't find a reference to the name of the book in any of the articles that have been published online. Watch this space and if I do find it, or if someone else finds it, I'll post again here.
OK here you go:
"Le Buste de Néfertiti. Une imposture de l'égyptologie?" Published in 2008 in Switzerland.
I’m not surprised at this. Egyptology is filled with a lot of misinformation and half truths or at least what they let on to the masses.
I read in a book a while ago that questioned why this bust is attributed to Nefertiti, when there is no conclusive evidence that ties her to this bust.
I recommend that everyone watch Magical Egypt by John Anthony West. Its online and its not hard to find.
Post a Comment