Nefertiti: Unlocking the Mystery Surrounding Egypt's Most Famous and Beautiful Queen (Paperback)

by Joyce A. Tyldesley (Author) "Once upon a time, a long time ago in a far-away land, the king of the gods..." (more)
Key Phrases: talatat blocks, smiting scenes, double uraeus, New Kingdom, Queen Tiy, Cairo Museum (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
She was the beloved wife of "heretic king" Akhenaton, who defied ancient custom by practicing monotheism and by elevating Nefertiti far above the role of subservient consort previously played by Egyptian queens. Her image has ravished Western viewers ever since a magnificent limestone bust unearthed at the royal retreat of Amarna went on display in Berlin in 1924. But frustratingly few facts are known about this woman who lived more than three millennia ago. As she did in Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh, British archeologist Joyce Tyldesley makes a virtue of necessity by writing a book that is as much a cultural history as a biography. As Akhenaton swept away the plethora of old gods, dismaying many of his subjects, he needed a strong female figure to soften the abstract austerity of Aten, the sun deity; his beautiful queen was celebrated in official art and inscriptions that focused on the domestic life of the royal family. Tyldesley meticulously analyzes this iconography to evaluate Nefertiti's position in Egypt and her importance to her husband, who clearly cherished her beyond the demands of propriety or political necessity. The author cannot give readers a strong sense of Nefertiti's personality--the evidence simply isn't there--but she paints a wonderfully evocative picture of life at the civilized heart of the ancient world. --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly
If biographers choose their subjects based on interest, then Nefertiti, beloved queen of the heretic pharaoh, Akhenaten, is certainly a worthy one. But she's also scholar Tyldesley's (Hatchepsut, etc.) most elusive subject yet, since, as Tyldesley admits, there are only "meagre shreds of evidence" that can support a variety of interpretations about the sun queen. Drawing on a "random assortment" of archeological remains, a few historical documents and much religious and mortuary art and architecture, she presents an engaging portrait of what Egyptian life was like during Akhenaten's reign, as well as the time just before and after. But because nothing is known about Nefertiti's parentage (no one claimed to be related to her) or her exact role as queen, and no verifiable conclusion can be reached about her fate, the information here is closer to pure context or even a biography of Akhenaten himself. Even the artists of the 18th Dynasty weren't concerned with exact representation, making Tyldesley's job even harder. Ever since the Germans first put her now famous bust on display in Berlin in 1924, Nefertiti has become a symbol of the Egyptian world and of beauty itself. Unfortunately, due to the lack of other reliable records, this account of her life is mostly speculation, not established truth.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (February 28, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140258205
• ISBN-13: 978-0140258202
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,010,154 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The disappearing queen..., May 15, 2003

By	FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

Joyce Tyldesley's book, `Nefertiti: Egypt's Sun Queen' is a fascinating study of a very important but mostly misunderstood figure in Egyptian history. Perhaps it was due to the confusion of names (another queen, Nefertari, is popularly known due to the use of her name in Biblical epic films), and largely historically due to Nerfertiti's marriage to Akhenaton, a pharoah who was almost erased from history.

Akhenaton was a heretic in Egyptian terms -- he renounced the worship of old gods in favour of a more monotheistic framework based upon a sun-worship (Aton) which prompted him to change his name (he had been Amenhotep IV). He built a new capital city at Amarna, where he and Nefertiti lived and raised their children. Nefertiti was perhaps the most influential person on Akhenaton, at that time one of the most powerful rulers on earth.

Very little is known of Nefertiti -- her death is not recorded, and her tomb has not been found. Her beauty is renowned from the masks found at Amarna by archaeologists early in this century, having been lost for millenia. It is unusual that such a prominent person's death would not be recorded in the culture of Egypt, symbolised to this day by the monuments to the great who have died in pyramids and tombs.

The mystery deepens, however, with the discovery of stelae at Amarna that shows Nefertiti in glorious array while her husband the Pharoah occupies a lesser position.

`The Berlin stela provides us with the image of a perfect and semi-divine family inhabiting an ideal world far beyond the experiences of most Egyptians. The exact roles played by the principal members of this family are unclear. Akhenaten seems quite happy perched on his lowly, undecorated stool while his wife occupies the more regal seat, yet to him fall the the honour of holding the more important princess while Nefertiti looks after the babies.'

Nefertiti may have been the regnant queen by this point -- unusual but far from unheard of in Egyptian history. Female pharoahs such as Sobeknofru and Hatchepsut had proved this, but it is much more likely that a female would act as regent rather than regnant. She might have served as co-regnant with Akhenaten until his death, and then as a regent for Tutankhamen.

Of course, alternate theories also abound. Some inscriptions have been discovered in which a another name, Meritaten, was inscribed over erased names and titles of another woman -- was this Nefertiti? Did she overstep her position? Did she commit some indiscretion or crime? Meritaten, the daughter of Nefertiti and Akhenaton, might have assumed public duties as queen. This was put forward by Egyptologists including Norman de Garis Davies and John Pendlebury.

Tyldesley presents various theories of Nefertiti's life and death side by side with evidence supporting each. Alas, the support is difficult no matter which interpretation is preferred -- Amarna was abandoned shortly after the death of Akhenaten, and the old religious ways reinstituted. Akhenaten's name was deliberately suppressed due to the threat to the 'established religion' that monotheistic ways represented (perhaps a source of animosity between another group, the Canaanite/Israelites, and the Egyptians stems from the fear of this monotheistic tendency latent in Egypt).

It is a sad tale, that Akhenaten and Nefertiti's family was all but destroyed, their capital reduced to a quarry for future pharoahs and builders to use; they and their family, including Tutankhamen and Ay, the following pharoahs of the family, were all deleted from official lists of kings -- in traditional Egyptian theology, for the spirit to live forever, the person's name, body, or image must survive -- and thus the officials of Egypt tried their best to destroy the spirit of these people. But archaeology has managed to resurrect their images and at least part of their story, and the mystery of their lives will continue for a long time to come.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nefertiti, March 28, 2000

By	Atheen M. Wilson "Atheen" (Mpls, MN United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I enjoyed this book, but it is definitely for the person with some knowledge of Egyptian history. The book is not a romantic, detailed description of the queen and her life and times; it covers the artistic and epigraphic data dealing with the Amarna period, a particularly complex and confusing time in Egypt's history. The personalities of the period first came to public awareness during the 1920s, when the famous bust of the queen was put on display, and since that time a number of speculative theories have enjoyed a vogue among experts and amateur enthusiasts. Ms Tyldesley covers the history of these theories, the data supporting or refuting them, and poses some of her own. (Some of these I first came across in Week's "The Lost Tomb," where he introduces the concept--borrowed from Ms Tyldesley and others--that some of the novelties of the Armarna court were actually in evidence during the reign of the preceeding monarch, Amenhotep III, and were simply driven to extremes under Akhenaten). Ms Tyledesley also makes it quite evident than much of the evidence that might have gone far to clearing up some of the confusion in the reigns of the Armarna monarchs has been lost to the vandalism, theft and neglect of centuries. Although she goes far in creating a profile of the queen and her contemporaries, I think that the reader will still come away with a feeling that the only certain thing about the period is its continued mystery.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Solid, but not inspiring, July 9, 2002

By	kallan - See all my reviews

I was somewhat disappointed by this book. The title gives the impression that it will be a biography of Nefertiti. It would have been better titled "What we think we know about Nefertiti and the Armarna Period from rock carvings".
Having read a number of books on Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Tutankhamun, etc., I found very little that was new in Tyldesley's offering. A different perspective is always welcome, but Tydesley did not "think outside the square" in any meaningful way. She follows the same chronological trail as other authors, using the same pieces of evidence. While she does delve into the history of the Eighteenth Dynasty, this book could have been more fully grounded in other ways. For example, how would a girl of Nefertiti's social class have been brought up? How would her parents have lived? What is the current thinking on what marriage meant to the ancient Egyptians? What are the daily duties of a queen? Tackling these issues could have brought life to both Nefertiti and the book, and gone some way towards making it the biography the title seemed to promise. If details on these points do not exist, Tydlesley could at least have said so.
Tydesley's style of writing is uninspiring and there was not enough in the way of footnotes and extra information for my liking. Certain points of evidence are interpreted in very different ways by different scholars, and I would have appreciated reading the pros and cons of these debates and thus learning exactly why Tyldesley came to some of the conclusions she did. I agree with other reviewers that better visual aids would have been appreciated in this book.
Joyce Tydesley's Nefertiti is, as far as I can tell from my amateur perspective, a solid offering that covers the main points. But it left me wanting more of everything: more evidence, more theories, more pictures, more excitement, more that was new to me. I would not recommend it unless you already have some familiarity with Ancient Egypt.