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Sculptor
hid Egyptian queen Nefertiti's flawed beauty
Monday, September 20, 2010 03:07:25 PM,
IANS
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London:
Egyptian queen Nefertiti, hailed as the perfect example of beauty,
might have been quite ordinary looking after all.
The 3,300-year-old carved bust of the queen with her aqualine nose
and high cheek bones has won her legions of admirers.
But a delicately carved face in the limestone core of the renowned
bust suggests the royal sculptor may have smoothed creases around
the mouth and fixed a bumpy nose to depict the 'Beauty of the
Nile' in better light.
TV historian Bettany Hughes was part of a team that stumbled on
the discovery which is supported by research from German
scientists who studied the 20-inch bust of Nefertiti, which means
'the beautiful one has come'.
Hughes and her team carried out a CT scan of the bust and
discovered a second limestone model with a bent nose and wrinkles
around the eyes which may have been used as a template for the
bust, reports the Daily Mail.
"That statue showed her nose was bent, and that she had wrinkles
around her eyes. It's a real portrait of a real woman," Hughes
told The Independent Woodstock Literary Festival Saturday.
"We're now going to a tomb in the Valley of the Kings, where we
think Nefertiti's sister is, to see if the dynasty has the same
features," he said.
The bust of Nefertiti, who died around 1330 BC aged between 29 and
38, was found in Egypt in 1912 at Tell el-Amarna, the short-lived
capital of Nefertiti's husband, the Pharaoh Akhenaten. The bust is
now housed in Berlin's Altes Museum.
But the first suggestion that she may have had the ancient
equivalent of botox and a nose job came in March last year when
German scientists analysed the limestone carving with CT scans.
Their analysis showed that compared to the outer stucco face, the
inner face had less prominent cheekbones, a slight bump on the
ridge of the nose, creases around the corner of mouth and cheeks,
and less depth at the corners of the eyelids.
The changes were possibly made to make the queen adhere more to
the ideals of beauty of the time, the researchers said.
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