Nefertiti: From Queen of Egypt to Monarch of Germany

What is the link that unites these six degrees of separation:

• a tattoo,
  
• a cage,
  
• a massive flak tower,
  
• the body of a queen, 
  
• a desert find in 1912,
  
• and a lost monarchy?

The tattoo is a quote from Tennessee Williams: A prayer for the wild at heart, kept in cages.

The cage is the one in the tattoo, and a Berlin bullet proof cage.

The flak tower is the one near the zoo in Berlin, built during the Second World War to protect the city from British, French and American  bombers.

The body of a queen is The Body of the Queen: Gender And Rule in the Courtly World from the 15th to the 20th Century, the English translation published in 2006.

The desert find in 1912 is the discovery under the hot desert sands of Armana by the German Egyptologist, Ludwig Borchardt, of the bust of Nefertiti, the beautiful queen of ancient Egypt.

The lost monarchy is the royal family which ruled Germany until the last monarch, Kaiser Wilhelm II, was forced to abdicate after Germany's defeat in the First World War.

And the link is the professor with a 1996 Ph.D. in German Literature from Humboldt University, Berlin,  who wrote, among other things, the article entitled Digital Digs, or: Lara Croft replaying Indiana Jones. Archaeological Tropes and ‘Colonial Loops’ in New Media Narrative.

Meet Professor Doctor Claudia Breger,  the Associate Professor of Germanic Studies, Indiana University.

Professor Claudia Breger

Breger is the author of the chapter in The Body of the Queen entitled The ‘Berlin’ Nefertiti Bust: Imperial Fantasies in Twentieth-Century German Archaeological Discourse.

Lara Croft is the fictional heroine of the very successful video game Tomb Raider.

Beautiful, intelligent and very fit, Lara is an archeologist – similar to the Indiana Jones character – who faces countless hazards in her exploration of tombs and ruins around the world.

Lara's trademark costume is a sleeveless tank top, calf-high boots, fingerless gloves, and two pistols thrust into holsters attached to her utility belt.

The tattoo is the one of the thirteen which Angela Jodie has, and is the one she and her mother each had done in a mother-daughter bonding moment.

Angela Jodie as a female action star received a major boost when she starred as Lara Croft in the movie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, beating out Pamela Anderson and Demi Moore for the role.

Lara Croft

One of the Berlin Museum officials we spoke to said that the Nefertiti bust deserved to stay in Berlin rather than being returned to her homeland, Egypt, because she was an outstanding example of how the foreign can be integrated into society.

In her article, Claudia Breger puts her finger on the real reason why the German governments have refused for 90 years to allow the bust of Nefertiti to return to Egypt.

She mentions an offer in the 1930's to exchange the bust of Nefertiti for a collection of other Egyptian objects; James Simon, the man who bankrolled the expedition of Ludwig Borchardt which discovered the bust in 1912, supported the exchange, because, he said the "unanimous judgment of the real experts" was that the objects offered in exchange were more valuable than the Nefertiti bust.

The exchange never took place, and many Germans flocked to see Nefertiti in the Berlin museum when word of the exchange leaked out.

What has made the bust of Nefertiti such a revered object for ordinary Germans, as well as those German officials who have a say over her continued stay in the country?

Claudia Breger says that Nefertiti has achieved "star" status, and simply put, is a surrogate for the monarchy which Germany lost after the First World War.

She writes:

The bust is thus exhibited [in her cage on the raised pedestal in the Berlin museum] as the royal object of a modern cult...  The newspapers from 1930 were aware of the potential inherent in such figures of royal stardom, and thus the (image of) Nefertiti became the new monarch for the people of the Weimar Republic who had just been 'robbed' of their emperor.

Thanks to Claudia Breger for explaining just why the German government and museum authorities are so insistent on keeping the bust of Nefertiti.

Their arguments might be based on the legality of the acquisition when Ludwig Borchardt divided up the spoils of his excavations with Egypt, but we feel that the officials protesteth too much.

Nefertiti bust in Berlin New Museum 2009

Now, with Claudia Breger's explanation as our guide, we understand why Chancelor Angela Merkel is intent on keeping the Nefertiti bust behind the bullet proof glass of its brand new cage in the New Museum of Berlin.

Nefertiti has been co-opted by Germany as the queen they no longer have.

Kaiser Wilhelm II might have in his study in his place of exile in Holland a copy of the bust made in 1913 for him by James Simon, but Germany has in its new museum in Berlin a copy of their replacement royalty: Nefertiti, Queen of Germany, hidden in a flak tower in Berlin in 1941 to protect Her Majesty from the bombing raids of the Allies.

Tattoos of Angelina Jodie

Kaiser Wilhelm II

Ludwig Borchardt with wife Emilie 1929

Strike a blow for Nefertiti: Leave a Rose for the Imprisoned Queen

Nefertiti bust - Old Museum, Berlin - 2009

On the 8^th of April 1930, the Berlin newspaper Der Tag reported on the crowds that gathered to see the bust of Nefertiti, and commented on the roses that were laid before her.

Today, Neertiti stands in her  bullet proof glass cage in the New Museum in Berlin, a solitary figure in a room built to showcase only her.

Her cage is raised, so that visitors look at her from below.

This is designed, according to Claudia Bregger in a chapter entitled The 'Berlin' Nefertiti Bust – Imperial Fantasies in German Archeological Discourse, in The Body of the Queen, so that:

A museum visitor of average height is presented with the carefully lit bust at an angle from from below, which lends the face 'something majestic', as Borchardt remarked. The bust is thus exhibited as the royal object of a modern cult.

For the many who visit her and who believe she should be returned to her homeland rather than languish in this new jail of hers, we have a suggestion:

Do what the visitors in the 1930's did – lay a single rose before her bust, to register your views.

The choice of the color of the rose you lay before her will depend on the message you wish to send.

The color of a rose expresses emotions, so choose the color that will, on the day of your visit to the New Museum to see the queen, express your emotions.

If you want to express your love for the lonely queen, lay a single red rose on the floor before her.

If you wish to symbolize your protest at her continued imprisonment under the grey winter skies of Berlin rather than her return to her perpetually sunny deserts, place a black rose on the floor beneath her cage.

If you want all to know that you are aware of the possible deceit of the German archeologist, Ludwig Borchardt, and the German Oriental Company (or  Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft) he worked for, when he removed her from her desert grave in Amarna in 1912 and took her to Berlin, then select a yellow rose, which significes deceit.

If you want the queen to know that you are fighting, in your own way, including by your laying of a rose before her, for a reconciliation of her image – the bust – with her homeland – Egypt – so that she may return home, then choose a white rose.

If you simply want to indicate that you love this forlornly beautiful queen, then place a simple red rose on the floor as you bow to her.

And when the New Museum authorities prohibit the laying of roses before the queen – something that is almost inevitable, because of the sensation a series of roses would cause – then you can consider resorting to a petal or two, which you can drop near her cage.

Just to let her know that she is not forgotten.

London 1917: The Night of Terror for Cleopatra's Needle

After centuries of peace on the banks of the Nile River, the obelisk known as Cleopatra's Needle was moved to the banks of another river – the Thames, in London. 

And here, on the night of 4 September 1917, the German air force launched a bombing raid, and the obelisk base  and one of the two sphinxes was hit by shrapnel.

Zeppelin raids on London in WWI

Enter Kaiser Wilhelm II

During the first World War French planes bombed German towns, and Kaiser Wilhelm II agreed that the German air force should retaliate, and allowed Zeppelins to be used in bombing London for the first time on May 31, 1915.

Enter the Count

The first large-scale builder of airships, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin (1838 – 1917), had served a stint in the Union army during the U.S. Civil War, and conducted balloon trials there as a military oberserver. 

He spent his life building the rigid dirigibles, with the first successful flight of his airship in 1900; within eight years Zeppelins were delivering mail and passengers over Germany.

Enter the German armed forces

In 1909 the German army used the first Zeppelin; during the first World War they used 115 Zeppelins for various missions,  including bombing raids – the Zeppelins  bombed England at the rate of about two per month.

Of the 115 Zeppelins, 53 were destroyed and another 24 so damaged they could not be used again.

With a little bit of help from the cows

The airships used an outer envelope and several separate gasbags inside, containing helium; about 200,000 sheets made from the intestines of cows were used to make the the goldbeater's skin of the gasbags of each airship.

The Zeppelins flew so high above London that the British fighter planes could not reach them, and when they did, their ammunition did not damage the airships – it was only in mid-1916 that the British planes were successful in using the new explosive bullets to punch holes into the outer skin of the Zeppelins and the incendiary bullets to set them on fire.

Only about ten percent of the bombs dropped from the Zeppelins hit their targets because bomb aiming was inaccurate, but the psychological impact was significant.

Gotha bomber - World War One

And now for the Gothas

When Zeppelin losses mounted, the German forces switched to airplanes, including the Gotha biplane aircraft, which flew at night and sometimes reached 20,000 feet, beyond reach of the British fighter planes. 

Landing a Gotha was tough – one estimate attributes 70% of Gotha losses to bad landings. 

The first flight of a Gotha took place only 13 years after the Orville Brothers first airplane flight in the Kitty Hawk. Gothas made 22 raids on England, and lost 61 aircraft. 

The Harvest Moon raids

Starting in September 1917, the Gothas and another large German bomber, the Giants, began what was called the "harvest moon" raids, attacking London nearly every night for a week.

Some shops let their staff go home early to escape the raids; some people gathered in parks to watch the raids, while others slept in the Tube stations.

The Obelisk's Turn

The ancient Egyptian obelisks feature in our thriller Obelisk Seven, so we were very interested in the history of the one in London.

On 4 September 1917 the Gothas made their first night-time raid on London. Four bombs were dropped around Charing Cross station near the Strand, with one landing on a tram traveling along the Thames Embankment. 

The bomb crater broke through the road's surface, exposing the circle/district underground line beneath the road.

Shrapnel from the bomb punched holes into one of the two large sphinxes that stand guard over the obelisk, and damaged the base of the obelisk - see our two photos below. The obelisk itself was not harmed.

Gotha bombing raid in WWI

Zeppelin watery end in WWI

Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin stamp

Cleopatra's Needle,  London: Gotha bomb damage to sphinx 1917

Shrapnel wound to Sphinx of London obelisk - 1917

London obelisk - sphinx with shrapnel wounds from Gotha bombing raid in 1917

Loraine and Sphinx of the London obelisk

Save the Cat: Blake Snyder on the role of The Board

In Save the Cat! Blake Snyder talks about a writer needing the beating ability –he describes it as a battle cry of Let's beat it out!

What's with the beat?

It's about structure, Blake says: something he learned only after writing screenplays for years:

It's a skill you must know... The craftmanship it akes, the patient work, the magic of storytelling on film, all come together in how you execute and realize structure.

He tells  how he came across Syd Field's Screenplay and found something that saved his career:

Oh! Three acts! Imagine  that? And yet, it was not enough. Like a swimner in a vast ocean, there was a lot of open water in between those two Act breaks. And a lot of empty script space in which to get lost, panic, and drown. I needed more islands, shorter swims.

His solution was to develop the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet – click here to see the actual beat sheet. As the number of pages in the average script runs at 110, there are 110 beats (pages) in the Beat Sheet, divided into 15 parts.

The Blake Snyder Board

How do you get to the beat sheet? You use The Board.

The Board lets you see what goes where, which character does what, and whether you need all the scenes or need new ones.

The Board is a blackboard or corkboard or notebook that divides the screenplay / book into 4 equal parts: Act One, first part of Act Two, second part of Act Two, and Act Three. In Blake's words:

It is the workout space where, using index cards, pushpins ... you can try your best ideas and see what they look like, and then begin to winnow them down. If done right, you'll end up with 40 scenes that make a movie ...

A similar approach is taken by Jennifer Jensen in her article Storyboards Help Track Plots and Subplots, and in the article The Board by Isaac.

So if you want to make your lot as a writer much easier, buy Save the Cat! and use Blake's Beat Sheet.

You might be pleasantly surprised by the results this discipline imposes on you.

Another version of The Board:

The Board

The Artist, the Engineer, the Dinner & an Obelisk for London

Edward A. Goodall

What on earth did an English artist, who thought parrots made an excellent soup and was accused of being a Russian spy in the Crimea, have to do with the move of an obelisk from Egypt to the Thames Embankment in London?

During our research about ancient Egyptian obelisks, for our thriller Obelisk Seven, we came upon the answer to this question.

The Beginning Dinner

It seems that the artist held a dinner which had momentous consequences for an ancient obelisk that had fallen down on the seashore in Egypt, at the foot of the one that was moved to Central Park in New York City:

At a dinner held at the home of Edward A. Goodall, several artists were invited including John Dixon the engineer.

Conversation eventually centered on Cleopatra's Needle in Egypt and John Dixon suggested that it be brought to England by private means since the government had estimated that the cost would be too great.

He said that if he had the money he would do it himself. Shortly thereafter, Sir Erasmus Wilson the celebrated surgeon and Freemason, called on John Dixon and offered the money to bring the obelisk over.

In 1865 Edward Goodall was living at 3 Fitzroy Rd., Regents Park, in London and the St. George's Square house, which Edward owned, was his studio. In 1884 he and his wife moved to 57 Fitzroy Rd. where they remained.

The Dixon Brothers

John Dixon (1835 – 1891), a civil engineer, and his younger brother, Waynman Dixon (1844 – 1930), also an engineer, moved the obelisk to London.

In 1876, Sir Erasmus Wilson, a leading surgeon and Freemason, agreed to pay John Dixon 10,000 pounds to move the obelisk, with payment only to be made if Dixon erected the obelisk on the Thames Embankment.

The Dixon brothers had been involved for some time in Egypt, mostly on engineering tasks, and Waynman Dixon had also spent time accurately measuring the Great Pyramid (he found some ancient relics which the original builders had left inside the pyramid, and John sent them to England).

The obelisk was first erected in Egypt by Pharaoh Thutmose III - the pharaoh who, according to the Royal Annals – saw around 1,500 B.C. fires in the sky above the desert, and centuries later was gifted to the British government in 1819 in recognition of Nelson's victory over the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile in 1798.

From one Freemason to Another

Included in A Short History of the Egyptian Obelisks, by William Ricketts Cooper, published in 1877, is a short narrative by Erasmus Wilson of his first meeting with John Dixon, including this:

As a sailor's son I took an interest in the matter ... I soon found that Mr. Dixon was a Freemason, hence, all formality and ceremony were at once banished. He told me that he had
long contemplated bringing the obelisk to England, and he hoped some day to do it himself, when he should be rich enough ... He then said, I should enclose the monolith in boiler plate, and then roll it into the sea ... and tow it to England.

Erasmus Wilson liked Dixon's idea of encasing the large granite pillar in iron, and hired him to do the job.

The Wanderings of Goodall

Edward A. Goodall (1819 – 1908) was an interesting man. He was a landscape and orientalist painter, the eldest sone of Edward Goodall, the well known line engraver; his brother was the celebrated Royal Academy painter Frederick Goodall.

In 1841 Goodall joined a Government-sponsored commission which was to define the boundaries of British Guiana, tasked with sketching the landscape, flora, fauna and inhabitants.

It was here that he had parrot soup, and once, when food ran low, ate a spider monkey.

He also singed his eyebrows , eyelashes and hair when gunpowder that was being prepared to salute departing members went off.

And he fell in love:

The entire party was much taken with the beauty of the local women, but Goodall must have been more so than most as he impetuously asked the father of one of them if he could marry her.

It seems that Goodall wore his rejection by the father well, and in 1854 he went to the Crimea as artist correspondent for the Illustrated London News, which was the most widely read journal in Britain, with 150,000 copies sold.

Edward A. Goodall - home at 3 Fitzroy Rd., Regents  Park

Goodall had access to the frontlines and battlefields, and observed the battle of Balaclava – scene of the famous Charge of the Light Brigade against the Russians on 25 October 1854, captured so eloquently by Lord Tennyson's poem - and the siege of Sebastopol:

At Inkerman in the spring of 1855, Goodall witnessed the melting snow reveal the bodies of dead Russian soldiers who had lain unburied throughout the winter. Crocuses were seen growing between the fingers of dead soldiers.

He had a short-lived spot of trouble due to mistaken identity, though:

Even so the [Naval] Brigade could not save Goodall from being arrested on suspicion of being a Russian spy. Ironically, the officer who arrested Goodall turned out to be a friend of Goodall’s brother, Frederick.

Cloeopatra's Needle arrives in London

Goodall stayed in the Crimea for a year, and then travelled widely, paying fifteen visits to Venice, as well as sketching and painting in France, Portugal, Morocco, Italy, Gibraltar and Spain.

In Egypt in 1870 Goodall was on the Nile riverbank sketching ancient Memphis when he saw a woman bend down to fill her pitcher, and tumble into the river. He jumped into the Nile and after a struggle brought her safely to the riverbank:

The next day she received several offers of marriage, being considered under "Divine protection."

Queen Victoria liked his work and gave him permission to paint from any window in the palace.

Cleopatra's Needle being raised in London

Cleopatra's Needle on the Thames Embankment, London

Cleopatra's Needle being placed in iron cylinder in Egypt by John Dixon

Cleopatra's Needle in London viewed from the Millenium Wheel

Cleopatra's Needle in London - from book by Erasmus Wilson

Cleopatra's Needle - Cover of book by Erasmus Wilson

Edward A. Goodall's studio was here at St. George's Square

Erasmus Wilson's grave at Swanscombe, Kent

Raising of Cleopatra's Needle - from the London Illustrated Times

Bridge of Sighs in Venice by Edward A. Goodall

Venice scene by Edward A. Goodall

Nefertiti – Torn between the Iron Lady and "Raider" Hawass

"Raider" Hawass

Is it High Noon in Berlin?

Has the head of the Supreme Council of the Antiquities of Egypt exposed a deep fear of the Chancellor of Germany?

Perhaps.

Dr. Hawass' Question

Dr. Zahi Hawass had this question for the Chancellor, when his request for the bust of Nefertiti to be loaned to Egypt was refused:

“They think we will be like the Raiders of the Lost Ark, that we will take it and not return it,” said Mr Hawass, who has been a vociferous champion for the permanent return of Egyptian artefacts.

Is this what the Iron Lady - as Chancellor Angela Merkel has been called - fears?

That Hawass will don his famous hat, put on his dusty boots, strap his pistol to his waist, pick up his trusty horsewhip, and beat off any attempts by the Germans to have the Nefertiti bust returned to Germany after the loan period expires?

Part of the German family?

It seems that the Germans have decided that the Beautiful One is fitting in well in Berlin, according to one Museum official:

The bust, [Dietrich Wildung, head of the Egyptian Museum], says, has become globally famous in a way that it would not have had it stayed in Egypt. “Nefertiti has become an outstanding example of how the foreign can be integrated into society,” Dr Wildung says. “She is accepted, not assimilated. She keeps her separateness and her uniqueness, yet she belongs here.”

The Fragile Queen?

And the Germans raised another reason why they just could not allow the bust of Nefertiti to be sent to Egypt for a short vacation in her homeland:

German officials say that the bust is too fragile to travel. “Nefertiti is not a pop star that can simply go on tour,” a senior official said.

 

Angela (Iron Lady) Merkel with Nefertiti Bust

So the bust is too delicate to travel home for a vacation?

The bust that survived being buried in the hot desert sands of Egypt for over 1,500 years, that was then dug up in 1912 and taken to the home of James Simon in Berlin in Germany, hidden in flack tower and later deep down in a salt mine during the Second World War to avoid Allied bombing, then after the war ended was moved first to Frankfurt then to a central warehouse of the Wiesbaden State Museum, then back to Berlin to the Old Museum and now to the New Museum?

She sure sounds pretty tough to me!

Chancellor Merkel, who lives just across the street from the New (Neues) Museum, Nefertiti's new prison in Berlin, can pop in to see her any time she wants to, but the people of Egypt have been denied the chance to see their famous queen for a few weeks.

The Nefertiti Standoff

Nefertiti's bust is one of "Raider" Hawass' Famous Five targets for return to Egypt (another one is the Rosetta Stone).

It seems we have a standoff between the German Iron Lady and the Egyptian Raider.

Our view - Set Her Free

Our view is in our novel, Obelisk Seven: Nefertiti should be set free, and returned to her home. Our compromise between the "No negotiations" stance of Chancellor Merkel and the "Unconditional Surrender" of Dr. Hawass uses something Kaiser Wilhelm II owned as part of our solution.

It is time for people of good will thoughout the world to rally behind "Raider" Hawass and insist on the return to Egypt of the bust of Nefertiti.

Set her free, Chancellor Merkel.

Let her go home.

James Simon - backer of Ludwig Borchardt who found Nefertiti Bust

Berlin flack tower - home of Nefertiti bust in 1941

   

Your Adams & Eves: We needed you – the Venetian

Gondola in Venice

Our man in Venice ended up taking on a life of his own, and we found ourselves simply having to follow him as he lead us through the canals of his home city.

Our Venetian character in Obelisk Seven is one of the minor characters, but the role he plays supporting the Big Three (Nick, Kate and Gliffy) is an important one. 

As soon as we decided that we wanted our novel to climax in Venice, we realized that we needed someone there to act as the conduit for the information dumps we had to add to the novel to move it along.

Our visit to Venice had been a real highlight of our train tour. 

Neither of us had appreciated the powerful position that Venice had occupied for so many centuries, and the unique nature of her democracy.

As soon as we set foot for the first time in St. Mark's square we lost our hearts to this wonderful city.

And then we lost them again when we glided beneath the bridges on our gondola, and walked beside the canals, admiring the ancient palaces that still exist, despite Venice's periodic floods.

So Lorenzo made his entrance, and came with a five hundred-year history, his own palace, and his very own Mouth of Truth.

And he arrived early on in our novel, and stayed until almost the very end.

A very welcome character.

St. Mark's Square, Venice

Venice from the sky

Venice Carnival Mask

Mouth of Truth in the Doge's Palace - reformatted

Glassblower's Art from Venice