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.

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

   

Twice Buried – The Finding of Nefertiti's Bust

Bust of Queen Nefertiti - reformatted

A beautiful bust of a beautiful queen was buried under the hot sands of Egypt for 1,500 years, dug up and moved – surrounded by controversy – to Berlin in Germany in 1912, and then reburied, only this time in a salt mine.

Read this short extract from Chapter 15 of Obelisk Seven, about the discovery of the long-buried bust of Queen Nefertiti:

"After his death, Nefertiti simply vanishes from the scene. The city where Nefertiti lived is swiftly emptied. It falls into ruins and most of it is covered by the desert sand over the centuries."

            Gliffy paused. He had them completely now.

            "And then the revisionists start their campaign. They use chisels to carve out the names of King Tut's father and his mother and the new sun god, Aten, wherever they can find them. They even delete his father's name from the List of Kings, so that Nefertiti and her husband disappear from Egyptian history for more than three thousand and five hundred years. Poof!"

            His bunched fingers exploded.

            "One pharaoh gone."

            The exploded hand turned and moved gently sideways through the air.

            "And life moves on," Gliffy said, "until, one hot day in the year 1887 AD, a peasant woman starts digging among some ruins which peek through the hot desert sand, looking for old bricks which she can grind into a fertilizer for her garden."

            Kate shivered, feeling goose bumps on her arms. She folded them and leaned forward to stare once more at Nefertiti.

            "The peasant finds what becomes known as the Amarna Letters, around three hundred baked clay tablets with diplomatic correspondence on them. Other odds and ends are found and slowly the story of the missing royal couple is pieced together and the chisels of the ancient censors are overcome. The legend of Nefertiti starts to be reborn."

            "What happened? How did they find it?" Lorenzo asked, pointing at the bust.

            "Egyptologists rush to explore the city of Amarna. Over years, the city is uncovered from the sandy desert," Gliffy continued. "One of these teams comes from Germany and is lead by the famous Egyptologist, Ludwig Borchardt."

Ludwig Borchardt with Nefertiti Bust in Egypt

Borchardt (1863 – 1938) was an Egyptian archaeologist, discoverer of the Nefertiti bust and expert and Old Kingdom temples. He founded the German Archeological Institute in Cairo in 1907.

He began excavating in Amarna, and discovered the workshop of the sculptor Djhutmose, and in it the bust of Nefertiti, which is now in the New (Neues) Museum in Berlin.

The bust was buried once more in a salt mine in Germany, to protect it from Allied bombs during the Second World War.

Bust of Nefertiti

Amarna Tablet - which lead to discovery of Nefertiti Bust

Emilie & Ludwig Borchardt - discoverer of bust of Nefertiti

General George S. Patton  in Egypt during WWII

General Patton's Third Army with Nazi gold  in Merkers mine - DailyMail

NASA and The UFO Pharaoh:

Is there a link between something a pharaoh saw above the Egyptian desert thousands of years ago, and recent reports of the existence of many earthlike planets in our and other universes?

The Royal Annals list the ruling pharaohs of ancient Egypt. This is King Tut the Third (aka The UFO Pharaoh):

Pharaoh Thutmose III

What Thutmose III saw in the desert

According to one source, in 1,482 B.C. pharaoh Thutmose III was out in the desert with his troops when he saw a circle of fire in the sky; a few days later he saw more of them – they were just over a hundred feet long and hundred feet wide – before they flew up into the sky, out of sight.

Tulli's find in the Cairo bazaar

A former director of the Egyptian section of the Vatican Museum, Professor Alberto Tulli, found a manuscript in 1934 that is now known as the Tulli papyrus or manuscript after him, in a bazaar in Cairo, and it was then given to an Italian-Russian Egyptologist named Prince Boris de Rachewiltz for translation.

The Prince and the Poet

The prince had married the daughter of the American poet, Ezra Pound, whom Hemingway had tried to teach to box (Hemingway later wrote that he was never able to teach Pound how to throw a left hook).

Pound was caught and spent 25 days in an open cage at a US Army base north of Pisa; he was later accused of treason during WWII because he had sided with Mussolini against the US, but was found incompetent to face trial and spent 12 years in a mental institution.

When Pound returned to Italy in 1958 he stayed at the Prince's Castle Brunnenburg. He died in his home in Venice.

The Prince was a respected Egyptologist, and his translation became a sensation, because people could now read about the circles of fire which Thutmose III had seen around three thousand years ago in Egypt.

The only problem is that the original papyrus has never been found, so everyone has to rely on the Tulli copy and on the Prince's translation.

Apparently Tulli left all his assets to his brother, a priest in the Lateran Palace in Rome, but the priest also died and his assets were distributed to his heirs, and the trail of the papyrus goes cold there. A lot of people take it as proof that Thutmose did see UFOs, mostly because they can't see why the Prince would be party to a hoax, but others are skeptical.

Brunnenberg Castle

There you have it – a pharaoh in the desert, circles of fire in the sky, a prince as a translator, who is married to the daughter of a man convicted of treason.

Does this mean that pharaoh Thutmose III had a visit from beings from another world? If so, what evidence do we have of "other worlds"?

Nefertiti and Kaiser Wilhelm II

Kaiser Wilhelm II

Having been buried under the desert sand of Egypt for 1,500 years, the bust of Queen Nefertiti was dug up in 1912, and taken to Germany. 

The man who funded the expedition which found her, Henri James Simon, a Jewish German entrepreneur, had a copy made of the bust and on October 3, 1913 gave it to Kaiser Wilhelm II. The photograph above was inscribed by the Kaiser to Simon.

The Kaiser ruled as emperor of the German empire and as king of Prussia from 15 June 1888 to 18 November 1918.

The Kaiser, who believed that Germany had a right to use force to gain its rightful place in the sun, fled to the Netherlands on November 9, 1918, after disasterous defeats of the German army. 

He lived in exile for 22 years, having been banned by the Dutch authorities, who restricted his movements to 30 kilometers around the town of Doorn, and censored his letters.

Queen Wilhelmina of Holland resisted the intense pressure put on her by Britain and America to hand the Kaiser over to face hanging as a war criminal.

The Kaiser bought an estate of 60 hectares known as Huis Doorn in August 1919, and lived there until his death on June 4, 1941. 

Despite Hitler's desire to give him a state funeral, the Kaiser's wish to be buried in a small mausoleum on the lawn of his home was honored; he wanted his body to remain there in what he regarded as German soil until the monarchy was restored in Germany.

Kaiser Wilhelm II's saddle-chair

The Kaiser was not a lover of trees: between 1926 and 1929 the fit old man cut down 17,300 trees on his estate, leaving large areas denuded, much to the horror of his Dutch hosts.

He also had unusual work habits, dispensing with a chair in his office and using a stool with a saddle placed on top. The Kaiser claimed that this helped him concentrate.

The Kaiser kept his copy of the bust of Nefertiti in the study of Huis Doorn.

A copy of the lonley queen, kept by the lonely emperor in exile in a foreign land, and unable – due to opposition by people in power – to return to their homes.

Huis Doorn - exile home of Kaiser Wilhelm II

James Simon - who gave a copy of the Nefertiti bust to Kaiser Wilhelm II

Study of Kaiser Wilhelm II in Huis Doorn 

Copy of Nefertiti bust given to Kaiser Wilhelm II by James Simon in 1913

Nefertiti – The Lonely Queen in her new Berlin jail

From desert tomb to a bomb-scarred prison in Berlin - having ruled as queen of a revolutionary pharaoh some 3,400 years ago, sitting at his side in the new city he built in the middle of the Egyptian desert, Nefertiti now is imprisoned in the bomb-scarred museum restored in Berlin as her jail.

The restored jail was designed by the famous British architect, Sir David Allan Chipperfield. 

The Neues Museum (New Museum) is the final act in the restoration of the Museum Island complex which was commissioned by Prussian kaisers. 

The museum complex was bombed by the Royal Air Force in 1943, during the Second World War. Chipperfield retained some of the damage:

As part of the restoration concept, Chipperfield chose to leave many of the wartime scars inflicted on the building untouched. In the main entrance ... the walls remain stripped back to bare brick.

The  bust of the lovely queen looks forlorn in her new jail, just as she looked lonely in the one she was imprisoned in while the New Museum was being restored.

Nefertiti Bust in the New Museum in Berlin, Germany

Nefertiti married pharaoh Amenhotep IV, who reigned around 1353 BC.  Amenhotep was a religious revolutionary.  By his time there had been a god-merger, with three gods - Ra, Amun and Horus - merged into one, so that they were all identified with each other.  He
took this one stage further by trying to persuade people that the troika was one god, and that supreme god was Amen.  He took the worship of Amen out of the dark inner sanctums of the temples, into the open, sunlit areas. He succeeded for a while, but only because he had the power.   

After his death things reverted to the old ways again, and it was payback time - much of the art and many of the buildings of his time were defaced.  Later pharaohs took blocks of stone from his monuments and temples to build other tombs.

King Tut, his successor, beat a hasty retreat from his father's city of Akhetaten, perhaps because of a flu outbreak, and the new religion died. too.

Even good old Sigmund Freud got in on the act.  He claimed in his book Moses and Monotheism that this pharaoh's drive to have only one god was later picked up by Judaism.

Nefertiti's husband - Amenhotep IV

It's a bit ironic that the revolutionary pharaoh is known today as a failure, while his lovely wife, Nefertiti, lives on in people's imagination because the beauty of her face was captured in a painted bust.   

They were pretty fond of each other.  You can see it in photos of some drawings of the time, showing them holding hands, and Nefertiti kissing her daughter. 

It was the one and only time in when such natural poses were shown of a pharaoh and his wife.  A very natural style of art developed in his court, but it ended when he died.

They had a spat and parted company, with Nerfertiti, who had six daughters but no son, going to live in the northern palace with her daughter and her husband, the future King Tut. 

Tut turned his back on his father-in-law's new religion, and switched back to the old gods, before he died at eighteen.

His father's push for one single god really rattled the establishment. Later generations of pharaohs took her husband's name, and son Tut's name, off the list of kings, and Amenhotep was unknown as a king for more than three thousand years.  In the nineteenth century some archeologists dug up traces, and his history was revealed once again.

Nefertiti, Amenhotep IV and their children

Nefertiti being installed in the New Museum in Berlin

Nefertiti bust being admired by Prince Charles & Lady Camilla

New Museum in Berlin exterior - new jail of Nefertiti bust