A01=Joyce Tyldesley
akhenaten
amarna
ancient egypt
ancient queen
ancinet world
Author_Joyce Tyldesley
berlin museum
Category=NHC
consort ruler
egyptian
egyptology
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
female power
heretic
history's most beautiful women
lost masterpiece
mummy
nefertiti
painted bust
pharaoh
pyramids
royal portraiture
tom holland
Product details
- ISBN 9781781250518
- Weight: 200g
- Dimensions: 128 x 196mm
- Publication Date: 02 Jan 2020
- Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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More than three thousand years ago a sculptor working in the royal city of Amarna carved a limestone bust of an Egyptian queen. The queen was Nefertiti, consort of the 'heretic pharaoh' Akhenaten. Plastered and painted, Nefertiti's bust depicted an extraordinarily beautiful woman. However, Akhenaten's reign was drawing to an end, and the royal family was soon to be written out of Egypt's official history. Not long after its creation the stone Nefertiti was locked in a storeroom and forgotten.
In 1912 the bust was re-discovered and transported to Germany. Initially hidden from the public view, the beautiful queen was eventually displayed in Berlin Museum. Instantly, she became an ancient world celebrity.
Egypt has yielded more than its fair share of artistic masterpieces, but no other sculpture has so successfully bridged the gap between the ancient and modern worlds. The timeless beauty of the Nefertiti bust both attracts us and sparks our imagination, but in so doing it obscures our view of the past, shifting attention not only from the other members of the Amarna court, but also from other, equally valid, representations of Nefertiti herself. In this book Joyce Tyldesley explores the creation of a cultural icon, from its ancient origins to its modern context: its discovery, its display, and its dual role as a political pawn and artistic inspiration.
Joyce Tyldesley is a Reader in Egyptology at the University of Manchester, and an Honorary Research Associate of the Manchester Museum. She is the author of many books on ancient Egypt, including Cleopatra, Last Queen of Egypt, which was a Radio 4 Book of the Week and Tutankhamen's Curse: The Developing History of an Egyptian King, which won the 2014 Felicia A. Holton Book Award given by the Archaeological Institute of America.
Find her on Twitter @JoyceTyldesley
