Tempering with portraits and pictures to hide imperfections is not something new. Even kings and queens did it, either to hide scars or deformities, or to magnify certain physical traits, depending on the purpose of the painting. However, it now appears that this type of modifications is something that has been around for at least 3,300 years, as a growing number of pieces of evidence suggest that even the famous bust sculpture of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti was augmented in “post-production,” to hide certain physical defects.
The Great Royal Wife (chief consort) of the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten, Nefertiti, lived between around 1370 BC to approximately 1330 BC, and was made famous by a 20-inch sculpture, most probably the work of the sculptor Thutmose, as the piece was found in his workshop.
The delicate statuette, which was found in 1912 at Tell el-Amarna, the capital city of Akhenaten, is carved on a limestone core, with the outer layers made up of stucco, in variable thicknesses.
“It is possible that the bust of Nefertiti was commissioned (probably by Akhenaten himself) to represent Nefertiti according to his personal perception,” Alexander Huppertz, the director of the Imaging Science Institute in Berlin, explained and reported the find in a recent issue of the journal Radiology.
Despite the fact that the sculpture was analyzed using CT technology back in 1992, it was not until recently that Huppertz and his team got access to modern investigation methods, which allowed them to look deeper into the layers making up the statue.
They learned that the original mold, the one that was covered by all the stucco layers, was but a pale representation of what was on the outside. The cheekbones are less prominent in the inner part of the sculpture, and wrinkles exist around the corners of the lips. In addition, the team also discovered that the corners of the eyes and the eyelids had less depth in the original sculpture. Huppertz assumed that the modifications had been made simply to render the queen more beautiful, according to the standards of the age.
UNESCO, the cultural organization of the UN, is currently mediating talks between a German and an English museum, on the one hand, and Egyptian authorities on the other, as the latter seek to bring home these artifacts, which the nation considers to be its rightful possession. Some five such items are also on the list, and it remains to be seen if Egypt will be awarded custody of the valuable treasures.
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