QUEEN NEFERTITI (1370 - 1336 BCE ) WAS THE MOST  FAMOUS EGYPTIAN QUEEN AFTER CLEOPATRA.NEFERTITI KNOWN AS " THE RULER OF NILE AND DAUGHTER OF GODS".HER NAME MEANS, "THE BEAUTIFUL ONE HAS COME".SHE MARRIED EGYPTIAN PHARAOH AKHENATEN,SHE ADVISED HER HUSBAND IN MATTER RELATING TO RUNNING THE STATE.

Neferneferuaten Nefertiti is one of the most famous women is history. She was an Egyptian queen and chief consort of Akhenaten, an Egyptian Pharaoh. Nefertiti along with her husband brought a number of revolutionary changes to the kingdom. Nefertiti and her family were monotheistic and believed in the sun God Aten, while the rest of Egypt was polytheistic and believed in multiple Gods. Nefertiti and her husband attempted to change to rest of the kingdom to a monotheistic one. Temples were shut down and Gods were forgotten. Centuries of culture had been replaced with this new radical concept. While the royal family was not successful in completely changing the Egyptian kingdom to monotheism, some of the changes they imposed did remain. Many historians also believed that the priests and citizens did not easily accept the change.Nefertiti’s role in her husbands reign was unprecedented and unusual for the people of Egypt to see. The usual role of the Pharaohs queen is to stand behind her husband, literally and metaphorically. The queen was usually pictured behind the pharaoh. Nefertiti on the other hand was pictured right beside her husband or even by herself. She not only influenced the decisions he made, but also performed duties that were usually performed by the pharaoh. For example she is often pictured with the crown of a pharaoh or conquering her enemies. She was also given permission by Akhenaten to practice priesthood and give offerings to Aten. Akhenaten saw Nefertiti as an equal and went to great lengths to show it. He even placed her name next to his on the royal cartouche or carved tablet. It was even believed that Nefertiti ruled briefly by herself after the death of Akhenaten. Nefertiti was not afraid to voice her own opinions, even in a time when women were supposed to be seen not heard. She took her own initiative to make things she believed needed to happen, happen. Nefertiti would definitely help get equal rights for women. In a time where it was not unheard of a pharaoh treating his wife as an equal, Nefertiti accomplished just as much if not more than her husband. Nefertiti would be appalled at the pay gap between women and men in the workplace, especially since most of the women do the same work if not more than their male counterparts. Nefertiti would empower women to take a stand for their beliefs. She would encourage women to move out of the shadow of their husbands or male superiors and make changes for themselves. Nefertiti would be a great advocate and leader for that issue because she conquered it in her own time.The reforms implemented during her reign made Egypt one of the richest kingdoms in the world. Nefertiti also took an active role in bringing religious reforms in Egypt. She and her husband established the Aten Cult centered on the Sun god. The objective of setting up a new religion was to unite the country across religious lines. In the sculptures and paintings that were later discovered, Nefertiti was depicted as an equal to her husband. Despite her fame, mystery surrounds around the death of Nefertiti. While some historians opine that she was murdered, others believe that she died in a plague that swept Egypt after her death. Nefertiti could not maintain her control over the kingdom as she did not have a male heir. The Aten Cult was destroyed after her death by Tutankhamun. Nefertiti remains one of the most famous queens in the history of Egypt after Cleopatra. She married the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten at the age of fifteen and became the Great Royal Wife. The exact date of her marriage is not known. The couple led a happy married life and had six daughters, viz. Meritaten, Meketaten,Ankhesenpaaten,NeferneferuatenTasherit, Neferneferure, and Setepenre.The togetherness of Nefertiti and her husband is clearly visible in a number of artifacts from the time. In a number of paintings and sculptures, they were seen to be riding chariots together and kissing in the public. The couple seemed to have a deep romantic connection generally not found among other pharaohs of the time.Nefertiti and her husband established a new Aten Cult to replace the existing religions. According the Aten Cult, there was only one single god, viz. Aten (the Sun god). Aten Cult was monotheistic and did not support the existence of any other god than Aten.Nefertiti and her husband were believed to have acted as the priests in the temple of Aten during their reign. While trying to establish the new religion, Nefertiti and her husband took care to retain their supremacy over the people. They served as the priests in the temple of Aten, and common people were expected to reach the god through them.Nefertiti and her husband built a new city ‘Akhetaton’ in honor of the Aten god. Their palace was shifted to the new city. The city is now known by the name el-Amarna and had a number of open air temples.

Nefertiti’s crown told historians and archaeologists a crucial piece of information she was as powerful as a king! That an Egyptian queen could have been equal to her king is a notion that many Egyptologists are still debating over. However, more and more pieces of evidences show that may well have been the case with Queen Nefertiti and her pharaoh-husband King Akhenaten.

Nefertiti was a queen in Ancient Egypt who is world renowned for her beauty. She was one of the most powerful women in ancient times and was very influential during her husband’s reign. It is believed that she lived from around 1370 B.C. to around 1330 B.C. The identity of Nefertiti’s parents has not been established with certainty. The most widely accepted theory is that she was the daughter of a high ranking official named Ay, who would later go on to become Pharaoh for a brief period. It is believed that Nefertiti’s mother died and Ay’s known wife Tey was not the mother of Nefertiti but her wet nurse. This is deducted from inscriptions which mention Tey as “nurse of the Great Royal Wife”, i.e. Nef.Amenhotep III was the Pharaoh of Egypt at the time of Nefertiti’s birth. His elder son died young and hence the reign fell to his younger son Amenhotep IV. Amenhotep IV married Nefertiti at the beginning of his reign. She was probably around 15 at the time. Nefertiti then became the Great Royal Wife of Amenhotep IV and along with her husband oversaw arguably the wealthiest period of Ancient Egyptian history.ertiti.From inscriptions it can be deduced that Nefertiti and Akhenaten had at least six daughters. Although Nefertiti was not his only wife, Akhenaten is shown openly displaying love for Nefertiti and their daughters, which is uncommon in depictions. Most probably, the couple had a genuine romantic relationship. It can also be deduced that Nefertiti played a prominent role in the political and religious life during Akhenaten’s rule. She represented the female aspect of the God and along with her husband, was a bridge between God Aten and the citizens.After Akhenaten’s death Ancient Egypt was ruled by a female pharaoh who went by the name of Neferneferuaten. She ruled Egypt for around 2 years. There are various theories regarding who this Neferneferuaten was. The use of Nefertiti’s name made her one of the primary candidates but her likely death in Year 12 ruled her out.Nefertiti was considered one of the most beautiful women of her time. Many paintings and statues survive to this day which depict her beauty. Her legacy is rivaled only by another beautiful Egyptian queen, viz. Cleopatra.Nefertiti was also considered as one of the most powerful queens who ruled Egypt. Her husband always attempted to depict her as an equal. She was shown to be wearing the crown of the pharaoh or bravely fighting the enemies in many of the stone sculptures of the time.After the death of her husband, Nefertiti took an active part in governing the kingdom. As she did not have a son, she even tried to consolidate her power by marrying one of the sons of the Hittie emperor, Suppiluliuma I.But she could not remarry again as one of the sons of the Hittie emperor sent to Egypt was murdered on his way.Twelve years after the death of her husband, Nefertiti suddenly disappears from all the ancient records of Egypt. She was believed to have died in a major plague that swept across the Egyptian kingdom.Some historians believe that she was murdered. However, no evidence to support this claim has been found till now by archeologists.The mummies of Nefertiti, her children, and her parents have not been found and identified yet. One of the two female mummies found by the archeologist Victor Loret in the year 1898 was rumored to be that of Nefertiti. Till now there is no agreement among the archeologists whether the mummy was indeed of Nefertiti.The third daughter of Nerfertiti was married to Tutankhamun who later became the king of Egypt.After the death of Nefertiti, Tutankhamun restored Egypt to its older religions. All the traces of Aten Cult were wiped out from the kingdom.

Queen Nefertiti in her royal chariot. Nefertiti is remembered as an Egyptian queen renowned for her beauty. She ruled alongside her husband, Pharaoh Akhenaten, during the mid-1300s B.C, but little is known about the origins of Nefertiti. Some scholars have proposed Nefertiti was a princess from the ancient Mitanni kingdom and her name might originally have been princess Tadukhipa.

Akhenaten was a pharaoh of Egypt who reigned over the country for about 17 years between roughly 1353 B.C. and 1335 B.C.A religious reformer he made the Aten, the sun disc, the center of Egypt’s religious life and carried out an iconoclasm that saw the names of Amun, a pre-eminent Egyptian god, and his consort Mut, be erased from monuments and documents throughout Egypt’s empire. When he ascended the throne his name was Amenhotep IV, but in his sixth year of rule he changed it to “Akhenaten” a name that the late Egyptologist Dominic Montserrat translated roughly as the “Benevolent one of (or for) the Aten.”In honor of the Aten, he constructed an entirely new capital at an uninhabited place, which we now call Amarna, out in the desert. Its location was chosen so that its sunrise conveyed a symbolic meaning. “East of Amarna the sun rises in a break in the surrounding cliffs.He notes that this capital would quickly grow to become about 4.6 square miles (roughly 12 square kilometers) in size. After his death, the pharaoh’s religious reforms quickly collapsed, his new capital became abandoned and his successors denounced him.Akhenaten, either before or shortly after he became pharaoh, would marry Nefertiti, who in some works of art is shown standing equal next to her husband. Some have even speculated that she may have become a co-, or even sole, ruler of Egypt. Akhenaten was the son of Amenhotep III and his wife Queen Tiye. During their rule, Egypt ruled an empire that stretched from Syria, in west Asia, to the fourth cataract of the Nile River in modern-day Sudan.The letters indicate that an empire called the Hittites, based in modern-day Turkey, became increasingly assertive during Akhenaten’s rule, going to war against the Mitanni, a people who had been an Egyptian ally. “In addition to their conflicts with the Mitanni, the Hittites were also stirring up instability in the vassal states of Syria, and a nomadic group, the Apiru, was creating unrest in Syro-Palestine.They note that while previous Egyptian kings would likely have launched a military expedition into west Asia as a result of these acts, Akhenaten appears to have done nothing. “Some modern scholars criticize Akhenaten, noting that he focused all of his efforts on his religious ideas and thereby allowed Egypt’s international prestige to deteriorate. While the Aten, the sun-disc, was nothing new in Egyptian religion, Akhenaten’s decision to make it the focus of religious life, to the point where he desecrated the names of Amun and Mut, was something entirely new.Montserrat notes that at Karnak, a temple complex near Luxor that was devoted to Amun-Ra, the king would have a series of Aten temples built, their construction beginning perhaps in his very first year of rule.Even at this early stage, he appeared to have a dim view of the god Amun, whom Karnak was dedicated to. Montserrat notes that the axis of the new Aten complex was built facing to the east, toward the rising sun, whereas the rest of Karnak is oriented towards the west, where ancient Egyptians believed the underworld to be. “So Akhenaten’s first major building project turns its back on the temple of Amun, perhaps anticipating the events later in his reign. In addition to his radical religious changes, Akhenaten also unleashed a revolution in the way art was drawn. Before his time Egyptian art, especially those portraying royalty, tended to show a stiff, structured, formal style.This changed radically in Akhenaten’s time, with people being drawn with cone shaped heads and thin spindly limbs. The royal family was even drawn in a way that conveyed intimate moments. One depiction, reproduced in Hornung’s book, shows Akhenaten and Nefertiti riding a horse-drawn chariot, the two appear to be kissing each other with the rays of the Aten shining down on them.This radical departure in art, particularly the distorted body shapes, has long left Egyptologists mystified. Hornung writes that in 1931 the German Egyptologist Heinrich Schäfer commented, “anyone who steps in front of certain of these representations for the first time recoils from this epitome of physical repulsiveness. His [Akhenaten’s] head seems to float atop his long, thin neck. His chest is sunken, yet there is something feminine about its form. Below his bloated paunch and his fat thighs, his skinny calves are a match for his spindly arms.Nefertiti is depicted alongside her husband conducting rituals, making offerings to the sun. In some images their daughters also take part. One significant scene shows Nefertiti serving as a priest and taking part in the ritual of smiting the enemies of Egypt. Images of the queen show her in what was then a unique headdress, the straight-sided, flat-topped crown familiar from the famous bust.In the 12th year of Akhenaten’s reign Nefertiti’s name and image disappears from reliefs, paintings and inscriptions. The reason is not known, but she may have died or changed her name. Some historians speculate she took on a male name and became co- regent under the name Smenkhkare, but a male mummy has been identified as Smenkhkare, who was most likely the father or brother of Tutankhamen.Most of the daughters also disappeared from depictions, but Nefertiti’s daughter Ankhesenpaaten married Tutankhamen, one of Akhenaten’s sons by another wife.When Tutankhamen resumed worship of the old gods, she became Ankhesenamun.After Akhenaten’s death in about 36BC, efforts were made to remove the names of both Akhenaten and Nefertiti from inscriptions and images in temples and elsewhere. The city of Amarna was left to fall into ruin.Tutankhamen reigned for 10 years and was succeeded by Ay. There is evidence that Tut was hastily buried and last week it was revealed he was wearing a death mask in which his name was stamped over that of Nefertiti.Nefertiti remained largely forgotten until in 1912 a team headed by German Ludwig Borchardt discovered the beautiful limestone sculpture depicting the head of an Egyptian queen. It was later identified as Nefertiti. Found in the ruins of the workshop of the court sculptor Thutmose, it was unfinished and the left eye was lacking the semi-precious stone inlay present in the right. It may have been used as a template for other official portraits.The face of Nefertiti has been revered as an image of perfect beauty for over a century, but little has been known about her. We may be on the verge of discovering some of her secrets.

Queen Nefertiti being just as powerful as an Egyptian king, if not more. According to her, it shouldn’t come as a surprise because the ancient Egyptian culture was known to believe in the male-female duality of the universe. She even points out that the very symbol of cosmic order was the female deity Maat, and that Pharaoh Akhenaten often described himself as ‘living by Maat’, despite his monotheistic devotion to the Sun’s disk Aten. So, his co-regency alongside his favourite wife and queen—Nefertiti—is probably neither as shocking nor impossible as some scholars argue.

Amenhotep IV married Nefertiti ,Amenhotep IV ruled Egypt for 17 years from around 1353 to 1336 B.C. He is most famous for changing Egypt’s religion from polytheism to henotheism (belief and worship of one God while accepting the existence of other deities). Worship was centered on the God Aten. Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten, the name by which he is known today. Nefertiti was referred to as Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti. Nefertiti means “the beautiful one has come” and the new name meant “beautiful are the beauties of Aten, a beautiful woman has come”.Nefertiti is prevalent in the depictions on the walls and tombs built during Akhenaten’s rule. The frequency is perhaps more than any other queen of ancient Egypt. While in some of the scenes she plays the role of a supporting queen, some show her leading worship of Aten, driving a chariot or striking an enemy. Such scenes in which she assumes rights generally associated with the Pharaoh suggest that Nefertiti was almost an equal counterpart to her husband during his reign. She is definitely one of the most powerful women of ancient Egypt. Akhenaten’s final years are shrouded in mystery. Until recently, Egyptologists had noted that Nefertiti’s name appears to disappear around year 12 of his reign, the time the last of his major monuments were built.It has been speculated that she may have fallen out of favor with Akhenaten, or that her name was changed so that she became a co-ruler of Egypt. However, a recent discovery challenges all of this. In December of last year, Egyptologists with the Dayr-al-Barsha project announced that they had found an inscription, dated to year 16 of Akhenaten’s reign (shortly before his death), that mentions Nefertiti and shows that she was still Akhenaten’s “chief wife” (in the researchers words).Whatever happened in Akhenaten’s final years his religious changes, and new capital, would not survive his death. Within a few years of his death (which occurred around 1335 B.C.) a new king named Tutankhamun, whom many researchers now believe to have been Akhenaten’s son, ascended the throne.A boy king, he had originally been named Tutankhaten, in honor of the Aten, but his name was changed to honor Amun, the god whom his father had tried to have wiped out. During Tut’s reign, Egypt would return to its original religious beliefs, Amun and Mut assuming their places on top of the Egyptian pantheon of gods.The capital that Akhenaten built would become abandoned within a few decades of his death, and the “heretic king” would fall into disgrace, not even being included on some king lists of Egypt.Furthermore, Tutankhamun would condemn Akhenaten’s actions in a stela found at Karnak. Part of it reads “the temples and the cities of the gods and the goddesses, starting from Elephantine [as far] as the Delta marshes… were fallen into decay and their shrines were fallen into ruin, having become mere mounds overgrown with gras.On December 6, 1912 a team led by German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt found the now famous bust of Nefertiti at Amarna, Egypt. In 1913, there was a meeting between Borchardt and a senior Egyptian official to discuss how to divide the archaeological finds of 1912. It is said that Borchardt showed a photograph of the bust to the Egyptian official “that didn’t show Nefertiti in her best light” and concealed its real value. The German Oriental Company denies this. The Bust of Nefertiti was crafted in 1345 BC by the royal sculptor Thutmose. The bust shows Nefertiti “with a long neck, elegantly arched brows, high cheekbones, a slender nose and an enigmatic smile”. In 1923, the bust was first displayed to the public at the Egyptian Museum of Berlin in Germany. It created a sensation and it soon made Nefertiti a world renowned icon of feminine beauty. The bust is described as “the best-known work of art from ancient Egypt, arguably from all antiquity”. It remains one of the most copied images from ancient Egypt and the most famous bust of ancient art.