Egypt

Neferetiti's Eyes

Archaeology Magazine - Nefertiti's Eyes (Earl R. Ertmman)

Archaeology has a feature in the March/April 2008 issue entitled Nefertiti's Eyes, which you can see online at the above address.

Did the queen's distinctive feature become a symbol of Egyptian royalty?

All eyes were on the Valley of the Kings the morning of February 5, 2006, when our expedition first looked into the chamber now known as KV63, the first tomb found in Egypt's Valley of the Kings since that of Tutankhamun (KV62) in 1922.

Press speculation was rampant over what the tomb might hold. Would our expedition find the mummies of royal women from the late 18th Dynasty, such as Queen Nefertiti, thought by some to be Tut's mother? Or the six princesses she bore to the pharaoh Akhenaten, including Tut's queen, Ankhesenamun? The mummies of these women have either not been found or identified. Perhaps they were removed from Akhenaten's capital at Amarna when a later king, presumably Tut, returned to the traditional capital of Thebes on the Nile opposite the Valley of the Kings. Did Tut rebury them in the Valley?

After taking out several stones blocking the doorway from the tomb shaft into the chamber, we peered through the narrow opening. Inside, we could see many large ceramic jars and several wooden coffins, some with yellow-painted faces. The press speculation was incorrect on all counts. We found no mummies in any of the tomb's seven coffins and no inscriptions to tell us for whom these coffins were initially intended.

But while studying the coffins, I discovered--in the eyes of faces painted on three of them--an intriguing link to Nefertiti, the queen whose name means, simply, "the beautiful one has come." While none of the coffins held Nefertiti's remains, the eyes may tell us something unexpected about her celebrated beauty. Was it in part the result of a genetic syndrome?

See the above page for the full story.

- Feature: The Riddle Of Kv63
drhawass.com (Zahi Hawass) With video After King Tut’s tomb was discovered, everyone thought there were no more tombs to be found in the Valley of the Kings. But in 2006, we made an amazing discovery, the shaft of an unknown tomb. When I first saw the...

- The Truth In The Search For Nefertiti
In a very flawed article from the Archaeology News Network, the former head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, Dr. Zahi Hawass disputes Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves theory that the tomb of Nefertiti will be found behind the painted walls...

- The Daughters Of Nefertiti
Valley of the Kings tomb KV63 was discovered quite by accident in 2005 by a team directed by Dr. Otto Schaden working on the tomb of Amenmesse inside and around the entrance of that king's tomb, KV10. As debris was being removed from in front of...

- The Tomb Of Nefertiti
Well all is set for Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves to investigate Tutankhamun's tomb hoping to find a doorway behind one of two walls or both. Mr. Reeves believes that Nefertiti's burial chamber may be behind one of them. This theory coming from...

- After Nefertiti
With the recent release of the data from the DNA and CT scanning of the eighteenth dynasty mummies in particular the mummies believed related to king Tutankhamen some new questions have been raised. The results show that the Kv55 man found in a coffin...

Egypt