Two years later in Paris he repeated the proposal, listing the stone as one of several key items belonging to Egypt's cultural heritage, a list which also included the iconic bust of Nefertiti in the Egyptian Museum of Berlin ; a statue of the Great Pyramid architect Hemiunu in the Roemer-und-Pelizaeus-Museum in Hildesheim, Germany ; the Dendara Temple Zodiac in the Louvre in Paris ; and the bust of Ankhhaf from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

* c. 1348 BC – 1336 BC: Nefertiti, bust from Akhetaten ( modern Amarna ) was made.

Nefertiti bust with eye liner applied

The Nefertiti bust | iconic bust of Nefertiti, claimed by some to be illegally obtained by the Germans during the customary excavations at Tell el-Amarna in 1912.

The Nefertiti Bust is a 3, 300-year-old painted limestone bust of Nefertiti, the Great Royal Wife of the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten and one of the most copied works of ancient Egypt.

A German archaeological team led by Ludwig Borchardt discovered the Nefertiti bust in 1912 in Thutmose's workshop in Amarna, Egypt.

The Nefertiti bust has become a cultural symbol of Berlin, Germany, as well as of ancient Egypt.

Note Nefertiti wears a crown similar to that depicted on the bust.

The bust of Nefertiti is believed to have been crafted in 1345 BC by the sculptor Thutmose.

The bust does not have any inscriptions, but was identified as Nefertiti as it wears the characteristic crown that Nefertiti was known to wear.

Nefertiti bust

Borchardt showed the Egyptian official a photograph of the bust " that didn't show Nefertiti in her best light ".

Neues Museum, Berlin is the present location of the Nefertiti bust

The Nefertiti bust has been in Germany since 1913, when it was shipped to Berlin and presented to James Simon, a wholesale merchant and the sponsor of the Amarna excavation.

The Nefertiti bust was displayed in Berlin ’ s Neues Museum on Museum Island until the museum was closed in 1939 ; with the onset of World War II, the Berlin museums were emptied and the artifacts moved to secure shelters for safekeeping.

As early as 1946, East Germany ( German Democratic Republic ) insisted on the return of Nefertiti to Museum Island in East Berlin, where the bust had been displayed before the war.

In 1989, the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak viewed the bust and announced that Nefertiti was " the best ambassador for Egypt " in Berlin.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, the former Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, believes that Nefertiti belongs to Egypt and that the bust was taken out of Egypt illegally and should therefore be returned.

Some scholars have argued that Akhenaten went blind at the end of his life and was supported by his wife Nefertiti.

The exact dates of when Nefertiti was married to Akhenaten and later promoted to his Queen are uncertain.

One of the structures, the Mansion of the Benben ( hwt-ben-ben ), was dedicated to Nefertiti.

In his fifth year, Amenhotep IV officially changed his name to Akhenaten, and Nefertiti was henceforth known as Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti.

Nefertiti ’ s steward during this time was an official named Meryre II.

Some theories believe that Nefertiti was still alive and held influence on the younger royals.

Furthermore, Fletcher suggested that Nefertiti was the Pharaoh Smenkhkare.

" Ancestry and Pathology in King Tutankhamun's Family " < cite > The Journal of the American Medical Association </ cite > p. 640-641 </ ref > Recent DNA testing had also discovered that she was the daughter of Yuya and Thuya, who were the parents of Queen Tiye, thus ruling her out as Nefertiti .< ref > Hawass, Zahi et al.

Before he became pharaoh, he was already married to Nefertiti.

Nefertiti ( literally " the beautiful one has come ") was the 14th-century BC Great Royal Wife ( chief consort ) of the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt.

It was found in what had been the sculptor Thutmose's workshop, along with other unfinished busts of Nefertiti.

Although the rest of the Amarna collection was displayed in 1913 – 14, Nefertiti was kept secret at Borchardt's request.

Nefertiti was initially stored in the cellar of the Prussian Governmental Bank and then, in the autumn of 1941, moved to the tower of a flak bunker in Berlin.

In 1967, Nefertiti was moved in the Egyptian Museum in Charlottenburg and remained there until 2005, when it was moved to the Altes Museum.

In scenes found on the talatat, Nefertiti appears almost twice as often as her husband.

Georges Daressy further deduced that the gilded coffin found in the tomb was originally made for a woman and only later adapted to accommodate a king, through alterations to its inscriptions and the addition of a false beard, a uraeus, and the royal scepters ( crook and flail ).< ref > Davis, T. M., < cite > The Tomb of Queen Tiyi </ cite >, ( KMT Communications, 1990 ) p. viii </ ref > The identity of the coffin's original owner has been a matter of much discussion over the years, with Tiye, Nefertiti, Meketaten, and Meritaten all proposed as candidates .< ref > Davis, T. M., < cite > The Tomb of Queen Tiyi </ cite >, ( KMT Communications, 1990 ) p. viii-x </ ref > It is now widely accepted that the coffin was originally intended for Akhenaten's secondary wife Kiya .< ref name =" davis p. xii "> Davis, T. M., < cite > The Tomb of Queen Tiyi </ cite >, ( KMT Communications, 1990 ) p. xii </ ref > It is also recognized that the four canopic jars discovered near the coffin belonged to Kiya, and that the female heads on the jars ' stoppers portray her.

One theory holds that Smenkhkare was Akhenaten's male lover as well as co-regent, due to images found where a male ( believed to be Smenkhkare ) was depicted beside Akhenaten in a manner very similar to how Nefertiti was shown in earlier records.

According to Joann Fletcher ( who controversially identified the mummy as Nefertiti ) a Nubian-style wig was found near the mummy.

Among many other sculptural items recovered at the same time was the polychrome bust of Nefertiti, apparently a master study for others to copy, which was found on the floor of a storeroom.

A small statue of an aging Nefertiti was also found in the workshop, depicting her with a rounded, drooping belly and thick thighs and a curved line at the base of her abdomen showing that she had borne several children, perhaps to project an image of fertility.

Based on ceramic evidence, it appears that the Uluburun sank toward the end of the Amarna period, but could not have sunk before the time of Nefertiti due to the unique gold scarab engraved with her name found aboard the ship.

Much of the finest work, including the famous Nefertiti bust in Berlin, was found in the studio of the second and last Royal Court Sculptor Thutmose, and is now in Berlin and Cairo, with some in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Close-up of a limestone relief depicting Nefertiti smiting a female captive on a royal barge.

This theory is based on the discovery of several shabti fragments inscribed for Nefertiti ( now located in the Louvre and Brooklyn Museums ).

The independent scholar Marianne Luban had published similar speculation in 1999 in an article posted on the Internet, entitled " Do We Have the Mummy of Nefertiti?

* Naguib Mahfouz, Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth ( 1985 ) Nefertiti is one of the characters who reflects on Akhenaten and the Amarna period

Image: Queen Nefert-iti and Princess Meket-Aten on boundary stela, Tell el-Amarna, 18th Dynasty, 1353-1336 BCE-Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art-DSC08150. JPG | Boundary stele of Amarna with Nefertiti and her daughter, princess Meketaten, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

9 ) Baketaten-Sometimes thought to be Queen Tiye's daughter, usually based on a stelae with Baketaten seated next to Tiye at dinner with Akhenaten and Nefertiti.

She is known to have had a house at Amarna, Akhenaten's new capital and is shown on the walls of the tomb of Huya – a " steward in the house of the king's mother, the great royal wife Tiyi " – depicted at a dinner table with Akhenaten, Nefertiti, and their family and then being escorted by the king to her sunshade.

They distributed postcards depicting the bust of Nefertiti with the words " Return to Sender " and wrote an open letter to the German Culture Minister, Bernd Neumann, supporting the view that Egypt should be given the bust on loan.

Another theory suggested that the existing Nefertiti bust was crafted in 1930s on Hitler's orders and the original was lost in World War II.

In 1989, a 70 pfennig stamp which featured the bust of Nefertiti was on issue in Germany.

In 1999, Nefertiti appeared on an election poster for the green political party Bündis 90 / Die Grünen as a promise for cosmopolitan and multi-cultural environment with the slogan " Strong Women for Berlin!

Zahi Hawass displays a Ptolemaic statue discovered at Taposiris Magna on May 8, 2010Hawass spearheaded a movement to return many prominent unique and / or irregularly taken Ancient Egyptian artifacts, such as the Rosetta Stone, the bust of Nefertiti, the Dendera zodiac ceiling painting from the Dendera Temple, the bust of Ankhhaf ( the architect of the Khafra Pyramid ), the faces of Amenhotep III's tomb at the Louvre Museum, the Luxor Temple's obelisk at the Place de la Concorde and the statue of Hemiunu, nephew of the Pharaoh Khufu, builder of the largest pyramid, to Egypt from collections in various other countries.

They draw attention to the fact that Akhenaten's co-regent's name Neferneferuaten is also an epithet bestowed on Nefertiti earlier in the Amarna period.

On the other hand, those who identify both a female and male co-regent / successor assume Nefertiti predeceased her husband, based on two fragmentary shabti figures inscribed for her as queen.

In the former case it is assumed that Tutankhamun supplanted Nefertiti on the throne after the murder of Zannanza, in the latter case it is believed that Meritaten was afterwards forced to marry her servant Smenkhkare although the possible identification of Zannanza as Smenkhkare is also suggested.

He often performed solo works in free verse based on the lives of the grand dames of history, including Lucrezia Borgia, Jocasta, Medea, Lola Montez, Nefertiti, Clytemnestra, and Carlotta, Empress of Mexico.

Ay is believed to be the father of Queen Nefertiti, wife of Akhenaten, and Mutbenret or Mutnodjmet depending on how the name is read, Mutnodjmet being the wife of Horemheb.