ZOOM ONLY EVENT
Nefertiti's Face: Revisiting Egypt's most Famous Queen. More than three thousand years ago a sculptor working in the royal city of Amarna carved the head of an Egyptian queen. That 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. Egypt has yielded more than its fair share of artistic masterpieces, but it is difficult to think of another sculpture that has so successfully bridged the gap between the ancient and modern worlds. The timeless beauty of the Nefertiti bust both attracts modern viewers and sparks our imagination, but in so doing it obscures our view of the past and distorts our understanding of the Amarna royal family. Is there really any evidence to suggest that Nefertiti ruled Egypt? In this lecture Professor Joyce Tyldesley explores the creation of a cultural icon, from its ancient origins to its modern context.
Joyce Tyldesley is Professor of Egyptology at the University of Manchester, where she has developed and teaches a suite of online Egyptology programmes. She is also an Honorary Research Associate of the Manchester Museum. Joyce 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. Her book Nefertiti's Face: The Creation of an Icon was published in 2018, and her most recent book, Tutankhamun: Pharaoh, Icon, Enigma was published in 2022.
Entry: £5 members, £7 non-members