Bust of Nefertiti, ca. 1353–1336 BC

The bust of Nefertiti, painted in color and worked extraordinarily uniformly and finely, was excavated by the German Oriental Society in 1912 in the Egyptian Tell el-Amarna in the workshop of the chief sculptor Thutmosis and brought to Germany at the beginning of 1913 as part of the finding distribution. Made during the reign of the Pharaoh Akhenaton between 1353 and 1336 BC, the bust of Nefertiti, the principal wife of Akhenaten, is considered to be a masterpiece of sculpture of that time. It is one of ancient Egypt's most famous treasures.

Bust of Nefertiti, painted limestone with stucco, black beeswax and rock crystals, 49 x 24.5 x 35 cm, photographer: Sandra Steiß; source: © Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection of the National Museums in Berlin, Prussian Cultural Heritage, Inv. No. ÄM 21300, https://recherche.smb.museum/detail/606189, Creative Commons Attribution - Non-Commercial - Distribution under Equal Conditions 3.0 Germany (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 EN), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/de/deed.en.