 Thank you very much indeed. Good afternoon everybody. What I want to do this afternoon is give a very, very brief overview about what we know and what we think we might know about a name which is probably familiar to an awful lot of people, yet exactly what who she was and how she fits into things are probably less clear. She's perhaps all the people of the ancient past dominated by one image, the one which is on the screen here, of a painted limestone bust of her found in a sculpture studio in Egypt in 1912. But I want to show today that there is more to her, far more to her than simply being a pretty face, which sadly is often what she seems to be presented as to nowadays. And also to show how much history can be changed by one discovery, because the narrative, which I'm presenting my book and also which I'm summarizing in the lecture today is a very different one from one which one might have written about Nefertiti 50 years ago, or even 20 years ago. Well, things about dealing with late with early literate societies like Egypt is the way that archaeology history are completely intertwined and that an awful lot of what say we think we know historically is actually ultimately based on items of material culture. So therefore I think this whole Egyptology study of ancient Egypt is one where all the various disciplines of studying humankind come together very very well to try and produce an overall solution. So worthwhile just sort of locating ourselves in time because I know many of you certainly not have more than some passing acquaintance with ancient Egypt. So what we call ancient Egypt in the sense a period of time where we have broadly the same religion, language, basic worldview lasts for over 3000 years from the unification of Egypt around 3000 BC down to the real end of what you would call ancient Egypt with the end of paganism because at the end of paganism, really a lot of all the things which tie together ancient Egypt have gone. And, and all and that period 3000 over 3000 years, those are a few of the waypoints people might be aware of implication, where the pyramids are built to the moon, clear patch of the seventh the last of independent ruler of Egypt, but then there's a long long tale with Roman rule, and also really just to show how that fits in time wise and, and the amount and spread of existence with other civilizations on there. And one of these is worthwhile pointing out is for clear patch of the seventh there, this is the famous clear patch of the pyramids were more ancient than clear patch is for us. It's not to grasp when you're trying to look at ancient Egypt is not it's a very, very long period. It's remarkable how much remains the same and how much changes. And what we're going to the lady we're going to be talking about today is involved in one of those periods of change. And just so you can see where she is there she is in the middle of what we call a new kingdom, and in broad handfuls the second half of the 14th century BC. So how do we know about her. Well, as far as absolutely undisputed facts are concerned. There is that she was the wife, the king's great wife, the chief wife of King Akhenaten, who ruled that who ruled in the late 14th century BC in Egyptian 18th and is remarkable for the fact that during his reign, the ancient Egyptian religion was thrown up in the air, and the multiple multiplicity of gods were replaced at least for the King himself, how far this kind of this sort of spread into the rest of society is pretty unclear. But for the King himself anyway, there was now a single God to whom he owed his allegiance the art and who was the physical body of the sun. So that is absolute fact. So beyond this, it's all, they're all to a great lesser degree, measures, measures of interpretation, hypothesis, as I say, a lot of Egyptian history is, is a working hypothesis, if only that's where I'm putting it. And that although we can got some big handfuls of things which we, which we are pretty certain we know, there are say things which change, and the interpretation of things that can change quite rapidly. So as to when the marriage between Akhenaten and Nefertiti took place, well it seems to be some point after the King came to the throne as a successor of Amenhotep III, his father. Many older books talk about the two kings having ruled together as co-regents. That now seems to be not a cat, not not the case after all. That's not the case is where history has changed over time. But the vast majority of Egyptologists, including myself, are now happy. It's simply a direct father-son succession without any kind of overlaps. But the reason why we think that when he first came to throne, probably quite young, perhaps 16 or 17 years old, he had no wife because the very earliest representations of him in two tombs. Here are Prime Minister Ramosa and Cheroef, who was the steward of his mother. Well, in the both these representations, the king is shown in a context with another female, but it's not his wife in the one in the top right hand corner from the two of Ramosa. It's Maat and in the tomb of Cheroef, it's his mother T, who is standing in Lu of where you'd normally expect a spouse. But it seems it's only a very short period of time after this that he does actually marry Nefertiti. The evidence for the early part of the rain comes from here, modern Luxor, ancient Thebes, and it's at Luxor, ancient Thebes, that the tomb chapels we've been talking about in that previous slide are there over here on the Sheikh Abdel Kerna hill and the Assasif play next to it. But then we find the among the key evidence for the early part of the rain and the earliest part of Nefertiti's marriage to Akinathan is here on the east bank of the Nile Nile running across here. People things like the value of the kings and places like that over on the West Bank here on the east bank are two major temples, the temple of Luxor and the temple of Karnak. And it's the temple of Karnak where we find our first evidence for Nefertiti. This is a map of the great temple of Karnak, one of the largest if not the largest single complex of religious buildings anywhere in the world. And this part within this wall is the element belonging largely to Amun with various lodges. There are other gods who have their temples in here as well because it's not only is it the home temple of Amunray, the king of the gods, but also it's the national shrine of Egypt during this period. So there is other gods have their have their sort of have little chapels and so on around the place. But as part of his new, his religious reform, his move to at least monolotry, if not monotheism, big debate over what would actually be how you interpret this single god of Akinathan. He builds a new temple outside the area of Amun. And here at the back, we have the Gemet Paarten, which is one of the four buildings we know he created at Karnak for his new cult, but which only traces have been found. Lots of broken lots of separated blocks have been found, but only a small amount of actually in situ archaeology out here, because after his death. These temples were all dismantled as part of the return to something approaching orthodoxy, and those blocks were then used to fill up bill gateways and so on of later kings. Not quite a few bits, but actually where they actually lay originally is a bit more unclear. Anyway, so as a Gemet Paarten. We find various blocks from that. And here we've got a very early representation from the same scene of the king and the queen. But the king is shown within what we call the Amana art style I explain why Amana in a moment. Whereby there is a significant distortion of the human form, particularly for the king and queen, but also extending to other people and you'll see some more detail of that kind of that sort of representations a bit later on. What is quite interesting though is that the very probably one of the earliest bits of work in that new style. And this is a part of the same scene, while the king is shown with this lantern jaw and rather scrawny face which is part of that. At the moment, his queen is shown in the classical Egyptian style of the period directly before this. Initially, it appears that it's the king who is being shown in a revolutionary manner. But then everybody else including the queen remains for a time in more conventional way of being shown. It carries on for a while, but the transition of the queen into the revolutionary style seems to be quite a slow one. As you can see there the king on the right there is in full lantern jaw form in full in what we would call revolutionary or Amana style. But then the queen although she's no longer quite got the classical features she had in the previous one hasn't gone all the way. So it's a very interesting period, how long it lasts, a few months, we don't know of how this new style comes into existence. One of the remarkable things about the new temples, and this is something which is a which, although we haven't actually got the foundations of much of them, we've got huge quantities of blocks from which we can actually do a huge three dimensional puzzle to reconstruct those is this hallway here great with with with with six great pillars. And this seems have surrounded the main fetish the main sanctuary of the art and which may have been a reused earlier obelisk. But what's remarkable here is the fact that the only person who is shown as an efficient is not the king, which you'd normally expect in any kind of religious context in Egypt, particularly for most of the other monuments, which come from this period, but it's the queen. So she is shown here, twice with her young daughter down here, offering to the art and the art and is shown in a very unusual way, it's shown in an abstract form of a sun's dish of a sun disk with the rays coming down in the form of hands, which offer a sign of life to the nose of the queen in this particular case. And so here in the very heart of the of the new temple the new God. We have Nefertiti newly fairly newly married, perhaps only a year or so after her marriage with a very young daughter shown with her here is that is the is the is the is the major person offering. And what we see during this period is the way that Nefertiti's status probably exceeds that of almost any other Egyptian queen before her. Her dynasty the 18th dynasty had a number of very strong women involved in it, particularly the beginning of the dynasty where appears after a king had been killed in battle, his widow effectively took over the running of the army and she ends up having military decorations in her in her tomb, which we normally don't expect to find for a male. So there's not to be said but nobody but nowhere previously as evidence for a king's wife being the soul efficient in the very heart of a major temple. Also, we find her represented in this mode of smiting of smiting enemies. This is very much a male mode and she is the only Egyptian woman we know of anyway ever to be seen with in this in this pose. Indeed, the only later examples we've really got in the Nile Valley from much, much later in the in the Sudan, long after this and by which time the culture in Sudan is very much a composite African Egyptian one so you can't really really follow that but the very fact that here she is in smiting mode isn't the only example either, again is something which is unheard of for a queen prior to her. And not only is she a strong woman in life, but she also takes on a role for eternity as well. This is the sarcophagus of Akhenaten reconstructed from fragments after the end of his reign, not only was his religion taken back taken down, he was effectively as well, so his sarcophagus was smashed to fragments, but enough survivors to see what's going on here, there is the sun disk there's the sun's rays coming down. In the corners, we have got four protective female figures, and we can resume in on in on those. Now, on the Egyptian sarcophagi, the idea of having protective figures of females on the corner is not unknown. This is an example from slightly later on in time, the one of Akhenaten's successors. And here we've got on his sarcophagus for females on the corner, this case with wings. And these are the four protective goddesses of Egypt, of the Egyptian dead, Isis, Nexus, Neat and Selket. So that's fine. But those four, of course, are excluded in the new religious setup. So who are these protective divine females on the corner? Well, they're actually all Nefertiti. So we find that not only is she got exceptional status during her life, but she is the goddess of the dead effectively in the new setup. So very much. So therefore, another aspect of her unique status as a royal woman. Now in the fifth year of the reign of Akhenaten, originally it calls himself Ammonhotep IV, a link himself with the old imperial god Ammon. But Ammon is in many ways the principal victim of the move to the new single god. And Ammon is ultimately not only banished from the pantheon, but also his images and names become attacked at a later stage. But as part of the developing revolution, if one can actually, well, we can usefully call it that, there's a decision taken that the art and the new god needs to have his own hometown, and also effectively that Egypt needs a new capital city. And as such, around in year five, there is founded this new city, modern name Telemana, in Middle Egypt, but halfway between the old religious capital Luxor here and the old political capital of Memphis up here about halfway through a completely barren area as far as we can make out, which was then adopted, and then there a whole new capital city was laid out from scratch. Here we actually have from point of view of archaeology and from study of settlements. This is a wonderful example of what we can, of what was believed in the late 18th dynasty to be the ideal city. So very much so the Egyptian Canberra, Brasilia, of one which is to be less kind, Milton Keynes. And the, the boundaries of the new city was set up with a series of great boundary steely, and this is one of them. There's a whole series on both banks to the river to delineate the territory which belongs to the art and, and in these steely includes the original foundation decree of the city, and one of the things which we find in that foundation decree is the decreeing of the building of a tomb for the king, but also stating that Nefertiti was to be buried with him in his in that tomb. And this is that tomb built in a valley, some kilometers into the desert behind the city of Emana. And it's quite an interesting one because it differs from earlier royal tombs earlier royal tombs were intended really just for one burial for the king himself. Occasionally you might have prematurely deceased wife or child buried your mother saw in a storeroom. This is the first royal tomb to have whole sweets devoted for burial of members of the royal family. This one here ended up being used for some of the daughters. There are scars on the walls here indicating that there were plans to build further sweets out of here. And then this sweet here unfortunately undecorated is almost certainly intended for Nefertiti because it's effectively a duplicate of the main royal tomb, just with a bend in it, presumably the idea that the burial chamber would probably be further down here actually if it had been completed would have perhaps been in parallel without the king at the end here. And just as this is just a view inside the tomb. This is the entrance to the what is probably a Nefertiti sweet and here we can see the passageway curving round and round and down. At the bottom here, there would probably have been the burial chamber or at least the beginnings of a next next sequence because the tomb was never finished. Like pretty well everything because the whole of the Amar the whole Amarna episode was fairly short lived as it would turn out. This is a typical example of the art of the period, as you can see here the figures of the king in particular and the queen are distorted to some degree the king is shown with a lantern jaw he's shown with a prominent potbelly large buttocks. It's almost a somewhat effeminate kind of physique. Indeed an early Egyptologist suggest he might have been castrated while on campaign in Sudan, and this is the result of that. However, he is most certainly not a you know because here with Nefertiti is Nefertiti. For much of the times you can be distinguished by this flat topped crown, which is something which isn't really found by it from where one by any other Egyptian royal woman. This is a series of children, and these are the eldest three daughters, Merit Arton, who we actually saw in that earlier relief that cut from Karnak. Very very young, then Mechit Arton, and then Ankesinpa Arton, the eldest three daughters, all of whom seem to have been born by around the time that the move to Amarna took place so by by about year six, I suppose, we've probably got three of the eventually six daughters born. And here actually is the final lineup of them by year 12, which is when the tomb of Mary Ray the second which has been mentioned at the top there was completed. We have 12 we have we have the six daughters Merit Arton, Mechit Arton, Ankesinpa Arton, Nefer Nefru Arton, Tasheret, which effectively means Nefertiti junior because Nefertiti soon after her marriage had her name expanded to a full name was Nefer Nefru Arton, Nefertiti, for most of her, for most of her life. Then we have Nefer Nefru Ray and Setepen Ray, the two youngest daughters. One thing which is quite odd is the fact that while the eldest four daughters all have the name of the Arton, their father's god included in them, Setepen Ray and Nefer Nefru Ray, don't they have the old sun god Ray, who is always part of the Arton, but it's almost assumed by him, not yet here, the old god is being brought and there is clearly some subtleties going on in the theology of the time, which we can't quite grasp we know it's a case with so much of the stuff and we're looking at ancient Egyptian material is we know something is interesting is happening but quite what is slightly more of a problem. Let's say this is the evolution of the name of Nefertiti this is as when she first appears in the records, Nefertiti, which means the beautiful woman has come the beautiful woman has arrived. This has on occasion been used to argue that she was a foreign princess who had come into Egypt, because we know that the Egyptian kings certainly married a foreign prince and we actually know that Akhenaten had at least one foreign wife. However, there's no evidence that they ever became great wives at this period. And also, it could simply mean a beautiful woman, a beautiful female simply female has arrived is simply an appropriate name for a baby girl. And there are other individuals of this period who have exactly the same name, because the Egyptian, a lot of Egyptian names, they sometimes they're sort of quite sort of heavy ones relating to gods, but quite often they are quite informal. Nojmet means the sweet one. So, you know, the beautiful, the beautiful female has arrived is a perfectly reasonable name for an Egyptian female baby and say we have a number of people who most certainly are not foreign princesses of this period who have exactly this name so it's I think there's not really an issue here. But then she becomes, as I say, a couple of years, it's not long after her marriage anyways becomes Nefer Nefruaten, Nefertiti. Beauty of the beauties of the Arton. And what's quite interesting about this is that the name, they are two separate names run together, because you can see that this sign at the end here is these things are facing that way, rather than that way like the rest of them. So it's almost two names which have sort of docked end to end. So it's it's quite clear that she had her, she had two names, Nefer Nefruaten and Nefertiti. It's not just simply one of them with an epithet added on to it. And as for the rest of her titles. Well, there were a few other epithets she has but that's those are the key ones. King's great wife which means he's no senior of multiple wives, his beloved, Mr of Upper and Lower Egypt, and Lady of the two lands. Egypt will have been regarded from time immemorial as two elements, possibly reflecting a real duality in prehistoric times. But anyway, so Upper and Lower Egypt was what the king was the ruler of. Therefore, his wife also had that status and Lady of the two lands, Upper and Lower Egypt. Now as the background of Nefertiti, this is a whole lecture in its own right. I have no intention. Well, I have not had time to be able to go into all of that today. But if she's not a foreigner, where does she come from. Well, the, the probably the least unpopular theory, when we're dealing with this period, there are different reconstructions there are Egyptologists who deal with it. But that it seems a number will would would would argue that she is the daughter of a man called God's father I God's father is a title which is born by a number of other individuals in this period, and seems to be potentially interpretable as King's father-in-law. His wife is the nurse of the great wife of Nefertiti Tay. But not necessarily not is not the mother of Nefertiti which has been used as an argument against I. But another possibility is that Nefertiti's mother, an earlier wife and we know that that I had at least one previous wife prior to Tay. She may have died in childbirth with Nefertiti or otherwise died young. I remarried and that Tay as his second wife is the stepmother, and that would be a could be could be well interpreted in normal context of Egyptian titles as nurse, because there isn't a word there is no there is no term which is our stepmother. If somebody is bringing up another person's baby, well, nurse is the best title which you can probably get for that. We know a little more about one thing we do know about Nefertiti's family is she had a sister. And in this tomb scene is another quite typical tomb scene of the period with the king and queen rewarding the tomb owner who's down here at the bottom right. We have made the daughters of Akhenat and Nefertiti. We have in this scene here, a lady called on the left, called Mutt Nozmet, whose title is sister of the king's great wife Nefertiti, and her name is Mutt Nozmet. And the other thing about which says anything about her parentage so all we can do is do the implications so whether or not she is indeed a full sister whether she's a half sister being a daughter of Tay, we have no idea in the in current contexts. And she only appears for absolutely for certain in a couple of tomb representations fairly early on in the rain. So here I'm rather intriguingly the last queen of the 18th Dynasty, the wife of Horimheb, an army general, who ended up the following the extinction of the royal line at the death of Taranghamun. His wife was Mutt Nozmet. There's nothing in any of the representations of her from her from from this period, which has anything about her background. But it does seem very suspicious that we have a queen's sister, named Mutt Nozmet, and a few years later, an army general on becoming king has as his wife on the same name. The name Mutt Nozmet is a fairly common name, so we can't be absolutely certain about this. But I think most people take it did I think very very suspicious that you've got the sister of Nefertiti, and later on, the wife of King Horimheb is Mutt Nozmet. The question of whether or not Nefertiti had any male children has been one of the most pernicious of the period. Some have argued that because only daughters are ever shown with her in the tomb and temple representations which we have, therefore there couldn't be a son. However, that ignores the fact that for reasons which remain unclear, down until this period, it was unheard of for royal sons to appear on major monuments. For some reason they were perfectly okay for kings to be shown with their daughters, but not their sons. And even in the reign of Amenhotep III, the predecessor of Akhenaten, we have representations of him during his Jubilee ceremonies with his wife, his daughters, but no sons. Yet we know at that point there were two sons alive. There was Akhenaten and his elder brother who died prematurely and that's the reason why Akhenaten becomes the king. So to ask for a representation of a male child at this period is asking for something which until that time was something which didn't ever happen. However, towards the end of the reign, we have these two blocks surviving, which are from a temple at Amarna. These are examples just like those that back at Karnak were dismantled after Akhenaten's demise. But here we've got on one side, one which talks about a king's son of his body, Tutankhuaten, who is the silly same person as the later king Tutankhamun, when he first comes to throne Tutankhamun is called Tutankhamun, citing the name of his father's god. The next to it is a another block, king's daughter of his body, which seems to be only restorable as the name van Kessenpaarten, the third daughter of Akhenaten. As she is clearly as the woman on the right or left there is clearly an offspring of Akhenaten Nefertiti, what the implication would seem to seem to be that the king who the son is on the other side is also an offspring. And this is a very much a contractual reconstruction of how that block would have fitted in. So perhaps this kind of double a double scene with Akhenaten on one side, Nefertiti on the other, one with her daughter, on the other side with their son. So I think the arguments are pretty, you can make a very good argument for Tutankhamun actually being the son of Akhenaten Nefertiti. There are a whole load of issues surrounding some genetic work which was done about 10 years ago. But to say not really, there's not really, that is probably a whole lecture in its own right. But I think you can, you can, you can make the genetics and this actually tie up. The high point really for Akhenaten and Nefertiti seems to have been the 12th regnal year when there was some major festival. We know of it from representations, a couple of tombs. It's been sometimes called the derbar user taking off term from British imperial history. But basically it seems to be a major celebration where most of the known world came to Amarna and bringing gifts. And here is one of the two scenes which shows part of that. So very much what actually the year 12 derbar was all about is again a matter of debate. Everything in Egypt always tends to be a matter of debate to some degree or other. But my suggestion is it's actually marking the completion of the major building phase at Amarna. It starts in year six, six years later, you might expect to have the city something like ready and why not have a big party to market. However, the party may have brought gifts, but it may also brought disease. And in these days of social distancing, this is kind of thing if you've got somebody's got something. This is a perfect super spreader event again to use what little terminology we've suddenly become an adept at using. And it seems too much of a coincidence that within a couple of years of this event, we're seeing large scale deaths in the royal family. And in the royal tomb, the side room here is that was decorated to for the death of the burial of the second daughter, Mekhet Arton, who is seen in the year 12 derbar scene. But then when a short period afterwards, she's she's dead and gone. And here we've got that morning scene. Here she is lying on her beer unfortunately the figure is almost destroyed the label text, and her hand is visible. And in parallel she's also shown in probably statue form in a bower here, where she is being mourned by her parents and three of her sisters. And that's quite significant because it appears that Mekhet Arton wasn't the first daughter to die to the two youngest daughters had died shortly before as well. So again, something which does suggest some kind of epidemic, which might which may have taken them away. There is a much debate has been brought about by the fact there is this baby being suckled outside the death chamber here. And a number of books have sort of states almost the fact that Mekhet Arton died in childbirth. There's an issue here in that she's probably too young to have been able to conceive a child. And also, there are two more similar death scenes, both with also children being suckled outside the death chamber. In Egyptian art, you never show how a person dies, or even implications of how they die. And also say the fact doesn't seem like you've got three all dying in childbirth and the other two are definitely very definitely too young to have conceived. And it's been suggested this is actually a representation of what the Amarna take was on an Egyptian on the idea of rebirth is always always been present in Egyptian funerary belief. And it's rather more made more than more explicit because during this period, Egyptian religion is thrown up in the air and quite honestly, there's nothing, there's very little about it, which takes direct, you can directly link to how things were done prior to this. That seems to be a part of the part better in explanation for this. Well, it has to be very careful that not jumping to conclusions and say, and a lot of what I call zombie facts floating around a bright idea by some previous Egyptologist has then been taken and run with as a fact. And I say, Mekhet Arton may have been the third daughter dying a short period of time because on this wall here. We have a damaged version to have two death scenes very very similar in composition, including the nursing nursing child here. And these may well be the youngest two daughters never never array to teppenray. So it looks as though within a couple of years of the derby if not sooner. You've got three half the half the daughters are dead. And so that's what we seem to have. And the fact that these are nefenefru rense teppenray is rather suggested by the fact that in the morning scene of Mekhet Arton here, alongside the king and queen. There are those three daughters suggest and there, and you would expected had the other two youngest girls been alive when Mekhet Arton died. They would have been there in that scene. Just talking about some zombie facts for a moment about things which have passed into history as reality when actually probably aren't. In the 1920s excavations at a manor at this place called Maru Arton is a model of the of this particular area. Which attempt a temple complex blocks were found where the names of a royal wife had been erased and replaced by those of the eldest daughter met Merit Arton. At that time in the 1920s the only known wife of Arton was Nefertiti, and therefore it was assumed there had been some kind of falling out, and that rapidly became the facts of history. And there was this rather nice Salernoed Woolly here, well before his triumphs excavating at Ur. This was his reasoning in a very sort of rather typically 20s kind of way, suggesting that there had been some kind of falling out between the king and queen. And he fails to notice anywhere in this in this sort of in his purple prose here though is that nowhere else has this happened everywhere else to the manor. Nefertiti remains perfectly intact. So, if it's being done here. Okay that might be an issue, but I think trying to extend it to a complete falling out becomes slightly problematic. But this has passed into history, passed into so stuff you're told to guide school in Egypt, and you get, this is what you get told on site. Nowadays, by many, many guides anyway. And bring in a little when so some years ago that then they bring it bring into the house with Princess Diana, then sort of talking about interfering mother in laws and all sorts of things. And the whole thing was actually scotch complete scotch mist, because it wasn't Nefertiti being erased at all. It was actually a second wife called Kia, who, and for her we only came to know about in the 1960s. It was the same to know about her. Then we started was then realized these reliefs from the work 40 odd years previously, actually were also erasures of Kia. So it was a Kia who Akinan had falling out with not Nefertiti says a whole but but but but these things are embedded in the literature that it's almost impossible to get rid of them, often because nobody has actually goes back to what was the reason for having this fact included in history to start with. So, it's still difficult to try and sort of unpick this. But there was no evidence whatsoever for Nefertiti having had a falling out with her husband. It was, it was Kia who the problems arose with. And just to say that that top that top scene now in the cars will get protect in in Copenhagen has recently been matched with a block in now in New York. It's just a nice example of how ongoing research not only new excavations, but just simply people looking at material, which had long since passed into museum collections have been able to put bits and pieces back together again. You know the part one of the reasons why the idea that I have a teacher fallen from grace was that after the morning scenes for her dog for the daughters in the in the royal tomb, she appeared disappear from view completely she was there in year 12, the daughter deaths are soon after that same year 30 she just seemed apparently disappeared. And there were some who suggested that she might have died at this stage, one of her shabby figures one of the magical servant figures for the afterlife exists. This is a fragment in the Louvre is another fragment in Brooklyn. And so therefore there were lots of arguments as to know why that might, if she died, whether she'd been destroyed all those kinds of things that why she disappeared. But then in 2012 in up here in what he did Abu Hinnis a little bit to the north of a manor, a Belgian expedition had been copy, examining a series of queries, which had been used for the bill for collecting stone for the building of a manor here in Corrie 320. In the quarry, my other pillars holding up the ceiling of what where the stone been removed. They found a graffiti in Egyptian hieratic script. In it, there was a mention of a year 16 of Nefertiti and I can art and dies in his year 17 so here we've actually got rather than this and if he's having disappeared as it so long had been assumed. She was only a year before her husband's death. So suddenly the whole question of her disappearing becomes and the arguments about what, what lay behind that death disgrace or whatever, all fall apart because she's still perfectly happily around. But by that time, a year before her husband's death, Egypt was a significantly different place. Probably as a result of the pestilence, which may, which we're suggesting might have been in Egypt as a result of the Durbar. Not soon after that, he appointed a co region to co ruler called spend her a who was married to Akinat and Nefertiti's eldest daughter. Exactly where this co regency fits again is a matter have been a matter of debate, but I have generally argued that it should be placed here, so not long after the Durbar. And in any case, if you're quite short lived and certainly and every indication is it's over long before Akinat himself is dead. And it's with the demise of spend her a whose origins are another matter of debate. Nefertiti seems to get a promotion because there is this unfinished stealer, which shows two naked rulers, each wearing royal crowns, the so called blue crown here and the double crown here. Unfortunately, the cartridges are all blank and these cartridges up here would have held these are the ovals containing royal or sometimes divine names. These would originally have had been labels for the art and up here. And these are the cartridges to label the people here. It's immediately clear these cannot be two kings, because there are only three cartridges, a king, a fully fledged Egyptian King has to have two cartridges. So therefore this is a king and a queen. And therefore these can only be Akinat and Nefertiti. But the fact is that whichever one is Nefertiti it's probably this one if you look at the physique, although the chest area of Akinat is normally quite feminine. This actually looks far more like a genuine female breast. So this is probably nothing, but she is wearing a proper King's crown, not a queen, not the headdress which she had as a queen. So it looks as though probably after death of Smenchare, she is promoted to being a what I'm calling I would call a crowned queen, not quite all the way to being a female pharaoh and there were female pharaohs, but well on the way to it. So there we have her there as crowned queen. So before Akinat's death she did actually make it to fall female pharaoh. This strip from a box found in Tutankhamun names, the royalties who are floating around at the very end of Akinat and Drain. And we have King Akinat and King Nefenefruat and remember Nefenefruat and was one of the names of Nefertiti so when become now becoming full female King, she has dropped the Nefertiti part but maintained the Nefenefruat. And also there is a name of their eldest daughter Meritarten, who is either here as dowager of Smenchare or possibly she is also acting at carrying out the ritual role of Queen now that both her parents are kings. So what we now seem to have is that in the last few months of Akinat and Drain before his death. What happens next, however, is a bit more or another matter for debate. This is just an example of how one of these things makes it clear that Nefertiti transitioned to being a crowned queen or full pharaoh. As you can see the crown on this heading in Hanover is made of a separate piece of stone from the rest rather inferior piece of stone from the rest. And but when we look very closely at how that has been fitted on, it's clear that it supersedes the typical crown of Nefertiti. So it starts off as being a statue of her as queen, then becomes her as king. Let's say Akinat and dies year 17 cleared it. What happens next, though, is where the interesting bit comes in. We know that soon after hit after his death anyway we have a new royal couple to turn out and and and Kesson pattern, who I would argue are both full siblings, children of Nefertiti and Akinat and there's no doubt that Nefertiti and Khartan is that, but their children to don Khartan is only eight or so, and therefore is not able of course to rule on his own. So we have two sort of possible situations here. One is that Nefa Nefruat and has an independent carries on ruling as independent ruler, and then on her demise to turn Khartan becomes king. So one of my personal favour is that as she starts off her existence as a co ruler with her husband, that appointment might actually have been to guarantee the succession of their son. So that I would argue what you then have is that Nefa Nefruat and the former Nefertiti is running what ruling in parallel with her son. So we have this sort of group ruling. The period is a matter of some retrenchment, because we have this graffiti dated to year three of Nefa Nefruat and which is talking which is actually written by the priest of Ammon. So within three years with how whatever you do with the exact succession within three years, Ammon who been complete anathema under Akinat and is back. This is about the, this is the last time we see Nefa Nefruat and the former Nefertiti because although they there is now as reproachments we even find that to turn Khartan in this particular case, worshipping Ammon and his wife, so therefore clearly the the the removal of Ammon from the panther is now over. And Nefa Nefruat and that the end of her life was not as she might have wanted it, it's just by the fact that a number of her funerary items were not used for her burial, but actually were used in the burial of Tutankhamun later a few years later. So it all indicates that Nefa Nefruat was not buried as a king, suggesting therefore that the end of her life may not have been of the best. And there is a there are some arguments around identifying her body which come in here, but again, not time for this afternoon. Then with her gone, there is a full scale restoration it does appear that that during that period of time in some kind of rapprochement between Atan and Ammon that doesn't last this stealer dating to soon after Nefa Nefruat and his death as far as we can tell is for a full scale return to normality Tutankhamun becomes Tutankhamun and the stages set for return to something like the way before although things were significantly different afterwards. So, we have Tutankhamun becomes king, and not long after that a full reaction takes place, but only is the art and removed from the pantheon but attacks are made on the images of those associated with him. And here, for example, we have one of many examples where both Nefertiti and Akhenaten have been attacked in tomb chapels at Ammona. But even though she clearly was being removed from ancient history she has reappeared in modern history. She was rediscovered in the late 19th century, and the discovery of the famous head has really brought a superstar status. And this is a huge, a huge replica of that head, which greets you when you're just approaching the city of Minya in modern Egypt, where the, which is the area where Ammona lay. So that has been a very, very brief overview of what at least I think is going on as far as Nefertiti is concerned. If you read somebody else's writings on her, you'll find some completely different views that say Egyptologists like that I'm afraid. So if you want to sort of to explore some of the things I've talked about this afternoon, and also some of the things I've alluded to, which I'm not really able to fit into into into into this short lunchtime lecture. This is the book which Chris mentioned in his introduction. So, hopefully that gives you some feel for Nefertiti and happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much for such a crystal clear overview of new thinking. We do have not surprisingly some some questions coming through. The first one is from Hazel Gray and it concerns smiting. She asks, are there not even any representations of Hatshepsut smiting enemies? I'm not aware of any fragments thereof. It wouldn't surprise me if there were had been some of her, but bear in mind that Hatshepsut is a female king, not a queen. And so therefore any representations of her in smiting mode would be in full pharyonic mode, not as a royal wife. This is the thing about Nefertiti. Nefertiti becomes a female pharaoh, but those representations of smiting, she is there in royal wife mode rather than in pharaoh mode. Eddie Duggan would like to know, was cancelling someone by destroying a sarcophagus and dismantling temples a rare or relatively rare event in the new kingdom or in other periods? It is relatively rare, but when somebody is regarded in negatively, it happens. Happens to Hatshepsut, her material is her representations are removed. It's not so common with royalty, but certainly with a lot of people who've got private enemies. If you go around some of the private tombs at Luxor, you will find quite often that some would attack names and the eyes have been hacked out. So yeah, I think the thing is the Egyptians believed that representation was a real thing, if you know what I mean. It was a manifestation of the person, so therefore harming the image was a way of getting at them ritually anyway. And there's a follow-up, a similar question from Isabella, who asks, why and when were Nefertiti and Akhenaten removed from the heart? I think you've said the why. Well, it certainly has happened by the reign of Sati I, because we've got a king list from the reign of Sati I, which jumped straight from Amnhotep III to Horimheb. It misses out all the problematic kings. So the decision is certainly made by then. There's a general assumption it probably happens under Horimheb, but all we can say is it has certainly been done and is probably dusted by Sati I's reign in the early in the 19th dynasty. So we're talking about, because you've got Horimheb, Ramesses I, Sati I, so very much it's in that kind of period anyway. And also then there's also then a subsequent continued reuse of material, like many of the blocks which came from Amman originally were then used in the foundations of buildings of Ramesses II. So it's very late 18th, early 19th, but probably it's all over by Ramesses II because by that time nobody really cares anymore. It's probably while people who were around at the time, they're the ones who care about taking them out. And finally, a question from Arthur, who I cannot identify further than that, who asks, is there evidence to suggest Kia in some way fell from favour, as opposed to, for instance, being another victim of illness. Now I think she definitely fell from favour because you've got the, she is actually hacked out. So therefore her names are very much taken out of that block I showed, a couple of blocks I showed, even that representation from Copenhagen I showed, her head has been recut to look like Meritarten rather than Kia. So she is very definitely taken out. Also her coffin gets reused for the burial of probably Smenchare as along with her canopic jars. So yeah, Kia is very, very definitely taken out. Thank you. And John Titterman asks, is there a suggestion that the heir of a king was his son-in-law, therefore the son had to marry his sister to succeed his father? That's an old 19th century theory, it's another zombie, another zombie fact. Not a mummy fact. No, that was a nice bit of 19th century anthropology, looking at sort of matriarchal societies and things like that. Now when you look at the evidence, it is definitely the eldest son of the king who is the heir. There also seems to be a serenity of presentation to the people, nominating him as heir, then he carries out the burial of his father to sort of cement the whole thing. On the other hand though, I suppose probably in if there is no male heir, a king's son-in-law is clearly going to be a high on the list of potential. But the old idea that the right to the throne went down the female line is complete junk. It's one of those wonderful theories when you start unpicking the assumptions which lay behind it. You suddenly start realising well, there is a couple of cases where you have to do some amazing mental somersaults to actually make it work. So that's one of the old zombie facts.