My favourite piece

In response to my invitation to post ‘art that has changed my life’, Leone Shaw has sent the following.

Leone writes: ‘Carved from limestone 3,500 years ago, as part of a near life-sized figure, she is another example of the famous Egyptian ruler’s wife whose painted bust is on display in the Neues Museum in Berlin.’

‘The sculpture flanked one of the Boundary stelae (Boundary Stela Q) that were carved into the limestone cliffs on the eastern edge of the ancient city of AkhetAten, also known as Amarna. It is thought that she stood with a figure of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, 10^th ruler of the New Kingdom in Ancient Egypt. Nefertiti was Akhenaten’s principal wife’.

‘In order to consolidate power away from the priests in Thebes, Akhenaten moved his court down river and out into the desert behind the east bank of the Nile. He and Nefertiti worshiped the sun god Aten and the location is thought to have been influenced by this belief (sun worship). The name he took Akhen – Aten tells us about the intensity of his beliefs. Also, he named his new city Akhet – Aten’.

’25 years after the city was built Akhenaten died. The city was destroyed, the effigies of Nefertiti and Akhenaten were knocked down, and the centre of religious power was returned to Thebes with administrative power returning to Memphis’.

‘This sculpture, which was faithfully carved by the hand of a craftsman, was broken from its original form by vandals, lay in the desert for three and a half thousand years being sculpted by wind and rain before an archaeologist picked it up and donated it to the National Gallery of Victoria in 1907 where we see it today – over 110 years later’.

‘Physically I find it a most beautiful piece, the form hinting at the beauty for which Nefertiti is known, the stone revealing its structure, its strengths and weaknesses. The years and the many hands that shaped it have taken their toll adding to its mystery. The story behind this piece, its history, is most compelling, adding a conceptual element possible only by its age’.

‘Nefertiti herself lived for about 50 years but her image haunts us even today’.

Thank you, Leone, for reminding us of beauty – even in decay. In thinking about your description of Nefertiti, I was reminded of the lines from Shakespeare’s ‘Antony and Cleopatra’: ‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety’.

Further information about the ‘NGV Nefertiti’ can be found in the article by Colin Hope: ‘A head of Nefertiti and a figure of Ptah-Sokar-Osiris in the National Gallery of Victoria’ Art Journal 24, 1983: https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/a-head-of-nefertiti-and-a-figure-of-ptah-sokar-osiris-in-the-national-gallery-of-victoria/