Famed Nefertiti Bust "A Fake"

And I become just a bit more cynical. I'll explain after the link:

PARIS (AFP) — The bust of Queen Nefertiti housed in a Berlin museum and believed to be 3,400 years old in fact is a copy dating from 1912 that was made to test pigments used by the ancient Egyptians, according to Swiss art historian Henri Stierlin.

Stierlin, author of a dozen works on Egypt, the Middle East and ancient Islam, says in a just-released book that the bust currently in Berlin's Altes Museum was made at the order of German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt by an artist named Gerardt Marks.

"It seems increasingly improbable that the bust is an original," Stierlin told AFP.

The historian said the archaeologist had hoped to produce a new portrait of the queen wearing a necklace he knew she had owned, and was also looking to carry out a colour test with ancient pigments found at the digs.

But on December 6, 1912, the copy was admired as an original work by a German prince and the archaeologist "couldn't sum up the courage to ridicule" his guest, Stierlin said.

I studied archaeology in college and while I didn't specialize in ancient Egypt (I'm a much bigger fan of the Roman Empire) I've always found it to be an equally mysterious and fascinating culture. So I spent the summer of 2003 backpacking across Europe where I visited about a dozen countries, Germany being one of them and Berlin being one of the cities I spent some time in there.

Long story short: I visited this museum (amongst dozens of others that year) and I viewed this specific bust. More to the point, the museum was fairly crowded that day and when I walked into a small side room with this bust set on a pedestal in its middle and encased in a square glass cover it was surrounded by about 10-12 noisy and fairly annoying people. Just as I was lamenting the fact that I had to share the space with so many others (which I almost always do when I'm in a museum; if you have the same problem do what I did: become a museum member and donor. It's a completely different experience walking through silent and deserted galleries alone at night) everyone suddenly cleared out and moved on to the next exhibit.

And there I was, suddenly all alone in silence and face to face with this exceptionally gorgeous and ancient work of art. Now I'm not saying that I felt an explicit kinship with Nefertiti at that moment or that I suddenly channeled a past life as a pyramid builder in ancient Egypt or anything like that, but merely that in those few fleeting moments I felt a very real yet also surreal calm and enjoyment as I privately looked into the face of this beautiful woman who ruled over an entire kingdom thousands of years before I was born. It was a feeling that I still remember quite vividly, so much so that it is one of the more lucid and cherished memories of my trip.

And now I just found out that it's a fake. And while the moment and the feelings that it elicited are still and will always be with me, I must admit that the entire experience now feels slightly cheapened by this recent revelation. And I become just a bit more cynical. And I subsequently open my second bottle of Chardonnay of the night...

(via)