The hunt for Nefertiti, where in the world did she go?

[Edmond Dantès]

Celebrity archaeologists perennially announce that they're close to unearthing the tomb of Nefertiti, perhaps ancient Egypt's most powerful queen. She first tantalized the modern world with her beauty alone in 1912, when her iconic bust appeared. Her importance in ancient Egypt became better known over the following years. Still, archaeologists remain baffled about her abrupt disappearance from the historical record—and where her remains lie.

Nefertiti was raised at the court of Thebes, and may have been the daughter of Ay, a vizier to Amenhotep III. She married Amenhotep IV, heir to the throne, at age 15. Polytheistic ancient Egyptians each favored one god or another. Nefertiti followed Aten, the sun god. In either the fifth or ninth year of his reign, Amenhotep III changed his name to Akhenaten and devoted Egypt to an unpopular monotheism around Aten. Nefertiti changed her name too, to Neferneferuaten.

Many scholars believe Nefertiti wasn't a queen, but a co-regent. Carvings portray her smiting Egypt's enemies. After bearing Akhenaten six daughters, Akenhaten's sister bore him King Tutankhamun. Fourteen years into his reign, one of Nefertiti's daughters died in childbirth. Shortly after, Nefertiti vanishes from the record.

Most historians think she died, but other theories have proliferated. Some posit that Akhenaten ditched her for not producing an heir, but he had King Tut by then. Another debunked theory said she was banished for defecting from Aten. Yet another says Nefertiti committed suicide after her daughter's death.

More recently, researchers have wondered whether Nefertiti was the mysterious "dakhamunzu" (possibly a rendering of the words for "Egyptian queen" in the language of the Hittite people) who begged, in a letter known from historical records, to wed the son of a Hittite king. Far more researchers, however, believe she became monarch herself after Akhenaten's death. Zahi Hawass, one of the celebrity archaeologists on the case, thinks Nefertiti dressed as a man named Smenkhkare to rule until King Tut could take over.

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(A house altar relief depicting Akhenaten, Nefertiti and three of their daughters (ca. 1350).)

Nefertiti's mummy would offer clarity. In 2003, British Egyptologist Joann Fletcher finally got Hawass—then heading Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities—to sanction her study of three mummies from the tomb of Amenhotep II. Fletcher announced on the Discovery Channel that one was Nefertiti, but a group of Egyptologists countered her conclusion. In 2007, National Geographic brought a CT scanner to Egypt so Hawass could test his own hypothesis that one of the other two mummies was Nefertiti. Neither was.

Hawass remains a leading name in the search for Nerfertiti alongside British archaeologist Nicholas Reeves, who announced in 2015 that high-resolution surface scans had found hidden doors in King Tut's tomb, potentially leading to Nefertiti. Archaeologists under another former Egyptian minister of antiquities, Mamdouh Eldamaty, overcame significant doubt to confirm the presence of hidden rooms using ground-penetrating radar technology in 2020.

In 2022, Hawass announced that freshly discovered amulets belonging to King Tut corroborated his guess that one of two mummies he'd unearthed elsewhere in the Valley of the Kings had to be Nefertiti. Reeves announced 11 days later that hieroglyphs he'd found on King Tut's tomb further evidenced Nefertiti's burial there. Both parties have stayed quiet in the years since, though Hawass said in 2023 that Nefertiti's decisive identification was coming soon.

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The Hunt: Where in the World Did Nefertiti Go?

Modern society met Ancient Egypt's queen Nefertiti over a century ago and we still haven't found her body. Learn more in The Hunt.

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What do you think happened to Nefertiti? Was her body destroyed after her death because of her association with Akhenaten? Was she buried somewhere secretly in an as yet undiscovered tomb? Or is the Young Lady found in KV35 Nefertiti? Some other theory?

 

[Fiction]

Excellent post.

I think a certain archeologist wants very very very badly to be known as the person who found Nefertiti and will immediately shoot down any other evidence or ideas to the contrary all while basically saying "trust me bro" and it's the reason I dislike him.

Since the discovery of the rooms in Tuts tomb, that has a lot of her name and such, I think she might be in there still.

 

[Sheev]

Everybody knows she went on an adventure dealing with dinosaurs on a spaceship with The Doctor and then decided to live in the 20th century afterwards.

 

[Foolhardy]

Where does the Smenkhkare theory stand with most Egyptologists these days?

 

[Edmond Dantès]

Where does the Smenkhkare theory stand with most Egyptologists these days?

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That he was a completely distinct individual who may have been a brother of Akhenaten and the actual father of Tutankhamun.

 

[Jedi2016]

I thought Tutankhamun's mother was already found, in some other random mummy? Or am I thinking of someone else? Is there also the idea that Nefertiti wasn't his real mother?

 

[Edmond Dantès]

I thought Tutankhamun's mother was already found, in some other random mummy? Or am I thinking of someone else? Is there also the idea that Nefertiti wasn't his real mother?

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It's postulated that the Younger Lady may be Tut's biological mother. Whether the Younger Lady is Nefertiti remains open to speculation. Most Egyptologists lean towards the Younger Lady been a daughter of Amenhotep III and Tiya.

For Nefertiti not been Tut's mother, that's still the general consensus.

 

[The Iron Yuppie]

We had just the man to get to the bottom of this, but cancer stole him from us.


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