Nefertiti woman is queen nefertiti

Queen Nefertiti: Her name means “the beautiful [or youthful] woman has come.” In ancient times, when the scene was complete, Nefertiti would have been seen with her husband, the pharaoh Akhenaten. King Akhenaten and Nefertiti are best known for leading a religious transformation. They tried to change Egyptian religious practice from the worship of multiple gods to the worship of one deity only—Aten, the disc of the sun. They moved the capital of Egypt from Thebes to Amarna and dedicated it to Aten to show their devotion. At some time during her husband’s reign, Nefertiti was made core gent, the pharaoh’s equal. Proof of this is seen on other reliefs that show her the same size as the pharaoh.

Nefertiti was the wife of the pharaoh Akhenaton. Akhenaton was an Egyptian pharaoh who reigned Egypt from 1353 to 1336 BC. Nefertiti supported her husband's revolution in the Egyptian religion. Which was the religion that celebrated the power of the sun disk Aten and the sun god Aton.

Nefertiti is best known for her portrait bust, found at Tell el- Amarna. Which was the main province in the country. Nefertiti had six daughters. Two of them had later became queens of Egypt. At around the 12th year of Akhenaton's reign Nefertiti probably retired after losing favor from Akhenaton, if not she must have died. Some of Nefertiti's things were found in a place in Amarna.

Nefertiti is standing with her arms raised offering a bouquet of lotus flowers to a god whose multiple arms and hands reach out to accept the gift. Who do you think the god could be? What might the many hands symbolize?

Nefertiti jumps out at us from history thanks to this sculpture, which was found in the abandoned Amarna workshop of the sculptor Tuthmosis by German archaeologists in 1912. She stood out in her time for her power as well as her beauty. Ancient carvings show images of Nefetiti killing traditional Egyptian enemies. Usually, only pharaohs were shown in this powerful and aggressive pose. Nefertiti was Akhenaten’s most important wife, and the mother of six daughters. Historians aren’t sure if she or another of Akhenaten’s wives was the mother of King Tut. This statue is now in Germany inside one of the most famous museum in the world.

King Akhenaten, his beautiful wife Nefertiti, and his probable son Tutankhamun were all part of this dynasty (dynasty 18). During this time one of the most dramatic changes in Egypt took place: Akhenaten built a new city as a capital, Amarna, for a god named the Aten, and outlawed all other gods. The Amarna period, sometimes called “The Amarna Experiment,” resulted in some of the bestknown art, tombs, writing and records of ancient Egypt. That is why, even though the period was only around 30 years long, it is one of the most famous in Egyptian history.

In fact Akhenaten focused in his religion ideas and didn't care of the foreign affairs like traded or the power of Egypt in Asia.

Questions and Facts about Nefertiti:

Did Mutnodjmet really exist?

Yes, Mutnodjmet really existed, as did Nefertiti, Queen Tiye, Akhenaten, Vizier Ay, Lady Kiya, General Horemheb, General Nakhtmin... Suffice it to say that almost every character in the book was based on an historical personage.

While the main historical events are accurate, such as Ay’s rise to power, Akhenaten’s obsession with Aten, the dream of Amarna, and Nefertiti’s unparalleled influence at court, liberties were taken with personalities, names and minor historical events. For instance, no one can be certain how Mutnodjmet felt about her sister’s vision of an Egypt without the Amun Priests, but in an image of her found in Amarna she is standing off to one side, her arms down while everyone else is enthusiastically embracing Aten. In a period where art attempted to portray reality for the first time, I found this significant. And while Nefertiti did have six daughters with Akhenaten, she never, so far as we know, produced twins the way she did in the novel. Historical uncertainties revolve as well around the questions of whether Amunhotep the Younger ever had a co-regency with his father, or whether Nefertiti ever did rule on her own. These are questions that can only be answered by conjecture, and I went with what seemed most plausible given the historical evidence.

Today, some of these questions could be answered by a firm identification of the Amarna mummies. Although much of Kiya’s funerary equipment was found in her son Tutankhamun’s tomb, little to nothing remains that was Akhenaten’s or Nefertiti’s. How old was Nefertiti when she died? What killed Tiye? Dr. Joann Fletcher contends that a cache of mummies found in tomb KV55 are the bodies of Nefertiti and the Dowager Queen. If so, they were stunning beauties even in death.

Some historians mentioned that Nefertiti had been captivedand and prison in a Northern Palace in the end of Akhenaten' reign, Is that true?

No. This belief was predicated upon an inscription on the Northern Palace which archaeologists believed read “Nefertiti.” The name had been removed from the palace while Nefertiti was still alive and replaced with the name of Princess Meritaten. If Princess Meritaten had truly removed her mother’s name from the palace, it would indeed seem to indicate a daughter taking the place of her mother. However, the inscription was later discovered to actually read “Kiya.” After Kiya’s death Nefertiti and her daughter set out to erase the existence of Nefertiti’s only real rival. Unfortunately, many internet sites haven’t bothered to update their information, so the erroneous theory of Nefertiti having been banished persists.

Is it true that Akhenaten had Marfan’s syndrome?

There is absolutely no anthropological or DNA evidence to suggest this was the case. Those who believe that Akhenaten had Marfan Syndrome, a genetic disorder characterized by unusually long limbs and curvature of the spine, do so simply because some of his statues show a man with long arms and an elongated head. It is essential to remember, however, that Akhenaten purposefully changed the artistic style which all of his predecessors had used, creating a new style known today as Amarna Art. For as many images as there are of Akhenaten with a long, leonine face and feminine hips, there are just as many images from when he was a child displaying none of these startling features. During the Amarna period, all of Akhenaten’s family begins to appear with long arms, elongated heads and large hips, even Nefertiti. It is highly unlikely that the entire royal family had this connective tissue disorder, particularly in light of Nefertiti’s bust which resides in Berlin and shows none of the characteristics that those with Marfan Syndrome typically display.

Nefertiti ever ruled as Pharaoh, Is that true?

This depends on which Egyptologist you ask and what camp they fall into. Amunhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten, and when Nefertiti became co-regent with her husband she changed her name to Ankhkheperura-Neferneferuaten. It is not beyond the limits of plausibility, then, to imagine that Nefertiti later became Pharaoh Ankhkheperura-Smenkhkara, who ruled briefly after Akhenaten’s death. A beautiful gold figurine in Tutankhamun’s tomb depicts a female Pharaoh (not a queen) walking atop an ebony leopard. Egyptologists have dated the figure back to Akhenaten’s reign, which means there is only one possibility of who this feminine ruler of Egypt could be: Nefertiti. There is also evidence of foreign correspondence during Pharaoh Ankhkheperura-Smenkhkara’s time that points to Egypt’s Pharaoh being Nefertiti. If you want more information about this, I suggest checking out the work of Dr. Joann Fletcher, who wrote The Search for Nefertiti: The True Story of an Amazing Discovery and whose work was featured on the Discovery Channel. Dr. Fletcher stirred up quite the controversy with this book and her announcement that she discovered the body of Nefertiti.

Dating as far back as 1500 BCE, palaces were more comfortable than you or I might imagine given that it was 3,500 years ago. The wealthy shaved with copper razors and bathrooms were discovered in Amarna equipped with toilet seats that matched the limestone sink bowls. Royal women regularly applied face cream, eye shadow and lipstick. Women had elaborate containers for their makeup, and very wealthy women carried handheld mirrors made of polished brass the way women carry purses today.

If Nefertiti ruled on her own, then who would have been her queen?

Just as Hatshepsut made herself Pharaoh and her daughter queen, Nefertiti would have named her eldest daughter Meritaten as her consort. Surprising though this may seem, rulers of Egypt searched for balance, the feminine with the masculine, and in religious ceremonies it was necessary to have a female part which Pharaoh, as a “man,” couldn’t play.

We see many source one of them at Michelle Moran online

Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV)

During Akhenaten's rule, from 1353 to 1336 BCE, He moved the capital city of Egypt from Thebes to Amarna, then known as Akhetaten, a city he constructed on what had been just a piece of desert. There he created a new religion and new temples. His influence lived on beyond his death.

Akhenaten

You may know that throughout their history ancient Egyptians worshiped many gods and goddesses. In some ways these deities were a lot like people: they had arguments, could get married and had children. Together, they were believed to control everything from health to rainfall.

Everyday Egyptians kept images of the gods and goddesses in their homes and communicated with them. Making offerings,celebrating religious holidays and preparing complex fun eralswere all a part of Egyptians’ constant interactions with their royal gods.

Akhenaten was born into this world of many gods. At that time, Amun Re was the most important of Egypt’s gods. Amun Re was a mysterious god with many abilities, but he appeared to the people as the sun. A powerful group of priests served Amun-Re.

When Akhenaten became king in 1353 BC he began to make changes. He declared that there was only one god who could be worshiped –the Aten – and he declared that as pharaoh he was the only person who could communicate with this god.

Why did Akhenaten make this huge change?Some people think he wanted to get rid ofthe powerful priests of Amun Re, whose power could challenge the pharaohs. Other people think that Akhenaten was totally dedicated to the Aten, and that he was one of the first people in history to express unique and personal thoughts on spirituality.

The Aten literally meant “the disk of the sun.” Akhenaten searched for a place to build a new city for the Aten. He found it in a spot where the sun appeared to rise from an eastern valley and spread its light over abroad piece of land in front of the Nile river.The new city was named Akhetaten, “horizon of the Aten.” Today, historians call the city Amarna.

The pharaoh lived at Amarna with his family. As a result,all the government officials, artists, builders and families who served the king moved there, too. This was a great huge move.

As the population grew, the city stretched north and south along the Nile, which was the source of water for the wells the people of Amarna dug into the desert. Official royal buildings and the temples of the Aten were concentrated in the heart of the city. Suburbs, where most people lived, surrounded the center of the city.

Surely, daily life went on for the Egyptian people. They farmed, fished and built as they had for hundred of years. The king, his wives and children went about their daily lives, but the family had a new significance in the new religion. Instead of the many statues of gods the people had been used to seeing when worshiping in the past, the king’s family were now Egyptians visible link to god. In sculpture, at important events, and even traveling around the city, the pharaoh family were not only royalty or representatives of gods on earth: they were the people’s only link to god. They also took the place of myths of the gods and their families.

During the rule of Akhenaten’s father, Amenhotep III, the numerous gods of ancient Egypt were worshiped widely, but Amun Re was held above the rest. The priests of Amun Re became so powerful and wealthy that they could even challenge the pharaoh. This wasn’t good for the royal family, and within his reign Amenhotep III made steps to raise other gods up and control the power of the priests. One of the gods he called attention to was the Aten, a solar god who was represented by an image of the sun in the sky.

About the year 1350 BCE, new rules were given by Pharaoh Akhenaten to the people of Egypt, and they came as a shock. The one and only god would be the Aten, which had no human or animal form. It was simply the sun in the sky. Only Akhenaten could know the Aten’s wishes, or ask the Aten for help.

When Akhenaten closed all the gods’ temples, including those of Amun Re, and announced that he was moving to a new city, priests suddenly lost all their power.

When the traditional gods were outlawed, everyday Egyptians lost their connection to the spiritual world. Akhenaten proclaimed that he and his family were the only ones capable of communicating with the Aten. If people wanted to communicate with the god, they would have to look to the pharaoh.

Of course, some people weren’t happy about all these changes, but they had also been trained for generations to think that the pharaoh was a god on Earth. They didn’t challenge his changes.

You may hear people claim that the religion of the Aten was monotheistic, which means a religion with only one god. Certainly the religion of the Aten was much closer to monotheism than the religion of the many gods Egyptian shad worshiped before. But there is one problem: The people had to worship Akhenaten, his wife Nefertiti and their family as the representatives of the Aten. The royal family would, in turn, worship the Aten. This isn’t strictly monotheism as we know it today.

Think of it - what if you had to worship the president,who could then worship god. The Egyptians were used to thinking of their leaders as godly, so it wasn’t as strange to them as it would be to you - but they still remembered the old ways.

In about 1346 BC Akhenaten chose Amarna as the site of a new city to be built for the Aten. All the people whose jobs depended on the pharaoh, from sculptors to builders to government officials, left their homes in Thebes and traveled to Amarna to begin a new life under one god. There, temples were built without roofs, so that the sun could be seen in the sky.

Did Akhenaten really believe in the Aten, or did he just use the Aten to upset Egypt’s power structure and reshape it the way he wanted? Signs show that Akhenaten really did believe in his spiritual connection to the Aten. He composed songs and poems in honor of the god, and sometimes neglected Egypt’s well-being and safety in his pursuit of building the perfect home for the Aten. But all of Akhenaten’s devotion to the Aten couldn’t erase what the people of Egypt had known for hundreds of years.

Soon after Akhenaten’s death, Amarna was abandoned and the capital cities moved to Memphis and Thebes,where the Aten was turned back into just one of many minor gods.

Akhenaten set out to build the Aten a city so amazing, rich and beautiful that it put memories of old gods out of his subjects’ minds. He wanted to create a place worthy of his god, and one that would impress his people with the Aten’s magnificence.

Because the pharaoh was so wealthy, he could hire as many painters, sculptors and artisans as he wanted - and it seems that a virtual army of artists lived in Amarna during the city’s short time. Akhenaten himself developed a new style for showing the human body in art. Instead of the very stiff and straight traditional figures, his were long and curved, with large hips and thin arms. Some people have even wondered if Akhenaten was born with an illness that gave him a strange figure - but now it is believed he was shown in this way as part of the new artistic style.

Family portraits of the royal family, Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their daughters, also changed at this time. In addition to formal, ceremonial pictures, the family was shown playingand relaxing together, holding each other and enjoying age under the rays of the Aten.

On this block from a temple relief, Akhenaten (ack-en-AH-ten), recognizable by his elongated features, holds a duck up toward Aten, the solar disk. Akhenaten believed that light was the only divine power in the universe and thus was the source and sustainer of all creation. The solar disk was the means through which this power came into the world. Akhenaten’s god was not portrayed in human or animal form but through the symbol of the solar disk with rays ending in small human hands, one of which holds an ankh, symbol of life, toward the king’s nose. The sun-disk symbol is a large-scale hieroglyph meaning ‘light”

On this block from a temple relief, Akhenaten (ack-en-AH-ten), recognizable by his elongated features, holds a duck up toward Aten, the solar disk. Akhenaten believed that light was the only divine power in the universe and thus was the source and sustainer of all creation. The solar disk was the means through which this power came into the world. Akhenaten’s god was not portrayed in human or animal form but through the symbol of the solar disk with rays ending in small human hands, one of which holds an ankh, symbol of life, toward the king’s nose. The sun-disk symbol is a large-scale hieroglyph meaning ‘light”

On this block from a temple relief, Akhenaten (ack-en-AH-ten), recognizable by his elongated features, holds a duck up toward Aten, the solar disk. Akhenaten believed that light was the only divine power in the universe and thus was the source and sustainer of all creation. The solar disk was the means through which this power came into the world. Akhenaten’s god was not portrayed in human or animal form but through the symbol of the solar disk with rays ending in small human hands, one of which holds an ankh, symbol of life, toward the king’s nose. The sun-disk symbol is a large-scale hieroglyph meaning ‘light”

With one hand Akhenaten holds the duck firmly by its wings and with the other he wrings its neck before offering it to his god. Although early depictions of Akhenaten often appear strangely exaggerated, his sculptors later in his reign attempted a more naturalistic style, emphasizing transitory motion and a sense of space and atmosphere. Akhenaten’s hands here are grasping and straining to hold on to the struggling duck. Such a scene, capturing a moment in a sacrifice being made by a king, would never have been attempted in another period. Akhenaten’s right hand, however, is twisted so that all five fingers can be seen, a pose that conforms to the Egyptian convention of presenting each part of the body as completely as possible.

The type of relief used here is called sunk relief. Instead of cutting the background away and leaving the figures raised above the surface of the stone (as in raised relief), the artist has cut the outlines of the figures into the surface. Sunk relief in general appears mostly on the outside of buildings, where the outlines are emphasized by shadows cast by Egypt’s brilliant sunlight, but during the Amarna period almost all relief was executed in this technique.

Khafra (2558 - 2532 B.C.)

Statue of Khafra

King Khafra, different son of king Khufu, followed his brother to the throne and built his mortuary complex at Giza.

Associate the 4th Dynasty, Egyptian civilization reached a peak in its development, and this high level was generally maintained in the 5th and 6th dynasties The splendor of the engineering feats of the pyramids was approximated in every other domain of endeavor, including architecture, grave, painting navigation, the industrial arts and sciences, and astronomy; Memphite astronomers first created a solar calendar based on a year of 365 days- Old Kingdom physicians also exposed a remarkable cognition of physiology, surgery, the circulative system of the body, and antiseptics.

The pyramid of king Khafra:

The pyramid of Khafra

The pharaoh called Khafre (pyramid 143.50 meters high = 3157.000000 twelfths of a cubit = 3157 months) lived 263 years and 1 calendar month.

The pyramids of Khafra and Menkara were constructed on a different plan inside to that of Khufu. Khafra's had two catches, both to the north, one from the platform ahead the pyramid, the other 50 feet above the ground. king Menkara still preserves the remains of its case of red granite. The entrance passing descends at an angle of twenty-six degrees, and soon meets the rock.

 
The first chamber is decorated with panels carved in the stone, and was involved at the further end by three portcullises of granite. The second chamber appears to be unfinished, but this was a trap to delude the spoilers. A passage cut in the floor, and cautiously hidden, gave access to a lower chamber. There lay the mummy in a sarcophagus of sliced basalt. The sarcophagus was still perfect at the beginning of this century. Taken thence by Colonel Howard Vyse, it foundered on the Spanish coast with the ship which was holding it to England.

The Sphinx:

The Sphinx of Giza

The Sphinx: a huge, limestone statue that stands about 66 ft [20 meters] high and stretches 240 feet [73 meters]. It is actually called the “Great Sphinx,” and it wears an ancient Egyptian royal headdress. The Great Sphinx lies near the tomb or pyramid of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh King Khafre. Historians conceive King Khafra had the monument established and its face is really a portrait of the king.

 



How to travel to the pyramid of Khafra?

If you are in a holidays or vacation to Egypt,  and then you are in Cairo you can travel there bye any Taxi, car or by Metro. But if you are in Luxor or Aswan Egypt you can go to Giza where the pyramid found by air or by train.