A Boost for Nefertiti

The exquisite sculpture depicting the ancient Egyptian Queen testifies to the appropriateness of her name: Nefertiti, "The Beautiful One Is Come." Now University of Pennsylvania Archaeologist Ray Winfield Smith has suggested that she had brains to match her looks. His evidence: carvings on the scattered fragments of a temple erected at Karnak in the 14th century B.C. by the Queen's husband, Pharaoh Akhenaten. After analyzing photographs of 35,000 pieces of this archaeological jigsaw puzzle, Smith reports that Nefertiti is depicted more often than the Pharaoh--an unheard-of honor for a woman of her time. Akhenaten's own portraits depict thick lips, feminine hips and thighs, and rudimentary breasts. The King, says Archaeologist Smith, may have suffered from a hormonal malfunction that left him simpleminded and sterile. All of which suggests to Smith that Nefertiti's six daughters were not sired by her husband, and that she played a large part of the role usually assigned to the sun-worshiping Pharaoh, founder of history's first monotheistic religion.

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