Nefertiti Found?

By Jeffrey Kluger and Andrea Dorfman

Given the spectacular manner in which Queen Nefertiti lived, you would think she would have equally spectacular accommodations in death. She and her Pharaoh husband lived on the breezy east bank of the Nile in a palace stuffed with throne rooms, pools and spacious courtyards. She was both queen and goddess, serving as a high priest at religious ceremonies and standing by her husband at the Window of Appearances. Yet the culture whose pyramids, mummies and dazzling burial chambers set the ancient standards for funerary grandeur appears to have forgotten Nefertiti. The glamorous young queen died more than 3,300 years ago, and sometime thereafter her body and all the accoutrements of her entombment disappeared without a trace.

Until, perhaps, now. A team of archaeologists, radiologists and scholars returned from Egypt earlier this year with what they claim are compelling clues that a stripped and mutilated mummy, first discovered in a side chamber of a royal Egyptian tomb more than 100 years ago, is the lost Nefertiti. The new expedition, funded by the Discovery Channel, will be chronicled in a TV special to be broadcast on Aug. 17. But much of the scientists' new evidence was shown to TIME last week. It is by no means conclusive--much of it is merely circumstantial. However, it may be as close as anyone has come to the queen in a long time.

From the beginning of her moment in the public eye, Nefertiti had a star quality that transcended her epoch. Her swan neck, flawless face and curvaceous figure seem to justify her name, which means "the beautiful one is come." Her parents are unknown, although some scholars believe her father eventually became Tutankhamen's vizier (a sort of prime minister) and then ascended the throne himself. Nefertiti was chosen as principal wife of young Amenhotep IV, who became Pharaoh in about 1350 B.C. At the time of her marriage, she may have been no older than 12.

The reign of Amenhotep shook things up in Egypt. The priesthood surrounding Egypt's traditional polytheistic religion had accumulated enormous power. Rather than try to wrest it from the priests, the young king simply pulled their religion out from under them. He abolished the polytheistic system and replaced it with a religion based on the worship of Aten, the sun god. The Pharaoh even changed his name to Akhenaten--or "one who serves Aten." This undoubtedly made him a despised figure among the orthodox, a hostility that spilled over to his queen who, if ancient reliefs are to be believed, also wielded enormous power. "She is literally hand in hand with Akhenaten at religious ceremonies and state occasions," says Egyptologist Rita Freed of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts.

Things apparently got dicey for Nefertiti sometime after the 12th year of Akhenaten's 17-year reign. She vanished from the historical record about that time. She may have died or, Egyptologists speculate, may have served as co-regent with her husband and after his death, as Pharaoh herself. If so, she ruled under a different name and only briefly, until Tutankhamen took over.

Whenever Nefertiti died, she likely received a glittery interment in the family tomb her husband had built in the city now known as Amarna. But after a return to polytheism, the tomb was sacked. Some scholars think that priests loyal to the former royals rescued the mummies, but for millenniums nobody knew where they were stashed.

Joann Fletcher, a British Egyptologist and member of the University of York's mummy-research team, believes she knows. Fletcher has long been intrigued by a tomb, known in archaeological argot as KV 35, in the Valley of the Kings near modern-day Luxor. The tomb was built for Pharaoh Amenhotep II, who died in about 1419 B.C. However, when archaeologists first opened it in 1898, they found that the mummies of additional Pharaohs--including Ramesses IV, V and VI--had been placed in coffins in a side chamber. In a second, smaller side chamber, the archaeologists found a bleaker scene: the stripped mummies of a middle-age woman, a younger woman and a boy were lying on the floor, their swaddlings tossed carelessly over their legs. The bodies of the boy and the young woman had been partly mutilated. The remains were studied, sketched and photographed. Then they were respectfully placed on thin mattresses, and the room was sealed.

When Fletcher was working on a doctoral dissertation on ancient Egyptian hair and wigs, she was drawn to a photograph of the younger woman in KV 35. Her hair had been shaved off, a style Fletcher believes Nefertiti favored so that she could wear her snug-fitting crown. Fletcher later learned that a bit of a wig had been found next to the mummy, and when she examined it in a museum she saw that it was consistent with the Nubian-style hairpieces worn by Nefertiti and her court. "There's enough left to give clear evidence of style," Fletcher told TIME.

Fletcher was fascinated by the clues and was determined to get inside the burial chamber. Eventually, London-based Atlantic Productions and the Discovery Channel agreed to try to persuade Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities to allow her a peek. Cairo complied, and last June Fletcher finally entered the tomb. "When the wall was taken down, and we shined our torches [flashlights] in, the first thing I saw was the older woman staring back at me," she says. "That took a bit of getting used to."

During that visit and a second one in February, she and a team of researchers amassed a body of evidence suggesting that the young woman was indeed Nefertiti and that the other mummies were those of close relatives. The method and high quality of the embalming, as well as the location of the incisions, are characteristic of the mid-to late-18th dynasty, which was Nefertiti's era. The young woman's left earlobe had been pierced twice, a feature, Fletcher says, she has seen in depictions of no other ancient Egyptian women but Nefertiti and one of her daughters. What's more, the mummy's forehead bore the impression of a tight-fitting brow band, a sign of royalty. "During this period, brow bands were worn only by the king and his principal queen," says Earl Ertman, professor emeritus of Egyptology at the University of Akron.

According to bioarchaeologist Don Brothwell of the University of York, who participated in the project, the damage to the bodies of the young woman and the boy is too violent to be accidental. Someone hacked at the woman's face with a sharp instrument, and similar damage was done to the boy's chest--just what might be expected during a postmortem desecration of unpopular figures. (A cavity in the woman's chest was likely the incidental handiwork of later grave robbers.) "The damage to the mouth is appalling," says Fletcher. "It looks completely malicious."

Evidence gathered with scientific equipment made the case even stronger. With the help of a small, portable, digital X-ray machine, Fletcher's team captured images of the interior of the bodies from numerous angles and assembled them into complete portraits of the three mummies. That work helped confirm that the young woman was between 19 and 30--the right age for Nefertiti. The older woman was 35 to 45, and the boy was between 12 and 14. "We can't be more precise," concedes Brothwell. "We're dealing with an ancient population that could have had different rates of maturity, and there are factors of nutrition to consider as well." Still, the ranges they cite are consistent with the possible age of death of Akhenaten's mother, Queen Tiye, and one of his brothers--both of whom could have been interred in the same tomb as Nefertiti.

The most puzzling--and most tantalizing--clue involves the young woman's arms. Her left arm is intact, but her right one had been wrenched off below the shoulder. As it happens, two partial right arms turned up in the discarded mummy wrappings. The better preserved of the two is a woman's arm that may be in a flexed position; the hand on the arm is clasped. If attached to the young woman's body, the arm would be bent across her chest and the hand could have held a scepter--an Egyptian sign of kingly power. "This was clearly someone of authority," says Ertman. "The only other time I've seen this is in an image of Hatshepsut, a woman who ruled as king."

Not everyone is convinced that the mummy of the young woman is, in fact, Nefertiti. Chemical and DNA tests, which might help confirm, for example, if any of the mummies are related--and prove that the arm and the mummy belong together--were forbidden by the Egyptian government. "It's very difficult to identify a mummy with a particular person, especially without DNA," says Peter Lacovara, curator of ancient Egyptian art at the Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta. "And as for the arm being flexed, a lot can happen when bodies are thrown around the room."

"The evidence strikes me as flimsy," says Egyptologist Kent Weeks, of the American University in Cairo. "If the mummy is female and if it is royal, then you still do not necessarily have Nefertiti. I think the jury is still out."

Fletcher is more sanguine. She believes she has the evidence, although she acknowledges that it is not definitive and that Nefertiti's whereabouts may remain an open question. "We're never going to be 100% sure," she says. "She's not going to sit up and tell us who she is." At least not until they make the movie.