A bust of Egyptian Queen Nefertiti may be a fake

Berlin (Germany), Aug 23(ANI): A bust of an Egyptian Queen Nefertiti, which is the most celebrated exhibit in Berlin's Altes Museum, may be a fake.

The bust, dates back to the 14th century BC, is sculpted to perfection, the eyelids and brows outlined in black, she is beautiful, striking, stunning. But, it has recently made headlines in newspapers, magazines, and by bloggers on the Internet for all the wrong reasons.

Martinez-Byrne, a blogger, has pointed out that the art history world is no stranger to controversy and forgery, and posed the question of how this one piece of sculpture survived unscathed.

"If it were on a shelf, the fall from the shelf should have damaged it more than the somewhat superficial damage we see. And why, out of all the pieces retrieved from the shop, is this one so elaborately painted and finished? Didn't anyone else merit such a bust? Even allowing for all of Akhenaten's works of art to be smashed, why wasn't this one smashed as well?" The Al-Ahram quoted Martinez-Byrne, as saying.

She claimed that several Egyptians, including her husband Nabih Kamil, who has worked with the Ministry of Information, have posed various questions.

"They observed that when a sculptured head toppled it tended to damage the projecting parts of the face, particularly the nose and ears. In the case of Nefertiti, however, her nose is intact, and one ear only is damaged, and that only slightly," Byrne said.

She further claimed that they had noticed the non-existent eye, and since no one had seen the bust other than in photographs, they queried whether it was a quartz-inlay or a painted eye that was missing, and that, in either case the eye socket looked distinctly artificial. (ANI)