Nefertitiنفرتيتي

Nefertiti was no ordinary queen. Alongside Akhenaten she helped drive his sweeping religious revolution, which swept away Egypt's many gods in favour of a single deity, the sun-disc Aten. In the art of the Amarna period she appears with extraordinary prominence — leading the worship of the Aten, sometimes making offerings entirely on her own, an almost unheard-of role for a woman. Other reliefs show her in the poses of a king: driving a chariot and even smiting Egypt's enemies. Together she and Akhenaten had six daughters, and their family was shown bathed in the rays of the Aten with a warmth and intimacy never seen in Egyptian art before. Her third daughter, Ankhesenpaaten, would go on to marry the boy-king Tutankhamun.

One of the great puzzles of Egyptology is that Nefertiti simply vanishes from the record around the twelfth year of Akhenaten's seventeen-year reign. No one knows why. Some scholars believe she died; others think something far more remarkable happened — that she was elevated to co-regent under the name Neferneferuaten, ruling as an equal, and perhaps continued to rule alone after Akhenaten's death, possibly as the shadowy king Smenkhkare. There is even a precedent: a century earlier, Hatshepsut had ruled as a female king. If Nefertiti did hold power at the end, she may have begun the very process of restoring the old gods that would be completed under Tutankhamun.

Nefertiti's fame today rests above all on a single object: the painted limestone bust of Nefertiti. On 6 December 1913, a German team led by Ludwig Borchardt uncovered it lying upside-down in the rubble of the workshop of the royal sculptor Thutmose at Amarna. With its serene face, high cheekbones, elegant long neck, and tall blue crown, it is considered one of the supreme masterpieces of ancient art — the most famous face of antiquity after the golden mask of Tutankhamun. Today it draws crowds at the Neues Museum in Berlin, and remains the image that the whole world pictures when it thinks of an Egyptian queen.

For all her fame, Nefertiti's tomb and mummy have never been definitively identified — one of the enduring mysteries of Egyptology. Researchers have looked for her in the Royal Tomb at Amarna and in the Valley of the Kings, and several unidentified female mummies have been proposed as candidates. In 2015 the Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves made headlines by suggesting that hidden chambers behind the walls of Tutankhamun's tomb might conceal her, and other scholars have since announced possible leads — but none of these claims has been confirmed. For now, the most beautiful queen of Egypt keeps her final secret.

• Who she was: Great Royal Wife of Akhenaten and a powerful queen of the 18th Dynasty.
• Arabic name: نفرتيتي (Nefertiti) — "The Beautiful One Has Come."
• When: 14th century BC (c. 1370–c. 1330 BC).
• Role: partner in Akhenaten's Aten revolution; shown making offerings, driving a chariot, smiting enemies.
• Family: six daughters; her daughter Ankhesenpaaten married Tutankhamun.
• Possible reign: may have ruled as co-regent (Neferneferuaten) and perhaps alone after Akhenaten.
• The bust: found at Amarna in 1913; now in the Neues Museum, Berlin.
• Her tomb: never confirmed — still one of Egyptology's great mysteries.

Sources include National Geographic, HISTORY, Archaeology Magazine, and ongoing Egyptological reporting on Nefertiti, the Amarna period, and the search for her tomb.