The leading woman of all the nobles, great in the palace, perfect of appearance, beautiful in the double plume, the mistress of joy who is united with favour, whose voice people rejoice to hear, great wife of the king, his beloved, the great mistress of the two lands—Neferneferuaten, Nefertiti, granted life for ever, and for eternity!”
Engraved on a stela found at Amarna, Egypt, this glowing passage describes Nefertiti, the great royal wife of Amenhotep IV—better known by the name he adopted later in life—Akhenaten. Her husband radically changed Egypt, transforming its polytheistic state religion to the worship of one deity, the solar disk Aten. He also moved the Egyptian capital to a new city he built named Akhetaten, meaning“horizon of the god Aten.”
Akhenaten’s revolution was short-lived: Egypt would…