Ophelia de Vere

  How a heretic pharaoh, a queen with impossible cheekbones, and a garden stroll carved in stone make ancient Egypt feel startlingly modern. Exhibition: Kunsthalle Bremen 2019 I can't remember the first time I met  Akhenaten and Nefertiti . For the latter, it may as well have been the her famous and in academic or diplomatic circles controversially debated bust that got me. Made of a limestone core covered in painted stucco, the bust ist believed to be a modello and  dated to around circa 1340–1345 BCE , during the Amarna Period. It is attributed to the sculptor Thutmose who had a  workshop at Tell el-Amarna. The bust was discovered on 6 December 1912 during excavations at Amarna by the German Oriental Society, led by Ludwig Borchardt. Today, she sits pefectly in state  — aloof, impossibly poised on a pedestal at the Neues Museum in Berlin . Everyone crowds her, phones up, mostly irreverent.  Nontheless, she has achieved worldwide cult status, whose very...