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In the Amarna gallery of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo is a beautiful, unfinished head of Queen Nefertiti. Although this piece of sculpture is far less famous than the Berlin Nefertiti bust (discovered by a German team in 1912), the story of her discovery is one containing a bit of ‘honeymoon luck’.
The Egypt Exploration Society ran an excavation season at Amarna in Middle Egypt from 1932 to 1933. The excavation architect Hilary Waddington brought his new wife Ruth for the season. On 21 December 1932, while walking over a patch of previously unexcavated ground within the ancient city of Amarna, Ruth tripped over a mud brick. Kneeling down to inspect the brick, she realised that underneath was a fragment of a plaster head belonging to a member of the Amarna royal family. Thinking that there may be more exciting finds below the sand, the area was excavated by a team led by Hilary and reis Hussein Sawaq over the next few weeks. What they uncovered was a large sculptors’ workshop complex within which, according to Pendlebury, ‘a number of works of art were discovered which rival those made by the Germans before the war’.
These amazing discoveries included plaster busts and faces of the royal family (initially believed to be ‘death masks’, but probably instead used as sculptors’ models), moulds, tools, and other equipment typical of a sculptors’ production area, as well as statuettes, figurines, faience amulets, inlays, and beads. Most famously, on 9 January 1933, the team discovered this unfinished head of Nefertiti, which is just over 30cm in length and was carved of quartzite. The piece still bears the sculptor’s drafting guidelines, and some areas of rough, unpolished stone, demonstrating its unfinished nature; however, the craftsperson still chose to paint Nefertiti’s lips red. This head was intended to be a part of a composite statue. The tenon on the neck was meant to have slotted into the torso of the statue, and similarly a crown would have rested on the tenon on the top of Nefertiti’s head. These other sculptural pieces would probably have been made from a different material, perhaps granodiorite, to create a striking finished statue.
Unfortunately, after the abandonment of Amarna c.1332 BC, this workshop complex, which was nicknamed the ‘Waddington Workshop’, was abandoned – leaving sculptural masterpieces, such as this head of Queen Nefertiti, unfinished.
Stephanie Boonstra, Collections Manager, Egypt Exploration Society
