
Nefertiti, Queen and Pharaoh of Egypt: Her Life and Afterlife
Alva Robinson
Aidan Dodson
2020, AUC Press, 978-9-77416-990-8, $35 hb.
This book is thus intended not only to explore what we can reconstruct of the life of Nefertiti, but also to trace the way in which she and her image emerged...
—Aidan Dodson
The unearthing of Nefertiti's 3,000-year-old bust in 1912 has captivated millions and helped cement her iconic status in popular imagination, but Aidan Dodson, an Honorary Professor of Egyptology at AUC, has set out to identify and contextualize the New Kingdom pharaoh. Dodson goes beyond the scholarship before him by meticulously chronicling the life of Nefertiti, beginning with her marriage to Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, and offers new theories on her origin. Dodson breaks down iconographic evidence etched in stele, tombs and other artefacts to reveal her parentage, relationships, roles and titles. Along the way, he challenges the reader to view her as more than just within “the shadow of her husband” and proposes an embodiment beyond a royal wife and mother, or even a king’s queen. Nefertiti was a warrior. She was Neferneferuaten, “a fully fledged female king,” Dodson writes. In assessing her life, her connection to the historic memory of Egyptians and the struggle against her erasure from history, Dodson illuminates Nefertiti “beyond being simply a name.”
You may also be interested in...
Umayyad Family Dynasty Creates Unprecedented Empire
Explore the development and history of the Umayyad Caliphate, one of the most consequential empires the world has ever known.Old Documents Shed New Light on History in Book Connected to Ancient Islamic World
The painstaking work to recover history—one page at a time—is on brilliant display in this collection of essays focusing on early Arabic, Coptic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin and Sogdian manuscripts.Children’s Book Documents Rise of Umm Kulthum, Egypt’s Star of the East, As Declaration of National Identity
Illustrator Rhonda Roumani presents an illustrative biography of legendary Egyptian singer and cultural icon Umm Kulthum.