The Bust of Nefertiti

Western Civilization's high culture and fine art traditions are gifts from Ancient Egypt. Elegance, civilized ordered social life, everyday objects made with aesthetic taste, visual culture, refinement, defined lines, are all given expression with beauty. Beauty in Egypt was built out of and against the powerful chaotic elements that are nature. Giant carved stone geometric shapes of symmetry and proportion still stand against a sea of sand beside a river that flows to the sea. Human figures depicted on interior walls with color, clear lines, aesthetic maturity, narrate the journey of man from Earth to heaven through ritual. The architectural and artistic capacity of ancient Egyptians remain a captivating mystery.

Palacial tombs, pyramids, mummies, statues, obelisks, gigantic artfully designed monuments, all erected to confront death and guide life. Death and the potential for eternal life and beauty are at the center of ancient Egyptian culture.

How ought one to live? How ought one to die? Imperfect answers regarding how these questions were addressed are found in the assorted artifacts left behind.

Egyptian artifacts are fascinating to me. As a child, I visited the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose, CA seeing mummies, a mock tomb, jewelry, everyday tools, ritual objects, writing implements, textiles, cat statues, many cat statues, architectural models and more. It was a visual feast. Ancient Egyptian aesthetics went far beyond the essential needs of sustaining life. The craftsmanship, the artistry, the monumental stonework all speak to an awareness that order, beauty and justice are important concepts that inform all others.

The Bust of Nefertiti is one such artifact that reflects the pursuit of idealized aesthetics and authority. It is an example of human effort to construct order and beauty from the chaos of the desert. It captures the essence of a civilization's art form and its pursuit of immortality. Some things are more beautiful than others and some ways of living are more beautiful than others. Represented by this stature is hierarchy, and judgment.

Bust of Nefertiti - By Philip Pikart

The Bust of Nefertiti dates back to the 14th century BC, during the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten. Crafted with exquisite skill, the bust epitomizes sensory allure with smooth facial features, elongated neck, and high cheekbones. Her expressive, painted eyes and the ornamental headdress crowned with vibrant lapis lazuli captivate the viewer. The bust’s intricate design showcases mastery in craftsmanship. Nefertiti's features are rendered with delicate precision, from the subtle arc of her brows to the defined edges of her lips. The use of color and symmetry reflects meticulous artistic effort. The artifact is an ancient imagining of grace and dignity.

The bust's serene visage, with its almost perfect symmetry, evokes an ethereal presence; the delicate contours of Nefertiti's face seem to breathe life into the limestone and stucco. The vibrant colors—a testament to the enduring brilliance of ancient pigments—illuminate her exquisite features, with red-painted lips hinting at a mysterious smile. Her elongated neck and regal blue crown form an arresting silhouette that draws the viewer into a contemplation of her enigmatic smile and noble bearing. Despite the empty left eye socket, there is a haunting completeness in her gaze that transcends the boundaries of stone and paint.

The intricacy of the Bust of Nefertiti is evident in its harmonious proportions and the delicate craftsmanship of features such as individually applied eyebrow hairs. Layers of stucco of varying thickness present a textured canvas for the vividly painted surface, resulting in an aura of lifelikeness evident today thousands of years after its creation. The choice and application of pigments were performed with precision, utilizing mineral-based hues that have withstood the test of time. The combination of symmetry and detail speaks to the mastery of the artisans who transformed raw materials into a reflection of elegance and power.

Nefertiti's iconic blue crown, adorned with a golden diadem and uraeus, symbolizes her royal status and divine status. The bust's regal portrayal, combined with traditional Egyptian collar and facial features, positions it within the canon of pharaonic art. The subtle smile and serene gaze amplify her enigmatic appeal, distinguishing the bust as a quintessential representation of Egyptian royalty.

Symbolically, the bust embodies feminine beauty, political strength, and spiritual devotion. Nefertiti’s visage goes beyond mere likeness; it is a study of perfected human form. Her serene demeanor testifies to strength found in composure and the mystique of the feminine form. Nefertiti's mythic stature as both queen and high priestess is central to her legend.

Ritually, the bust holds significant ceremonial value. It represents the rites and cultural veneration of the divine and sovereign in ancient Egypt. The people of Egypt shared a common orientation upward to the divine through the heads of state provided for a stable and long-lasting social order.

Lost for centuries, it was unearthed in 1912 by German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt in the ruins of Tell el-Amarna. This pivotal moment reintroduced the forgotten queen to contemporary consciousness. Advanced technologies, like radiography and digital imaging, have deepened our understanding of the bust’s construction and materials. These techniques reveal the artistry and realism achieved by ancient craftsmen, highlighting their sophisticated craft.

A surprising outcome of the bust’s rediscovery is its influence on modern beauty standards and its impact on social imagination, becoming an aspirational icon.

Through such artifacts, we see that conceptions of life, death, right, wrong, order, and beauty, require judgment and discernment that develop overtime and remain relevant thousands of years into the future.

Aesthetic judgment exists alongside ethical judgment. This was more clear to the ancients of Western Civilization than modern and post-modern thought. Each informs the other. “Ethics is language of obligation, aesthetics is language of sensibility” (David Bently Hart, Your Are Gods).

It seems to me that to attain beauty in life requires judgment and discernment, a hierarchy of aesthetic taste. Judgment and taste develop a language of aesthetics that allows for refinement that leads toward the beautiful. This is the artist’s way. Attaining life after death also requires good judgment, standards, a hierarchy of morality, and a notion of a final judgment. This is the moral path.

An encounter with beauty at once grounds us to the present moment and lifts us towards the transcendent. Witnessing beauty reminds us of the joy of existence in the midst of all manner of human suffering. Beauty also requires us to ascribe and describe the qualities of beauty. This dialogue with beauty, ourselves and others contains within it an implicit promise that the beautiful is possible to recognize and realize both in life and within ourselves.

Our ability to see beauty or its absence doesn’t require extensive education. In fact, these days, the more formal education one receives, the more complexified the notions of beauty become, and the more obscure and distant the experience of beauty becomes. Beauty itself is often criticized for being a foundation of hierarchy, judgment, and oppression. The current obsession with Marxian notions of equity and inclusion fosters a desire for the destruction of hierarchy. Modern art is filled with such artifacts.

For example, the New York Times reported one such illustrative story in 2016:

“Two California teenagers who recently visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art were less than impressed by some of the exhibits and wondered if they could do better.

And thus a scheme was hatched: They placed a pair of eyeglasses on the floor, stood back and watched as, within minutes, visitors regarded their prank as a work of art, with some even taking photos of the fake installation.

"Is this really what you call art?" Kevin said in an interview over the weekend.”

The clarity of the teenager’s (aged 16 and 17) understanding of the purpose of art is a clear example of how the “uneducated” may well be more in tune with beauty and its place in our personal and public lives than many museum curators.