Nefertiti: Egypt's Sun Queen

Nefertiti (c.1350 BC) is widely known from the exquisite painted bust of her in the Berlin Museum. But beyond this image we know little about her. Wife of Akhenaten, the monotheistic pharaoh, adored by her family, blessed by the sun god, and worshipped by her people, Nefertiti suddenly and completely vanished from the record. Was she banished by her husband or raised to rule as his equal? Did she reign, under another name, in her own right? Could she have been the `eminence grise' behind the young Tutankhamun, her son-in-law? Tyldesley draws on archaeological, textual and artistic evidence in a detailed discussion of Nefertiti's life and times at the ephemeral and heretical Amarna court.