What Happened to Nefertiti? The Queen Who Vanished From Egypt's Records

Nobody knows for certain what happened to Nefertiti. For a long time scholars thought she vanished from the record around Year 14 of her husband Akhenaten's reign, after the death of her daughter Meketaten, and theories ranged from disgrace to an early death. Then, in 2012, an inscription dated to Year 16 was found that still names her as Great Royal Wife, proving she was alive and in office almost to the end of his reign. Today many Egyptologists think she did not disappear at all but changed her name and ruled as a female pharaoh called Neferneferuaten. Her tomb and her mummy have never been confirmed.

"The beautiful one has come"

Nefertiti lived roughly from 1370 to 1330 BC, a queen of Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty and the Great Royal Wife of the pharaoh Akhenaten. Her name is usually translated as "the beautiful one has come".

Her origins are a puzzle. The courtier Ay, who later became pharaoh himself, has often been proposed as her father, but no surviving source explicitly says so. Another old theory made her a foreign princess from the kingdom of Mitanni, which would explain a name that sounds like an arrival, but that idea is weakly supported. Inscriptions do name Ay's wife Tey as her wet nurse, not her mother.

A queen shown almost twice as often as the king

Nefertiti appears in temple scenes at Thebes early in the reign, when her husband was still called Amenhotep IV. Decorated building blocks from those years suggest she was depicted almost twice as often as the king himself in the first five years. For an Egyptian queen, that is extraordinary.

The couple had at least six daughters: Meritaten, Meketaten, Ankhesenpaaten, who later became Ankhesenamun and the wife of Tutankhamun, Neferneferuaten Tasherit, Neferneferure and Setepenre. Art from the period often shows the royal family in relaxed, affectionate scenes with the daughters, something very unusual in Egyptian royal imagery.

The sun disc and a new capital

Akhenaten launched one of the strangest experiments in Egyptian history. He promoted the worship of the Aten, the disc of the sun, above all the traditional gods. Modern scholars debate whether this was true monotheism or a more limited devotion to one god among others. In Year 4 the court moved to a brand-new capital, Akhetaten, known today as Amarna, and in Year 5 the king took the name Akhenaten while the queen became Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti.

Was Nefertiti the driving force behind this revolution? It is a popular idea, but the World History Encyclopedia stresses that it is speculative: her devotion to the Aten is documented, but there is no proof she pushed the reforms. What is clear is that the king and queen presented themselves as the channel through which ordinary people could worship the Aten.

Smiting enemies like a king

Some of Nefertiti's images are surprising for a queen. She is shown smiting enemies, driving a chariot and worshipping the Aten in the manner usually reserved for a pharaoh. Akhenaten joined his cartouche with hers, and she is shown officiating at religious services and receiving foreign envoys. This is part of why the author Joshua J. Mark argues she likely held more power than any Egyptian woman since Hatshepsut.

The disappearance theories

A relief shows the king and queen mourning Meketaten, who probably died around Year 13 or 14. After that, Nefertiti seemed to vanish. Four main explanations were proposed over the years: that she fell from favour for not bearing a son and was replaced by a lesser wife named Kiya; that she abandoned the Aten and was banished; that she died of grief; or that she took a new identity and ruled as a pharaoh. The World History Encyclopedia considers the first three unsupported.

The Year 16 graffito, found at a quarry at Deir Abu Hinnis in 2012, was a turning point. It names both the king and Nefertiti, so she was alive and still Great Royal Wife one year before Akhenaten died around Year 17.

Did Nefertiti rule as pharaoh?

After Akhenaten, a mysterious ruler named Neferneferuaten appears, and one of this ruler's cartouches carries the epithet "effective for her husband", using a feminine form. Since Nefertiti had already used the name Neferneferuaten, many scholars, including Athena van der Perre, Nozomu Kawai and James P. Allen, identify this ruler with her. Allen revised his view in 2016 from favouring her daughter to favouring Nefertiti herself. Older theories identified her with the pharaoh Smenkhkare instead; that remains uncertain.

If this is right, Nefertiti may even have begun steering Egypt back toward tradition before Tutankhamun took the throne. Some scholars suggest she restored the worship of Amun, but this is debated.

There is also a famous diplomatic mystery. A Hittite record describes a widowed Egyptian queen, called Dakhamunzu, writing to ask for a Hittite prince as a husband; the prince, Zannanza, died on the way. Nefertiti, Meritaten and Ankhesenamun have all been proposed as that queen.

Where is her mummy?

No tomb or burial has been confirmed for Nefertiti. In 2003 Joann Fletcher claimed that a mummy known as the "Younger Lady" was hers, but later CT and DNA studies concluded that this woman was Tutankhamun's mother, a daughter of Amenhotep III and Tiye. A mummy from tomb KV21 has been suggested too, but the DNA evidence was inconclusive. Nicholas Reeves proposed that she lay in hidden chambers behind Tutankhamun's tomb, but later radar scans found no such rooms.

Part of the reason for all this uncertainty is deliberate. After the Amarna period, Tutankhamun restored the traditional gods, and later the pharaoh Horemheb tried to erase the Amarna kings from history.

The bust that made her famous

Ironically, the queen whose records were wiped became one of the most recognisable faces of the ancient world because of a single sculpture. The painted limestone bust, made around 1340 BC by the court sculptor Thutmose, was found in his workshop at Amarna in 1912 by the German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt. It was probably a model for apprentices, which may explain why only one eye was finished. It is now in the Neues Museum in Berlin.

The bust is also political. Egypt argues it was taken out of the country improperly and has called for its return; Germany maintains that the find was legally divided. The bust remains in Berlin.

Learn with Nefertiti: English phrases about mysteries

Phrase	Meaning	Example
to vanish without a trace	to disappear completely	The queen seemed to vanish without a trace.
a turning point	a moment of important change	The 2012 inscription was a turning point.
to piece together	to build a picture from fragments	Historians pieced together her final years.
the jury is still out	no decision has been reached	The jury is still out on her mummy.
to stand side by side	to be equal partners	The king and queen stand side by side in reliefs.

Try this: Describe an unsolved mystery you know in three sentences, using "vanish without a trace" and "the jury is still out".