Classic Couples: Nefertiti and...

What's fascinating about Nefertiti is that she is often presented as a separate entity from her family and surroundings: sui generis, rather like Cher. 

Which is not to say that Egyptian historians and writers, including mystery writer Elizabeth Peters, aren't aware that Nefertiti was the wife of the "heretic" Pharaoh Akhenaten. When I was growing up, one of my favorite books was Lucile Morrison's Lost Queen of Egypt, which focuses mostly on the story of Akhenaten's daughter (and eventual wife of Tutankhaten/hamun). 

Morrison's take, like Peters (whose characters are products of nineteenth-century thinking), is that Akhenaten was a forward-thinker. After all, he was so much like us moderns. He has modern ideas! He encourages modern art forms! He loves his wife like a modern husband! He promotes religious ideas that are normally associated with the Common Era! 

The art form stuff is true. However, I side with those historians that believe that Akhenaten was something of a nut-job who, in a bid against the increasingly powerful Amun-based priesthood, decided to start his own city and erase the past. He was apparently less a benevolent idealist and more a dictatorial ideologue.   

The historical perspective brings Nefertiti into focus as a possible supporter of her husband's ideology. She was likely the daughter of powerful and wealthy commoners. She is continually portrayed in the art of Akhenaten's court as a co-ruler. Her name, in the past, would have automatically been associated with his. Think Imelda Marcos.

And yet, her art--her legend--has survived beyond the husband and the time period that immortalized her. She's Nefertiti, not Nefertiti and...that guy with the difficult-to-pronounce name.