As archaeologists and anthropologists we are arch-appropriators of material culture. The objects we collect from ethnographic contexts, the artefacts we find in the earth, are no longer a part of the material culture to which they once belonged. From the moment of collection or discovery they become part of our material culture, our systems of cultural significance.1
Matt Edgeworth (2007)
By the turn of the twentieth century the days when a non-Egyptian archaeologist could arrive at an archaeological site in Egypt, dig it up and take his finds home to dispose of as he wished, had long gone. While Egypt was a British protectorate, veiled from 1882–1914 then de facto from 1914–56, the French-run Antiquities Service protected Egypt’s heritage. No archaeological mission could excavate or export antiquities without their permission. As we might expect, relationships between the foreign excavators and the French officials were not always as cordial as they could have been, and many of the excavators regarded the Antiquities Service – which they considered to be French rather than Egyptian – as acting in direct conflict to the interests of Egyptology.
In 1907 the eminent Egyptologist Gaston Maspero was both Director of the Antiquities Service and head of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. He awarded the concession to dig at Amarna to the German entrepreneur and philanthropist James Simon – a man who, thanks to his co-ownership of the largest cotton wholesale firm in Europe, could count himself one of the ten richest in Prussia.2 Simon shared his good fortune generously, allocating up to a third of his personal income to building public baths and homes for disadvantaged children, financing concerts and public lectures, stocking Berlin’s newly opened National Gallery and eventually, in 1898, founding the German Oriental Society (Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, or DOG). His philanthropy led to his inclusion in the regular ‘gentlemen’s evenings’ held by Kaiser Wilhelm II. They developed a friendship despite the fact that Simon was Jewish while the Kaiser was prone to anti-Semitism. It may be that they were united by their shared passion for archaeology. Simon, who was the treasurer of the DOG, funded the Amarna excavations with lavish donations from his own pocket while Wilhelm, who took over the role of patron of the DOG in 1901, financed excavations with awards from imperial funds.
Simon would not personally excavate at Amarna; the work was to be done by a team of archaeologists from the DOG, supervised by Ludwig Borchardt. However, by paying for the excavation directly, rather than donating the money to the DOG and allowing them to make the payments, Simon enabled the society to avoid the hefty donation tax that would have reduced the value of his contribution significantly. It has been estimated that the excavations cost him approximately 30,000 Goldmark each season.3 As was common on archaeological digs at this time, Borchardt would not be continually present at Amarna, but would delegate many of his responsibilities to a junior colleague, Hermann Ranke. The actual digging – the manual labour – would be done not by the Europeans but by a team of experienced locals.
Ludwig Borchardt was also, by 1907, an eminent Egyptologist. Born in 1863 in Berlin, he had studied architecture before turning to Egyptology and becoming a pupil of the distinguished linguist Adolf Erman. In 1895 he joined the Department of Egyptian Art in the Berlin Museum, and paid his first visit to Egypt. From 1896–9, as an employee of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, he worked alongside Maspero to produce the Catalogue Général of the Cairo Museum. Colleagues they may have been, but Borchardt and Maspero were never good friends, and their private correspondence shows that each was critical of the other.4 Having excavated some of Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty pyramids and sun temples, in 1907 Borchardt became the founding director of the German Archaeological Institute (Deutsches Archëologisches Institut, or DAI) in Cairo. He was to excavate at Amarna until the outbreak of the Great War caused him to return to Germany.
Work at Amarna started with a survey of the city, and the cutting of an exploratory series of trenches that would indicate where the richest archaeological rewards lay hidden. This investigative phase was followed by excavation proper. Starting in the eastern section of the city the team dug their way along High Priest Street in what today we would consider a rather random fashion. On 6 December 1912, digging in the remains of Thutmose’s villa, they found a collection of stone and plaster pieces lying in Room 19. Happily, Borchardt was on site that day, and able to observe the excavation in progress. Ten years after the event, he published an account of the find:
After my lunch break on December 6, 1912, I found a note by Prof. Ranke who was the supervisor, in which he asked me to come to House 47.2 … I went there and saw the pieces of Amenophis IV’s life-sized bust, which had just been discovered right behind the door in room 19. Soon after and close to the same place in room 19, very delicate and fragile pieces were found. It seemed wise to call the most diligent worker, Mohammed Ahmed es-Snussi, and let him do the work alone, and order one of the younger men to record the work in writing. Slowly but surely we worked our way through the debris, which was only about 1.10 m. high, towards the east wall of room 19 … About 0.2 m. from the east wall and 0.35 m. from the north wall, on a level with our knees, a flesh colored neck with painted red straps appeared. ‘Life-size colorful bust of Queen’ was recorded. The tools were put aside, and the hands were now used. The following minutes confirmed what appeared to be a bust: above the neck, the lower part of the bust was uncovered, and underneath it, the back part of the Queen’s wig appeared. It took a considerable amount of time until the whole piece was completely freed from all the dirt and rubble. This was due to the fact that a portrait head of the king, which lay close to the bust, had to be recovered first.5
His official excavation diary, written on the day of the discovery, gives a concise description of the colourful queen and includes a small sketch of the bust:
Life-sized painted bust of the queen, 47cm high. With the blue wig cut straight on top, and garlanded by a ribbon half-way up. Colours look freshly painted. Really wonderful work. No use describing it, you have to see it.6
Less helpful his rather cryptic reflection on the discovery:
Were I to describe this discovery here as it really took place, with its confusion, its surprises, its hopes and also its minor disappointments, the reader would certainly be as confused thereby as we were at the time, when we made notes in the studio, and had hardly got the particulars of one find to paper before two further objects to be measured and noted were uncovered.7
A preliminary report and photographs were sent to Berlin, where they greatly excited the directors of the DOG. It was hoped that the bust would be allowed to travel to Germany, but this would be entirely dependent on the goodwill of the Antiquities Service. There was nothing that the DOG could do to influence the decision.
In 1912 all non-Egyptian holders of excavation licences were entitled to a share of each season’s finds. This division, or partage, was designed to protect Egypt’s heritage by ensuring that no unique items and no items of great archaeological or commercial value left Egypt, while allowing those who financed excavations a tangible reward for their generosity. As a result, a stream of legally acquired and properly documented antiquities flowed out of Egypt and into private and public collections in Europe and America. Today the division of finds is generally seen as a bad thing: it breaks up groups of interrelated artefacts, turns a scientific excavation into a treasure hunt and encourages excavators to discard what they may perceive as insignificant discoveries in order to ensure that their share of finds is not entirely comprised of broken potsherds. The assumption that the proper place for an Egyptian artefact is a foreign museum smacks of colonialism and what cultural critic Edward W. Said has defined as the ‘manipulation or management of native societies for imperial purposes’.8
A century ago, opinions were very different. Western archaeologists regarded their digs as a legitimate means of exploring mysteries of the past – in many cases they were interested in exploring the truth of the history expressed in the Bible – which brought employment to some of the poorest areas of Egypt while stimulating the tourism that brought money to the country as a whole. But with little or no institutional funding available, all archaeological missions were dependent on sponsors, and those sponsors liked to be rewarded for their generosity. The end-of-dig division was therefore a necessary means of financing work that benefited everyone, while sharing out the trophies of mankind’s shared past. The acquisition of artefacts was particularly important to the DOG, who were keen to collect archaeological finds from across the Near East to create a museum for Berlin which could rival the far older collections housed in the British Museum in London and the Louvre in Paris. When, within a few years of Borchardt’s discovery, Egyptian law was changed to end the 50:50 division of finds and prevent private individuals such as Simon from holding concessions and so acquiring artefacts, many gloomily prophesied the end of all fieldwork in Egypt. Flinders Petrie, a former Amarna excavator, summed up the feelings of many when he said that ‘the Egyptian government is taking everything but is not paying the cost of excavation which terms are impossible’.9 For him at least, the outcome was inevitable, and Petrie abandoned a lifetime’s work in Egypt to excavate in Palestine. It is worth reading his views on this subject at some length, as they demonstrate the attitudes of the time very clearly:
The issue of new and arbitrary conditions by Lacau [Pierre Lacau, Maspero’s replacement as head of the Antiquities Service] was a repetition of what former French Directors of Antiquities had tried to do. This attempt had been checked before … by the strength of the British management. Now that Britain was leaving much more to Egyptian direction, there was not the same check, and French autocracy was uncontrolled … The applicant was required to renounce all rights to any share of his discoveries, to send in the names of his workmen to be sanctioned, never to see his friends without a permit from the government, and not to put up any shelters or structure without submitting plans to be approved. In this condition of affairs there was a general reluctance to continue work.10
Not everyone, of course, agreed with Petrie. The American Egyptologist and fieldworker James Henry Breasted, for one, regarded Petrie as little more than a spade for hire; a ‘mere digger after museum pieces and stuff to satisfy his subscribers’.11 But many older Egyptologists did think that the new rules were unfair; Egyptology was about to end, and the French were not to be trusted.
The seemingly insatiable Western interest in ancient Egypt had led, in many cases, to a desire to actually own parts of ancient Egypt. Growing numbers of tourists were sailing down the Nile before returning home laden with mummies, shabtis and papyri, at least some of which were genuine. Armchair Egyptologists were acquiring large and important (and often looted) collections from dealers, while some ‘respectable’ museum curators were not averse to enhancing their collections with antiquities purchased on the black market. The sites and monuments were under ever increasing threat as everyone, it seemed, wanted a genuinely ancient souvenir. Recognising that something had to be done, Maspero had, in 1899, managed to acquire enough funding to appoint two antiquities inspectors, whom he charged with protecting the archaeological sites. One was to be based in Cairo with responsibility for all the northern sites, while the other was to live in Luxor and supervise all the southern sites. The inspectors were required to ensure that the sites and monuments were properly excavated, properly conserved and properly guarded; any thefts or acts of vandalism had to be investigated and resolved. In 1904 a third post was created, with Maspero’s protégé Gustave Lefebvre being named Antiquities Inspector for Middle Egypt, an area that included Amarna. Lefebvre was a papyrologist with an interest in ancient language rather than Eighteenth Dynasty art and architecture, but this was not considered a problem; the three antiquities inspectors, burdened with what today seems as an impossibly huge workload, were not accorded the luxury of specialisation.
On 15 January 1913 the Aegyptische Nachrichten, a weekly newsletter for German ex-pats, carried an article describing the marvellous discoveries at Amarna, which apparently included ‘a room that was filled from top to bottom with unfinished sculptures, heads of kings and queens’.12 This would have worried Borchardt: as an excavator, he would naturally have wanted to keep the best finds for his sponsor, and unauthorised and exaggerated public recognition of his discoveries immediately before the division would not have helped his cause. On 16 January 1913 he wrote to Lefebvre, asking for a ‘speedy division of finds’, possibly hoping that Lefebvre had not yet seen the article. The division was subsequently fixed for 20 January 1913, with Maspero’s approval.
Bruno Güterbock, secretary of the DOG and editor of its newsletter, was a guest in the Amarna excavation house at the time of the division. A decade after the event, soon after the Nefertiti bust had been revealed to the public in Berlin, he wrote a ‘strictly confidential’ explanation of division day to Günther Roeder, director of Hildersheim’s Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum and board member of the DOG. Included with his letter was a copy of the signed division protocol; the official document which gave Simon title to specified finds. Güterbock was able to describe the growing apprehension amongst the excavation team members as the inspector’s visit approached:
You can imagine that we all had very little hope that this wonderful piece would not go to Cairo, so little, that on the evening before Lefebvre’s arrival, all the inhabitants of the excavation house walked in solemn procession, candle in hand, to the storeroom to bid our farewell – we did not expect anything else – to the ‘coloured queen’. Later, though, Borchardt negotiated in such a clever way that she fell to the German side.13
A brand-new Antiquities Law (Number 14, dated 12 June 1912; effective as of 1 July 1912) was designed to clarify and consolidate all previous laws relating to the ownership, sale and export of antiquities. All antiquities were to be regarded as the property of the state, and an export licence could only be granted by the Antiquities Service. Article 12 stipulated that ‘finds from an excavation shall be divided by partition into two shares of equal value in the same manner provided by Article 11 of the law’. Article 11, which dealt with a division between the state and an individual who had made a legal find, outlined more precisely how the division should be made. Crucially, however the finds were divided, the Antiquities Service had a right of pre-emption which allowed them to acquire any find, no matter where in the division it had been allocated.14 The ‘two shares of equal value’ stipulation was aimed as much at Maspero as at the excavators under his control. The government felt that he had been unduly lenient in allocating finds to foreign missions, while Maspero himself felt it important to encourage the foreign missions who were helping him to preserve Egypt’s archaeological sites from the threat of settlement and agricultural expansion. Borchardt, wary of the new system, recorded his thoughts in his diary: ‘We shall be the first victims of the new decree of the ministry of finances.’15
As the new law demanded, the Amarna finds were split into two lists. One list was headed by a small painted and inscribed stone stela; part of a household shrine showing Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their three eldest daughters sitting beneath the rays of the Aten. The other list was headed by the Nefertiti bust.16 Lefebvre reached Amarna at noon and, as Güterbock tells us, the division started with the inspector examining photographs of the finds. He was then given access to both the excavation records and the finds themselves; these lay in open crates in the dimly lit storeroom. Although, as Güterbock later stressed, ‘had he [Lefebvre] wished to do so, he could have taken out any individual object which he might have liked to examine more closely’, Lefebvre made the most cursory of inspections, and declined the opportunity to physically handle the finds. It seemed to Güterbock that the inspector had already decided which share he was to take. The excavation diary paints the picture of a more conscientious Lefebvre:
Then he looked at the finds on the bureau; there the excavation journals were put at his disposal. With special care, he viewed the objects in hard stone: stela, the colourful queen, the statues and heads of the princesses, the queen and the king.17
But, as Borchardt later confided to the art critic Julius Meier-Graefe, ‘the gents in Cairo were just too slack to look in the box’.18 From the diary we learn that the division was formally agreed and the protocol, which was written in French, signed that night after dinner. As Lefebvre did not claim the list headed by the bust, and declined to exercise his right of pre-emption to transfer the bust to his own share, ownership of the bust fell to Simon as the holder of the Amarna concession.
Borchardt left Amarna for Cairo on 23 January, taking the Nefertiti bust with him. On 5 February he wrote to Heinrich Schäfer at the Neues Museum in Berlin, informing him that the bust would soon be on its way:
Today H.M. [Her Majesty] shall leave my house where she was accommodated since Sunday. Thus you will see her soon after this letter turns up. I hope you enjoy it. I shall be calm only when I receive the telegram about her arrival.19
In late February 1913 the Nefertiti bust arrived at Tiergartenstrasse 15a, Simon’s Berlin home. A month later, the other Amarna finds reached the Neues Museum. With great generosity Maspero, who had not actually seen the 1912/13 finds, had agreed that they should all travel to Berlin for an exhibition; the Egyptian share would then return to Cairo. The exhibition opened on 5 November 1913, in the Egyptian Courtyard of the Neues Museum. As Maximilian Rapsiber, writing for the Berlin weekly journal Der Roland von Berlin, reported on 13 November 1913:
Curious visitors flocked in droves into the otherwise so deserted columned hall of the Berlin Egyptian Museum, only to be awestruck. First and foremost amongst them archaeologically inspired ladies and teenagers. Columns of youngsters, resplendent in colourful caps, push their way straight through the colourful throng of serious looking pedagogues. The buzz of sensation wafts between the papyrus capitals of the colourful temple hall. We admit; the scholars rummaging through the earth have not exaggerated this time: true works of art and curiosities of unprecedented attraction have surfaced here.20
The exhibition was a great success. Initially scheduled for just a few weeks, it remained open well into the New Year, exposing the general public to the art and sculpture of the Amarna Period for the first time. Until this point, most assessments of Amarna art had been based on the tomb scenes published by Lepsius. Art historians Georges Perrot and Charles Chipiez had summed up the feelings of many when they described Akhenaten:
[W]e find nothing that can be compared to the almost fantastic personality of Amenophis, with his low, unintellectual forehead, his pendulous cheeks, his feminine contours and his general expression of gloom and melancholy. The fidelity with which these unpleasing features are reproduced is extraordinary and can only be accounted for by the existence of a tradition so well established that no one thought of breaking it.21
Now the public could see with their own eyes that, away from the tomb, Amarna art had a vibrant, modern appeal. The pieces recovered from Thutmose’s workshop could have come from any contemporary art gallery. Furthermore the heads – the plaster heads – looked not like statues, but like the normal people who walked the streets of Berlin. The exhibition attracted great press attention, and members of the public flocked to the museum.22 When the Egyptian-owned objects returned to Cairo in February 1914 they were replaced in the exhibition by plaster casts made in the museum’s Gipsformerei, or plaster workshop. And the public continued to flock to the exhibition.
The public, however, did not see the Nefertiti bust. It had made a brief appearance at the opening of the exhibition, and had then been withdrawn at Borchardt’s request. Güterbock confirms our suspicions: despite urging from the museum and the DOG, Borchardt was reluctant to display the Nefertiti head because he knew that the Antiquities Service was likely to be very unhappy that a masterpiece had slipped through their fingers, and an unhappy Antiquities Service might well terminate the DOG’s concession to excavate at Amarna. This delay in display was ultimately to fuel speculation that the bust had a dubious provenance. In fact, there was an early publication of the bust. In October 1913 Borchardt published an illustrated article on the 1912/13 excavations which included images of the stone and plaster pieces recovered from Thutmose’s workshop. This included a small black-and-white photograph of the Nefertiti bust displayed in right profile with the crown and shoulders cut off. There was no reaction to this first public appearance; it seems that no one noticed.23
For several weeks Nefertiti sat on Simon’s desk, watching him as he worked. It was either here, or in a private viewing at the Neues Museum, that the Kaiser first inspected the bust. In October 1913 Simon presented Wilhelm with one of two replicas of the bust which he had commissioned from the young sculptor Tina Haim (later Tina Haim-Wentscher; subsequently Tina Haim-Wentcher). Haim already had experience of replicating ancient sculptures in the Berlin Museum. Her replica Nefertitis were not exact copies, they were made from artificial stone and they had been ‘tidied up’, with the uraeus, damaged ears and missing left eye restored. Nevertheless, the Kaiser was delighted with his gift, and wrote an effusive letter of thanks to Simon. His version of the Nefertiti bust would eventually accompany him into exile at Huis Doorn in the Netherlands, where it remains today. Simon kept the second replica for himself, displaying it in his living room underneath portraits of his parents.
The genuine bust was sent on loan to the Neues Museum on 20 October 1913. On 7 July 1920 Simon donated his entire Amarna collection to the museum, transferring ownership of the artefacts to the State of Prussia. The bust would undergo a final change of ownership in 1957 when, with the State of Prussia dissolved, title to all cultural assets owned prior to 1945 was transferred to the newly created Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, or SPK). Today the SPK, Germany’s largest cultural institution, controls Berlin’s sixteen state-run museums plus the State Library and the Secret State Archive of Prussia. Conscious that there are legal and ethical questions over the ownership of many of the pieces in its collections, the SPK is working with countries of origin with the aim of preserving ‘a shared heritage’.24 This includes working with the Egyptian Ministry of Culture on the creation of an Akhenaten Museum in Minya, Middle Egypt, which will display the most recent finds from the site. Currently, the SPK remains the legal owner of the Nefertiti bust.
Simon’s international business suffered during the Great War, and suffered again during the period of German hyperinflation that followed. Simon Brothers went bankrupt in 1929, with Simon auctioning the two most valuable pieces in his art collection – a Franz Hals and a Vermeer – to top up his employees’ pension fund. A plaque acknowledging Simon’s contribution to Egyptology was added to the Amarna Hall of the Neues Museum on the occasion of his eightieth birthday in 1931. Two years later, it would be removed by the Nazis. Simon died in relative poverty in 1932, and was buried in Berlin’s Jewish cemetery. The Kaiser, exiled in the Netherlands, sent a wreath to his friend’s funeral.
Following Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and the corresponding increase in anti-Semitism, there was a deliberate attempt to expunge Simon’s role as Berlin’s most generous benefactor. As his family fled Berlin, his name was effectively erased from the public record. When the war ended Museum Island – a complex of separate museums which together formed one large complex dedicated to science and the arts, including the Neues Museum – was allocated to East Berlin. The communist East German authorities had little interest in reviving the memory of a bourgeois Jew, although a commemoration of his Amarna work was held in 1982. Recently, however, following German reunification, steps have been taken to restore Simon’s memory. His story has been recorded in a television documentary, The Man Who Gave Nefertiti Away: James Simon, the Forgotten Philanthropist, produced by journalist Carola Wedel,25 a bronze portrait plaque now marks the site of Tiergartenstrasse 15a (the villa itself having been burned in 1933) and, as I write, the James Simon Gallery, designed by architect David Chipperfield, is rising on Museum Island, where it will serve as a much-needed visitor centre for the museums complex.
In 1914 Pierre Lacau was appointed successor to Gaston Maspero as head of the Antiquities Service. He could not take up his position, however, until he had completed his war service. By 1919 the now strongly anti-German Lacau was in post and had started discussions with the British Egypt Exploration Fund (now the Egypt Exploration Society), who wished to take over the Amarna concession. Although unaware of the Nefertiti bust, Lacau was unhappy that the contents of the sculptor’s workshop had been split, when they should really have been considered as one group: ‘In that respect we have nothing specific to blame the Germans for; they have used the right the government had generously granted them at its own expense.’26 He felt that the Antiquities Service should excavate the site, yet they were woefully overworked; he was therefore prepared to allow the EEF to excavate. There would, however, be no automatic 50:50 split of the finds. The EEF would receive only what the Service decided to allow them. The EEF were not happy, but when in 1920 Lacau informed them that a Harvard University mission was prepared to accept the new terms, they quickly agreed. In Britain at least, this was regarded as another albeit minor victory over the Germans. Borchardt, writing to James Quibell at the Cairo Museum, expressed his frustration with this outcome: ‘The Egypt Exploration Fund has been given our excavation site of Tell el-Amarna, and therefore shattered our hopes of conducting further work there.’27
In November 1922 Howard Carter discovered the long-lost tomb of Tutankhamen.28 Tutankhamen had been something of an enigma: his name was known, but it was generally assumed that he was a long-serving member of the elite who claimed the throne after Akhenaten’s death by marrying Nefertiti’s third daughter, Ankhesenpaaten. This made him the son-in-law of Akhenaten and Nefertiti. His was the only near-intact tomb to be discovered in the Valley of the Kings, and it appeared to be filled with golden grave goods. The discovery came at a time when the Western world was still reeling from the Great War and the subsequent Spanish influenza pandemic. A desire for fun and distraction coexisted alongside an increased interest in religion and the occult, as the living struggled to maintain contact with their dead. Meanwhile new technologies allowed the transition of news quickly, allowing the general public to receive regular updates on events in the Valley of the Kings. As ‘Tut-mania’ erupted the Amarna Period – a period whose art and fashions sat so neatly alongside the contemporary art deco style, and whose quasi-monotheistic king appealed to those interested in ancient religions – became familiar as it had never been before.
With Amarna a lost cause, Schäfer lost patience with Borchardt’s wish to keep the Nefertiti bust hidden. Photographs of the ‘colourful queen’ started to circulate, and in April 1924 she was added to the display in the newly opened Amarna Period hall. Here, her bust was rather unfortunately displayed in a small glass case with a black background that made it impossible to see the back of the sculpture. To facilitate this display, two metallic pins were inserted into the core of the bust through the base. The public was interested, but not overwhelmed.29 At the same time, with no further reason to conceal his find, Borchardt published a book dedicated to images of Nefertiti, which included a full-plate coloured image of the bust in profile (right side, with the missing eye and more damaged ear hidden from view) and four other black-and-white plates showing the bust from various angles.30 His publication also included an illustration and discussion of Lefebvre’s painted stela, which he compared to a similar stela in the Neues Museum.
The Nefertiti bust quickly became a huge success. Would it have experienced the same success had it remained in Egypt and entered the collections of the Cairo Museum a decade earlier? Perhaps not. Lefebvre was not the only Egyptologist to resist the appeal of Akhenaten’s art. As we have seen, many at the turn of the twentieth century considered Amarna sculpture to be atypical and even un-Egyptian, so that there is no guarantee that the contents of Thutmose’s workshop would have been regarded as anything out of the ordinary. In 1913 the Cairo Museum did not have the overwhelming number of artefacts on display that it has today, but it was still packed with wondrous antiquities. And, as William Hutton observed as early as 1785, when reflecting on a visit to the British Museum, too many artefacts can be a bad thing for the visitor: ‘If a man pass two minutes in a room, in which are a thousand things to demand his attention, he cannot find time to bestow on them a glance each.’31
Hutton’s comments still ring true. Although there can be a calm beauty in a repetitive display, any museum which crams its galleries indiscriminately is in danger of overwhelming the casual visitor who becomes unable to see anything clearly.
Nefertiti’s bust did not stand alone in Berlin; it had a supporting cast of choice Amarna artefacts. But the bust was very much the star of the museum, and the expectation was that all visitors would want to pay homage to Nefertiti. The ‘museum effect’ – the phenomenon that separating an object from its natural environment to display it in a museum gives that object a new importance and relevance – started to kick in.32 And so, as the public arrived in ever increasing numbers to view the queen whom they were programmed to find beautiful, their very numbers sparked further interest in the bust. Ironically, the fact that the bust had been taken out of Egypt turned Nefertiti into an Egyptian national icon.