Queen Nefertari before Goddess Isis

Painting of the goddess Isis offers the ankh, the symbol of life, to Nefertari. A detailed view of Pillar II in Chamber K (the burial chamber). The tomb of Nefertari is located in the Valley of the Queens, near the ancient city of Thebes. It is one of the best preserved and most ornate of all known tombs.

Queen Nefertari Meritmut wears a headdress in the shape of the protective vulture goddess, Nekhbet. The same artisans who created royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings must have prepared Nefertari’s final resting place, carving rock chambers, plastering walls, and painting every available surface.

“Egyptians were probably the first to be aware of the nobility inherent in the human form and to express it in art. One can sense the pleasure that the Egyptians must have taken in the balance of the shoulders and the delicate way in which they contrast with the aspiring shape of the rest of the body… Julius Lange showed with great sensitivity that we should not imagine the fact that human figures in Egyptian art ‘have stiff and erect backs, with their heads held high, and set squarely on their bodies’ to be a sign of incompetence… Rather ‘the awareness grew that this attitude expresses vitality and confidence in real life, and that it is therefore appropriate to the triumphant spirit which art should proclaim.’

The transition from the fat predynastic female figurines, with their heavy breasts, thighs, and buttocks, to the slender classical Egyptian pictures of women, which ‘remind one of the profiles of precious vases’ indicates how much effect aesthetic impulses had in the genesis of ‘Egyptian’ art; among these pictures, apart from a few exceptions determined by their contexts, only youthful, firm, and well-formed bodies are to be seen…”

— Principles of Egyptian Art, by Heinrich Schäfer (#aff)

New Kingdom, 19th Dynasty, reign of Ramesses II, ca. 1279-1213 BC. The Tomb of Queen Nefertari (QV66), Valley of the Queens, West Thebes.