Did Nefertiti Make Her Own Makeup

How ancient Egypt shaped our idea of dazzler

(Epitome credit:

Two Temple Place/Macclesfield Museum

)

Popular civilisation is steeped in images of smoky-eyed pharaohs and their queens. Were the ancient Egyptians insufferably vain – or are we but projecting our own values onto them? Alastair Sooke investigates.

Due west

Walking effectually Beyond Dazzler, the new exhibition organised by charitable foundation the Bulldog Trust in the neo-Gothic mansion of Two Temple Place in primal London, you would be forgiven for thinking that the ancient Egyptians were insufferably vain.

Many of the 350 exhibits, drawn from the overlooked collections of Great britain's regional museums, consist of what we would telephone call dazzler products, of i sort or another.

There are dinky combs and handheld mirrors made of copper blend or, more rarely, silver. At that place are siltstone palettes, carved to resemble animals, which were used for grinding minerals such equally light-green malachite and kohl for eye makeup.

At that place are also pale calcite jars and vessels of assorted sizes, in which makeup, as well as unguents and perfumes, could be stored. Then there is a chip of human hair that suggests the ancient Egyptians commonly wore pilus extensions and wigs.

This copper alloy mirror from the 2nd Millennium BC has a handle fabricated out of stone that looks like a column of papyrus (Credit: Courtesy Two Temple Place/Macclesfield Museum)

And, of course, there are lots of striking examples of Egyptian jewellery, including a string of beads, busy with carnelian pendants in the shape of poppy heads, found in the grave of a small child wrapped in matting.

In short, ancient Egyptians of both sexes plainly went to great lengths to bear upon upwards their appearance.

Moreover, this was but every bit true in death as it was in life: witness the smooth, serene faces, with regular features and prominent optics emphasised by dramatic black outlines, typically painted onto cartonnage mummy masks and wooden coffins.

Yet, for modern archaeologists, the ubiquity of beauty products in aboriginal Egypt offers a conundrum.

On the one manus, information technology is possible that aboriginal Egyptians were besotted with superficial advent, much as nosotros are today. Indeed, perhaps they fifty-fifty set the template for how we yet perceive beauty.

But, on the other, at that place is a risk that we could project our own narcissistic values onto a fundamentally unlike culture. Is information technology possible that the significance of cosmetic artefacts in ancient Arab republic of egypt went across the frivolous desire only to look bonny?

Sensibly sexy

This is what many archaeologists now believe. Take the common use of kohl eye makeup in ancient Arab republic of egypt – the inspiration for smoky eye makeup today. Recent scientific research suggests that the toxic, lead-based mineral that formed its base would have had anti-bacterial properties when mixed with moisture from the eyes.

Elaborate sarcophagi depict faces with heavy centre-liner – only make-upwards for the ancient Egyptians was functional as well every bit artful (Credit: Two Temple Identify/Macclesfield Museum)

In addition, the heavy application of kohl around the optics would have helped to reduce glare from the sun. In other words, there were unproblematic, practical reasons why both men and women in ancient Egypt wished to vesture eye makeup.

It'south the same with other ancient Egyptian 'beauty products'. Wigs helped to reduce the risk of lice. Jewellery had powerful symbolic and religious significance.

A fired dirt female person figure, depicting an erotic dancer, excavated at Abydos in Upper Egypt and now in the exhibition at Two Temple Identify, is embellished with indentations that were meant to represent tattoos. Of course, in ancient Egypt, tattoos probably had a decorative purpose.

But they may have had a protective function also. At that place is testify that, during the New Kingdom, dancing girls and prostitutes used to tattoo their thighs with images of the dwarf deity Bes, who warded off evil, every bit a precaution against venereal disease.

"The more than I try to understand what the Egyptians themselves understood every bit 'cute'", says Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley, "the more confusing it becomes, because everything seems to have a double purpose. When it comes to ancient Arab republic of egypt, I don't know if 'dazzler' is the right give-and-take to use."

These cosmetic pots contained kohl, which the ancient Egyptians applied like heart-liner, perhaps to screen out the sun (Credit: Two Temple Place/Ipswich Museum)

To complicate matters further, there are center-catching exceptions to the general dominion whereby elite ancient Egyptians presented themselves in a stereotypically 'cute' fashion.

Consider the official portraiture of the Center Kingdom pharaoh Senwosret 3. Although his naked torso is athletic and youthful – idealised, in line with earlier royal portraits – his face is careworn and cracked with furrows. Moreover his ears, to modern viewers, appear comically large – hardly an aspect, you would think, of male person dazzler.

Notwithstanding, in aboriginal Egypt, the issue wouldn't accept been funny. "In the Onetime Kingdom, kings were god-kings," explains Tyldesley, who is a senior lecturer at the University of Manchester. "But by the Heart Kingdom, kings [such as Senwosret] recognised that things could crumble and go incorrect, which is why they look a bit worried."

"The large ears are telling us that this rex volition listen to the people," she adds. "It would be wrong to accept his portrait literally and say he looked like this."

Queen of the Nile

Why, and then, do we go along to associate aboriginal Egypt with glamour and dazzler? "We however notice aboriginal Egyptian culture very seductive," agrees Tyldesley, who believes that this is due to the afterlives of two famous Egyptian queens: Cleopatra and Nefertiti.

Ever since artifact, following the Roman conquest of Egypt, Cleopatra has been known as a paragon of dazzler. Meanwhile the discovery, in 1912, of the famous painted bust of Nefertiti, now in Berlin's Egyptian Museum, turned a petty-known wife of the pharaoh Akhenaten into a pin-up of the ancient world.

Yet, says Tyldesley, who has written a biography of Cleopatra and is researching a book on Nefertiti, there is irony to the fact that these two Egyptian queens now resonate every bit sex symbols.

For one thing, explains Tyldesley, "Cleopatra has given us the idea that ancient Egyptian women were all beautiful, but we don't actually know what she looked similar."

In her coinage, Tyldesley says, "Cleopatra had a big nose, a protruding chin, and wrinkles – non what most people would call beautiful. You could argue that she appeared on her coins like that on purpose, because she wanted to look stern, and non particularly feminine. Just even Plutarch, who never met her either, said that her dazzler was in her vivacity and her voice, and not in her appearance. Yet we accept decided that she was beautiful and that she has to look like Elizabeth Taylor. I think that the idea of Cleopatra, rather than Cleopatra herself, has influenced u.s.a.."

The notion of aboriginal Egyptians as glamorous comes largely from Cleopatra, whose wiles ensnared Caesar – Elizabeth Taylor did not ignominy that idea (Credit: 20th Century Fox)

As for Nefertiti, Tyldesley points out that her bust is non typical of ancient Egyptian art: "Information technology's an unusual statue in that information technology'due south got all the plaster on and it'south colourful – a lot of the artwork we take is more stereotyped and less personal-looking than that."

Moreover, the moment when the bust was unveiled in Berlin – in 1923 – was crucial to its reception. 'Egyptomania' was in the air, post-obit the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun the previous year, and Nefertiti's athwart, geometric appearance chimed with stylish taste. "She'south very mod-looking, very Art Deco," says Tyldesley. "So everybody seemed to like her. It'south hard to find anybody who didn't think that Nefertiti was cute."

When this bust of Nefertiti was discovered in 1912, the queen instantly became a sexual practice symbol of the ancient world (Credit: Philip Pikart/Wikipedia/CC By-SA iii.0)

During the '20s, the bust of Nefertiti also benefited from the power of the mass media to plough her into a star. "A hundred years earlier, without newspapers or the cinema, that wouldn't have happened," says Tyldesley. "She would have gone into a museum and nobody would have made the fuss they did."

She pauses. "I wonder whether the fact that Nefertiti was put on display in Berlin as a major find actually influenced what we saw. Afterward all, beauty, as nosotros know, is in the middle of the beholder."

Alastair Sooke is Art Critic of The Daily Telegraph

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Source: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20160204-how-ancient-egypt-shaped-our-idea-of-beauty

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