Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art · statue

Unfinished Portrait of Nefertiti New Kingdom, Amarna PeriodTell el-Amarna, Egypt

Source of record: Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art — catalogued by the holding institution. View the original record →

Description

Object Label: Artistic style drastically changed during the Amarna Period. Because artists had to quickly adapt to the new style, they left behind an unprecedented number of trial pieces and sculptor’s models. Such unfinished works reveal the artistic process of ancient sculptors. The initial sketch in black ink outlines Nefertiti’s tall crown, and indicates her facial features and long neck with neck folds. The artist began sculpting the relief by carving away stone around Nefertiti’s profile and marking out the eyes, lips, and ear. Caption: Unfinished Portrait of Nefertiti, ca. 1352–1336 B.C.E. Limestone, pigment, 5 7/16 × 5 1/4 in. (13.8 × 13.3 cm) mount (deck mount m2): 6 × 6 1/2 × 5 1/2 in. (15.2 × 16.5 × 14 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Egypt Exploration Society, 33.686. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano

A machine reading of the photograph made Jul 2026: deities, names, signs and a description as the model saw them. Not curatorial; treat it as the model's best reading, not authority.

Connections

Royals Nefertiti
Materials Limestone

Cross-references (2)

  • BKM-Accession 33.686 tier-2
  • BKM-Object 37208 tier-2
About this record's data
  • From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Brooklyn Museum — Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art.
  • AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
  • Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
  • Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.