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  • [music playing]

  • NARRATOR: Nestling on the east bank of the Nile, Nefertiti's

  • capital city covered over 3,000 acres,

  • and was home to up to 50,000 people.

  • What is now barren landscape was once one of the greatest

  • cities in the ancient world.

  • And from these palaces and temples,

  • the royal couple ruled over all of Egypt.

  • She doesn't appear to be buried here,

  • but does this place hold clues to the fate

  • of the missing queen?

  • Nefertiti is famous today because

  • of this iconic bust of her.

  • She has one of the most well-known

  • faces in all of ancient Egypt.

  • This is about the spot that the bust was actually found.

  • We're in the house and the workshop of a sculptor who was

  • probably called Thutmose, This is where the Nefertiti

  • bust was originally created.

  • It's one version of Nefertiti's official portrait.

  • She may herself have signed off on this image.

  • But really, we have no idea what she looked like in real life.

  • NARRATOR: Nefertiti's early life is also still a mystery.

  • Her father was probably Ay, vizier to pharaoh

  • Amenhotep III, so she would have been

  • brought up in a royal palace.

  • By the age of just 15, she married

  • Amenhotep's second son, the new pharaoh Akhenaten,

  • and bore him six daughters.

  • As his queen, Nefertiti became the most

  • powerful woman in all of Egypt.

  • Yet Nefertiti's ultimate fate remains a mystery that occupies

  • archaeologists all over Egypt.

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