On the left is a model in the Berlin Museum, insipid beside the captivating original Nefertiti bust on the right.
Perhaps because art wasn't art to the Egyptians. It served more than a decorative, ephemeral purpose.
A sculpture like Nefertiti's was a magical stake in eternity.
As Anson Hunter, my fictional independent Egyptologist, observes in 'The Smiting Texts" adventure novel:
"Statues were imbued with life, which explains why they called the Egyptian sculptor: 'he who makes to live’. There was no art for art’s sake. Nothing was fashioned for its sheer aesthetics. Everything was fashioned for a magical purpose and charged with the purpose for which it was made. That’s why their work defies reproduction. And that’s why their art holds such a fascination. It is imbued with heka, magical force, the animistic, motive power of the universe. Jewellery was not just jewellery, but prophylactic charms, statues were never vanity portraits, but houses for the soul, tombs were not painted to brighten the darkness of the underworld but to harness the power of heka...."
