“Neferneferuaten Nefertiti” which pretty much
translates to “Beauty is the Beauties of Aten,
the beautiful one has come.

In 1988 I received a postcard from my mother from Berlin with an image of the statue of Nefertiti, with the following text:

"It was a radiant spring week which sweetened the bitter taste of that city for me.
Berlin, where such devilish plans were conceived and where these plans were issued.
Berlin, what has this city had to pay and nevertheless, from the ruins, from the misery, from all the horrors of war, a fresh spacious, beautiful city has risen, where art lives and flourishes. - Purified by the bombing from the air and all the enemy troops surrounding it - because as strange as it may sound, war has a purifying effect -
On May 11 we visited the Ägyptisches Museum Berlin. I think a museum is a solitary experience, we each went our own way. Up a spiral staircase and there I entered a dark, velvet room, where in the center, illuminated, Nofretete's beautiful head is a fascinating centerpiece. An unforgettable confrontation."

That postcard became the starting point for my photography project and search for the history of Nefertiti. The statue discovered in 1912 in Tel el Amarna, excavated from the workshop of the sculptor Tutmoses and taken to Berlin. The image that symbolizes the pinnacle of beauty. The statue is life-size and served as an example for artists who painted the murals in the Royal Wadi. The image on the postcard my mother sent me.

I peeled the back of the postcard layer by layer, as if trying to unravel history, and made a print of each stage on photographic paper. The text, my mother's handwriting, gradually disappeared and the bust of Nefertiti emerged more and more clearly.

During a trip to Egypt I visited the places where Nefertiti had lived. In Tel el Amarana, the Wadis, the Royal Tombs with the damaged wall paintings and the remains of the ruins of her palace. The schoolchildren ran along as I got off the boat that took me to the other side of the Nile. They wanted to show me the way, shouting loudly 'Nefertiti, Nefertiti'. There were no other tourists. From Hotel Nefertiti I saw the sun sink between the wadis. Her image was everywhere in all kinds of forms: as children's drawings on walls, stamps on postal sheets, logos on train sets.
I read books about the Empire she was part of, Queen and wife of Aknaten, the Sun King. The Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep IV who became king in 1375 BC, called himself Akhnaten and introduced a monotheistic cult of the sun god Aton. He built a new city of Akhetaten ("the horizon of the god Aton"). This and a series of new ideas that he introduced together with Nefertiti provoked a lot of resistance. The priests of the ancient cult called on the people to resist. Akhnaten's city was destroyed and the pharaoh and his family were driven out.