Word: akhenaten
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Nefertete's flesh-and-blood prototype married one of the most interesting men in history-Egypt's Akhenaten. She was then only nine, so the story goes; at 13 she bore him their first daughter and at 20 their sixth. Akhenaten seems to have adored his lady, usually had himself pictured in her company He also insisted that her beauty and his homeliness both be represented candidly, almost naturalistically, thus smashing, for a moment, Egypt's formalistic art code...
...this was part of the Pharaoh's larger plan to destroy the nation's Pantheon of man-beast gods and substitute the world's first monotheistic faith: sun worship. A famed bas-relief shows Akhenaten, Nefertete and a daughter sacrificing to the sun god (see cut). Unfortunately, soon after Akhenaten's death around 1350 B.C., the priest-ridden, sybaritic Tutankhamen (the famed "King Tut" of the 1920s) rang down the curtain on his predecessor's splendid experiment...