Mummy of Queen Nefertiti Brought to Life
Mummy of Queen Nefertiti Brought to Life With Controversial Fair Skin in 3-D Scan. The face of Queen Nefertiti, who may have been King Tutankhamun's biological mother, will be revealed on the Travel Channel's Expedition Unknown, which airs Wednesday night. The face is the result of the latest 3-D imaging technology that used the mummy's facial structure to bring the 3,400-year-old queen to life, but it's the sculpture's skin color, not cheekbones, that has raised the most controversy.
In order to create the bust of the ancient queen, a team of scientists at the University of Bristol in England digitally mapped the face of a mummy known as "The Younger Lady." The mummy was found in 1898 and is believed to be of Queen Nefertiti, but this was never proven. The mummy's face was digitally mapped to make an accurate facial construction for the bust. Then, paleoartist Elisabeth Daynes recreated the Queen's face on the bust, a painstaking process that took around 500 hours of work, a statement on the television show reported. By comparing the bust with historical images of Nefertiti, the researchers were able to show that the "Younger Lady" mummy was indeed the famous queen.
