# Borchardt’s team excavates the painted bust of Nefertiti at Amarna

Date: 1912

## The fact

On 6 December 1912 Ludwig Borchardt’s excavation at Amarna, house P47.2 attributed to the sculptor Thutmose, recovered a painted limestone and plaster bust now identified as Nefertiti. The diary and find division, not a pharaonic caption on the object, fix the date. This Fact is the excavation, not the later Berlin display.

## Context

Amarna (Akhetaten) had been abandoned after the Aten episode. Workshop dumps preserved plaster studies. The bust is a modern name for an uninscribed masterpiece; identification rests on physiognomy and find-spot, not a cartouche on the piece itself. That limit belongs in the record.

[Nefertiti](/people/nefertiti) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

The Amarna Project summarises the excavation history. Britannica independently narrates the 1912 find and the identification debate. They are different pages.

Official or archival record: The Amarna Project (https://www.amarnaproject.com/; Amarna Project / University of Cambridge).

## Significance

Knowledge-access path. High confidence on the find date. Medium on the uninscribed identification.

A find can open study and also start a colonial ownership fight. The fight is a later Fact.

## What is established and what is not

Established: a painted bust was excavated at Amarna on 6 December 1912 and later catalogued as Nefertiti. Not established: that Nefertiti commissioned its 1912 recovery.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Nefertiti: https://factrail.ai/people/nefertiti

## Drivers

- Digital Learning Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access

## Sources

- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nefertiti
- https://www.amarnaproject.com/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/eg-nefertiti-bust-excavated-1912