A Jewel of Antiquity in Our Collection
This month we present one of the most singular pieces in our collection: the diorama of Queen Nefertiti’s music room, made with figures by the English manufacturer Rose Miniatures and painted by Alejandro Noguera, current director of Museo L’Iber.
Nefertiti: The Queen Who Defied the Centuries
Nefertiti (c. 1370 BC – c. 1331 BC) was the Great Royal Wife of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, better known by the name he himself adopted: Akhenaten. Belonging to the 18th Dynasty of the New Kingdom, she ruled alongside her husband during one of the most singular and turbulent periods in the history of Ancient Egypt.
Her origins remain a subject of debate among specialists. One school of thought, upheld by authors such as Cyril Aldred, proposes that she came from a family of high-ranking Egyptian dignitaries; other researchers, drawing on the diplomatic parallels recorded in the Amarna Letters, suggest she was a Mitanni princess from the kingdom of Mitanni, in what is now northern Syria. Neither hypothesis has been conclusively proven to date.
What is documented is the extraordinary political weight Nefertiti wielded during their joint reign. In reliefs and stelae from the Amarna period she is depicted in positions of power usually reserved for the pharaoh: smiting enemies, driving war chariots, or making offerings to the god Aten in a position symmetrical to that of her husband. Her role was, therefore, far more than that of a decorative consort. From the new capital, Akhetaten — present-day Amarna — she co-ruled the country with fully recognised authority.
She and Akhenaten had six daughters. The eldest, Meritaten, went on to serve as Great Royal Wife during the last years of her father’s reign. Another daughter, Ankhesenamun, would later become the wife of the celebrated Tutankhamun.
After the pharaoh’s death, Nefertiti’s figure did not vanish from the political scene. One hypothesis, defended by Egyptologists such as James Allen and Aidan Dodson, holds that she ruled Egypt under the name Neferneferuaten, or even as the mysterious pharaoh Smenkhkare. The available epigraphic and archaeological evidence does not allow the question to be settled with certainty, but the mere possibility — upheld by leading specialists — speaks to this woman’s exceptional political standing within a system of power designed almost exclusively for men.
Her fame in the modern world began with the discovery of her celebrated bust by the German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt in 1912, during excavations at Amarna. The piece, carved in limestone and stuccoed, with its serene features and unmistakable blue double-plumed crown, has become one of the most widely reproduced icons of Egyptian art. It is now held at the Neues Museum in Berlin, not without controversy: Egypt has formally requested its return for decades, without success to date.
The Amarna Period: Religious Reform and Cultural Rupture
The reign of Akhenaten (c. 1353–1336 BC) marked an unprecedented rupture in Egyptian civilisation. The reform he drove — replacing the traditional pantheon with the exclusive worship of the Aten, the solar disc — was not a gradual evolution but a deliberate, accelerated imposition. The temples of Amun and the other deities were shut down, their priesthoods dissolved, and the names of the gods systematically erased from monuments. It was an iconographic persecution of massive scale.
Some researchers describe this shift as monotheism avant la lettre; others prefer the term “henotheism,” noting that the Aten was not abstract but a deity with a physical form — the solar disc itself — and that texts from the period do not explicitly exclude the existence of other divine forces. The academic debate remains open.
This religious revolution had consequences that went beyond ritual and theology: it transformed the art, language, architecture and daily life of the ruling elite. Amarna’s artistic style broke with the rigid canons that had dominated pharaonic art for centuries: figures became elongated, faces individualised, and scenes of domestic intimacy appeared — the royal family playing, embracing, receiving their children — utterly unprecedented in the context of earlier Egyptian art.
Music at the Court of Pharaonic Egypt
Music held a central place in the life of the Egyptian court. Iconographic evidence — tomb reliefs, wall paintings in funerary chapels, depictions on papyri — shows instrumental ensembles active at aristocratic banquets, religious ceremonies, processions and funerary rituals. In the royal palaces, musicians, dancers and singers formed part of the permanent staff.
The best-documented instruments include the harp — in its various forms, from the portable shoulder harp to the tall standing harp that could exceed a man’s height — the long-necked lute (introduced in the New Kingdom under Asian influence), the transverse flute and the double flute or memet, the double oboe, the sistrum — a percussion instrument especially linked to the cult of Hathor — and clappers of wood or ivory. The human voice was equally central to musical practice: the chantresses or “singers of Amun” formed a recognised category of high social prestige, to which noblewomen belonged.
Music served a ritual function, but also a recreational and representative one. At the great banquets of the elite, described in texts such as the Banquet Papyrus or in paintings such as those from the Tomb of Nebamun, musical performance was not a secondary entertainment but a constitutive part of the event: its absence would have been unthinkable.
During the Amarna period, the court’s musical life was not left untouched by the broader cultural renewal. Depictions of the royal family’s private life — unique in Egyptian art — include musical scenes in a domestic setting, with Nefertiti and Akhenaten surrounded by their daughters in moments of intimacy that contrast radically with the hieratic solemnity of earlier art. The diorama in our collection captures precisely that spirit: music not as an act of state, but as a living practice in the most intimate space of power.
Rose Miniatures: The Legacy of Russell Gammage
The figures that make up this diorama belong to Rose Miniatures, a brand that holds a distinguished place in the history of collectible miniatures. Founded in 1953 in England by Russell Gammage — who was at once owner, chief designer and sculptor — the company operated for three decades until its closure in 1983, leaving behind a catalogue of historical figures of recognised technical quality and documentary rigour.
Gammage specialised in civilisations of the ancient world — Egypt, Rome, Greece — as well as medieval and Napoleonic historical periods, always working with particular attention to historical detail and the sculptural quality of the figures. For this reason his pieces are today actively sought after by specialist collectors: their rarity on today’s market and the quality of their craftsmanship have turned them into objects of growing heritage and economic value.
The figure of Nefertiti at the centre of the diorama reproduces the queen with her characteristic crown and a jewelled collar worked in exquisite detail, faithful to depictions from the Amarna period. The painting and staging of the whole are the work of Alejandro Noguera, current director of Museo L’Iber, whose work transforms the original figures into a narrative composition of remarkable visual richness.
You can admire this diorama and many more singular pieces in the Antiquity Room of Museo L’Iber, in the heart of Valencia’s Carmen neighbourhood.
About the author
Alejandro Noguera Borel — Director of Museo L’Iber and of Fundación Libertas 7. In the world of miniature soldiers since the 1970s.
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