A FOREGONE CONCLUSION

I think Thomas Gage (above)  should have called the whole thing off, once the secret was out. And Lord knows it was out almost before General Gage ordered it be kept secret. Maybe the leak was his New Jersey born wife, and maybe it was the government's opponents back in London, and maybe it was just impossible to keep any secrets in a city of 6,700 civilians, occupied by 6,000 soldiers and sailors and their dependents. And maybe the truth is, Britain had already lost the war for American independence before the first shot was fired on 19 April, 1775.

Seven months earlier, on 1 September 1774, General Gage had sent 260 lobster backs 3 miles up the Mystic River to Winter Hill, where they seized the largest supply of gunpowder in the colonies (above). The audacity of Gage's preemptive strike had infuriated thousands of colonists who gathered in Cambridge with their weapons. It was weeks before things calmed down. Since then, Gage had canceled a number of similar expeditions, and pulled all his men back into Boston, abandoning the countryside except for occasional reconnaissance missions. He had warned his London bosses, “if you think ten thousand men sufficient, send twenty; if one million is thought enough, give two; you save both blood and treasure in the end.” What he got, in late February, were orders to get on with disarming the colonists.

Gage's plan was to send out a lightning strike to capture another large supply of powder he'd heard about, 30 miles to the northwest, in Concord. It was a full day's march to get there, giving colonists time to resist, but the expedition could succeed if security was tight and if the rebels were slow to react. So first, Gage wanted to arrest the colonial leaders. He would release them after the powder was safely in Boston, to give him someone to negotiate with. But on Saturday, 8 April, 1775, the two highest value leaders of the Committee of Safety still in Boston, smuggler John Hancock and his cousin, lawyer John Adams, slipped out of the city. Gage heard they had fled to Lexington, 25 miles out the Concord road. Hancock had been born in Lexington, and still owned his family's house there, which was currently occupied by his cousin Lucy and her husband, Jonas Clarke, who was the village pastor. So the first round went to the colonists

The following Monday, 10 April, Gage informed his senior officer, Lieutenant Colonel “Fat Francis” Smith (above), of his plan. Smith suggested a personal reconnaissance, and Gage agreed. So disguised as common travelers 42 year old Colonel Smith and 22 year old Sargent John Howe, who had made a previous reconnaissance, rowed across the Charles River to Cambridge, and started west on foot. After only six miles they stopped at a tavern for breakfast and information. But when Smith claimed to be looking for work, a black servant girl identified Smith by name, and told him he would find plenty of work up the road. Smith retreated back to Boston, but Sergeant Howe continued on. He returned on Wednesday, 12 April, telling Gage the country was so alert it would take 10,000 men to reach Concord and capture the powder and arms the Sargent now confirmed were in Concord.

Three days later, on Saturday 15 April, several companies of grenadiers and light infantry were relieved of their regular duties so they could resole their shoes, change out their canteens, mend their uniforms, and have their muskets serviced. About noon, Royal Navy row boats were seen being gathered in the harbor. At the Green Dragon Tavern on Union Street, one of the rebel leaders remaining in Boston, silversmith Paul Revere, kept the Committee of Safety fully informed of all these preparations..

At nine in the morning, Tuesday, 18 April, patriots in Concord moved their cannon and powder out of town. They already knew the British were coming, and that they were coming soon. About noon John Ballard, a stable boy on Milk Street, reported that a British officer had said there “would be hell to pay, tomorrow”. About two that afternoon, British sailors sent ashore to purchase stores, were heard talking of preparations to row infantry across the Charles River to Cambridge after dark. Doctor Joseph Warren was told by a British officer patient that Hancock and Adams were the intended targets of the movement. 

Around seven that night twenty mounted British officers and sergeants, under the command of Major Edward Mitchell, rode out of Boston, across the Roxbury neck, and headed north. Their mission was to intercept any warning coming from Boston, and to confirm the location of Hancock and Adams. The timing was telling, since most mounted patrols left after dawn and returned by dark. Just an hour later, in Lexington, militia posted a guard at the the Reverend Clarke's house, to protect Adams and Hancock.

About ten that night, under an almost full moon, 700 infantry were formed up in their encampment on the Boston Common, and then marched to the edge of the Back Bay. Boats rowed them across to the Cambridge farm of David Phipps, sheriff for Middlesex County.. The soldiers had to wade ashore through knee high water. Then, Lieutenant John Baker noted “we were halted in a dirty road and stood...waiting for provisions to be brought from the boats...” As the British infantry were stalled on the Concord road, Paul Revere was rowed across Boston Harbor to Charlestown (above), where he had stabled a horse. At about the same time tanner William Dawes managed to slip out of Boston via the Roxbury neck.

About 30 minutes after midnight on Wednesday, 19 April 1775, Paul Revere arrived at Reverend Clarke's house in Lexington. When the guards told him he was making too much noise, the volatile Revere yelled “Noise?! You'll have enough noise before long. The Regulars are out!” At that moment window shutters flew open and a very awake John Hancock invited Revere inside. Within the hour, Revere, joined by William Dawes, and local doctor, 34 year old Samuel Prescott, rode out together to spread the alarm to Concord and beyond. Just north of Lexington the three rebel riders ran into a detachment of Major Mitchell's scouts. Dawes and Revere were captured, but Prescott managed to jump his horse over a roadside fence and escape, taking the alert to Concord. Questioned, Revere told the British there were 500 armed men waiting for them on Lexington Green.

Meanwhile, back on the Phipps farm in the dark, Col. Smith's frustration was growing. It had taken the better part of an hour to get the march restarted, so Smith ordered 53 year old Major John Pitcairn to take the lead with 300 light infantry and marines, and force march until he had seized the bridges north of Concord. Smith would follow with 400 Grenadiers. By the time Pitcairn started it was after after two in the morning. There were only about 2 hours of darkness left. Musket shots and bell alarms were ringing all along the Concord road. Col. Smith sent a messenger back to Boston, requesting reinforcements be dispatched.

In Lexington, about 80 militiamen answered the alarm bell, reporting to 45 year old militia Captain John Parker, a veteran of the famous Roger's Rangers. Parker sent scouts down the road to Cambridge, then, as militiaman Ebenerer Monoe, recalled, “The weather being rather chilly, after calling the roll, we were dismissed, but ordered to remain within call of the drum. The men generally went into (Buckman's) tavern adjoining the common.” (above)  There, most fell asleep in chairs.

The sky had begun to lighten at about 4:15 that Wednesday morning when young Thaddeus Bowman galloped up to the tavern (above). He had been trapped behind Pitcairn's rapid advance, three miles down the road at “Foot of the Rocks.” opposite Pierce's Hill, but had managed to pass the British regulars by crossing fields. Bowman told Parker the regulars were just minutes out of Lexington, and Parker ordered his drummer, William Diman, to sound the “long roll” call to arms. 

 Some 70 militiamen formed a line across the northwest corner of Lexington Green, with Bowman the last man on the right. It is claimed later that Parker told his men, “Stand your ground; don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.” But because he suffered from tuberculosis, Parker's voice was raspy and thin, and few of the militia would have been able to hear Parker, if he said it.

In a soft half light, with a crisp chill in the air, it was approaching five in the morning. The sun has not yet risen over the horizon. But Pitcairn can see militia moving parallel to his march, and periodically even see muskets being fired to track his movements. In the past Major Pitcairn has said, “I have so despicable an opinion of the people of this country...I am satisfied they will never attack Regular troops.” But he now halted his men and ordered them to load their weapons and then fix bayonets. As Pitcairn dropped back to check the rear units of his command, forty year old Irishman Lieutenant Jesse Adair, ordered the 100 men in his command to “double step march” into Lexington.

Lexington Green is a triangle formed by the junction of the west trending Boston and Concord road, and the north trending Bedford road. At the apex of the triangle, where the Bedford Road meets the main road, and on the green, stands the village meeting house. The line of Captain Parker's 70 militiamen were anchored on the Bedford Road, about 75 feet from the northwest base of the triangle. This put them well off the Concord Road, so as not to threaten the British regulars marching to Concord. Parker means his little command as a statement of resolve, and nothing more. It makes the last part of Parker's supposed statement suspect at best.

But as Lt. Adair “quick marched” his command into Lexington the meeting house blocked his view of the militia. And he failed to follow the left curve of the Concord road, but angled to the right, up the Bedford road.  After a few yards the militia, almost equal in size to his own command, was suddenly revealed on his left flank. Startled, Lt. Adair ordered his men onto the green and into a “firing line”. As they did so the regulars let off a self confidence inducing cry of “”Huzzah!”, as they had been trained to do. It took, probably from first sight to the regular battle line, less than a minute.

Major Pitcairn was leading the next three regular companies in line, and guided them in quick step, correctly, angling to the left - west on the Concord road. But as he cleared the meeting house, Pitcairn suddenly saw the militia, and also Adair's company, spreading quickly out onto the green in a line 30 feet in front of the militia. It looked as if a battle was about to begin. Pitcairn ordered his column to halt, and galloped across the green directly toward the American militia. As he came up behind their line, the Major drew his sword and began shouting desperately,  “Lay down your arms, you damned rebels! Disperse! Lay down your arms!” 

Captain Parker, seeing his men outnumbered, and likewise not wanting to start a war, ordered his men to disperse. Few heard him, but those that did turned and begin walking away. But it was at this instant that somebody fired yet another musket, which set off first a hundred others, and then five thousand and then fifty thousand more, over 8 bloody years of war. It was the famous or infamous “Shot heard 'round the world”.

Of the approximately 200 muskets actually on the Green that morning, almost every loaded weapon was British. The regulars had far better discipline than the militia, but were exhausted, having not slept for 24 hours, and were strangers in a strange land. Everybody was on edge, frightened and caught in a rush of an unanticipated crises So, was the first shot intended to kill fired by a colonists or a British regular? In the end it does not really matter. Both sides had been playing with fire for a decade. It was inevitable a flint would spark a conflagration. And in the almost light before dawn on Wednesday, 19 April, 1775, Lexington Green was as good a place as any for that

It took, probably, from first sight to first shot less than 90 seconds. After that it was over, probably, in less than another minute. The regulars fired a ragged volley and then because they could not reload with bayonets on their muskets, charged the colonists. 

They stabbed at least two to death before Pitcairn had the drum beat to quarters, bringing Adair's company back into formation, and ending the melee. There were eight American – from this instant we can call them that - eight American dead. One British regular wounded, but by which side it is not clear. Major Pitcairn's horse was also wounded twice, but he was behind the American line, and those wounds were probably made by British lead.

Pitcairn had never intended on stopping in Lexington, and even now did not pause here for long. He had the entire command give a cheer and fire a volley into the air, but that was more to empty their weapons than anything else. In his mind the Major must have been feeling the weight of the reports he would have to write, and the endless second guessing by his superiors, as after the “Boston Massacare” five years before.But his orders were to seize the bridges north of Concord, so as quickly as he could, and without more than a perfunctory search for Hancock and Adams, who had fled before the shooting started, Pitcairn put his men back on the road, marching for Concord, now in the full light of the morning sun.

What Lexington made as clear as daylight was that America was too big to be controlled by any outside force. And by 1775, that is just what Britain had become. What followed was 8 years of warfare, that killed 50,000 Americans and 25,000 Brits and their hired soldiers. But if he could have divorced himself from his obedience to orders, Thomas Gage knew Britain already lost her colonies, before the first Red Coat had crossed the Charles River in the early hours of 19 April, 1775.  So the American Revolution was a foregone conclusion, all along. A lot of wars are like that.

- 30 -

PATRIOTS' DAY

I guess the most convenient starting point in a retelling the events of the morning of Wednesday, 19 April, 1775,   is to begin with Thomas Gage.  He had been a soldier since he was 21. He fought at Culloden, and in the Low Countries, and in 1754 his regiment served in what in America is called “The French and Indian War”. It was there, in December of 1758, at the age of 40, that Thomas Gage married the lovely Margaret Kemble, who was then barely 24 years old. And it has been alleged that it was Margaret who helped give birth to American Independence.Did the American born wife of the British commander betray his secrets to Paul Revere? Gage thought so. After his twin disasters at Lexington Green and Concord Bridge, Gage complained to a fellow officer that, “I communicated my design to one person only…” Within weeks Margaret was shipped back to England. It is said the couple never spoke again. But, as romantic and tragic as their story might be, I doubt the American Revolution depended on this lady’s betrayal of her husband. Her family did not see themselves as ‘Americans” but as British citizens. Her brother served with the British Army through out the war. And, more importantly, the British were betrayed long before any orders that set Lexington and Concord in motion ever reached General Gage.

Gage didn’t receive his instructions from London until Friday, 14 April  1775.  But as early as Saturday. 8 April - a week earlier - the colonists at Concord had begun to disperse the supplies of cannon, powder and shot they had collected. This advance knowledge of British intentions was due to John Hancock’s business connections in London.

Hancock had made a fortune smuggling goods through Boston Harbor right under the noses of the English custom officials: and tar and feathering those noses when necessary. That business gave Hancock faster and more reliable connections with England than those of the English crown. So, on Sunday, 16 April, when Gage sent out a 50 man patrol to ask locals the whereabouts of Hancock and John Adams (They were hold up in a house in Lexington) the rebels already knew those two men were not General Gage's real targets.

In retrospect, the road between Boston and Concord was so crowded with spies, rebel and loyalist, in the week before 19 April,  1775, as to give the impression of a colonial traffic jam.  The Americans  already knew it was the powder and shot in Concord that Gage was after, not a loud mouthed lawyer and a merchant.  And long before any redcoats marched up what would be called the "Battle Road" and what would become Massachusetts Avenue, those were already out of his reach.

Lt Col. Francis Smith was ordered to take 700 men 17 miles to Concord. “…where you will seize and destroy… all Military stores…” Gage never mentioned going after Hancock or Adams, or even searching Lexington for weapons.  But as Smith’s column approached Lexington he sent ahead 10 “light” infantry companies under the command of  Royal Marine Major John Pitcairn to secure the road junction, not the village.

As he marched the head of of the column into the village just after dawn on 19 April, 1775,  Lt. Jesse Adair discovered a motley group of 77 militia, under the command of a tubercular Captain John Parker (below, in bronze), formed up in a rough line on the backside of the village green. Forty or so spectators had also gathered to watch.

These 77 militia-men were not minute men, as Lexington could not afford the expense of keeping even a handful ready to call to arms “at a minutes notice”. These men had gathered during the previous evening at the Buckman Tavern (background, above) because by that morning just about every patriot, hot head, rabble-rouser, drunk and trouble maker in Massachusetts Bay Colony knew General Gage’s intentions.

The men formed up on the green when the English column was spotted approaching, Parker walked down the line and in his horse voice told them to stand fast but make no aggressive moves, and just let the redcoats pass.

But the Redcoats were too good at soldiering to leave an armed force on their column’s rear and flank. So, rather than march past the green and take the left turn on Concord Road, Lt. Adair turned his skirmishers to the right, and charged onto the triangular green with a loud “Huzzah”. The idea was to frighten the colonists, and it would have scared the heck out of me.

Major Pitcairn (above) came ridding up and with sword drawn, called out, “Disperse, you damn rebels! Damn you, throw down your arms and disperse!”

Things were getting very dangerous, and Parker knew it.  He croaked that the men should just “go home”. Hesitantly, slowly, some of the men who could hear him turned to leave the green. But nobody put down their muskets.

And then, as often happens when people with loaded guns start playing soldier, somebody fired a shot. Maybe it was accident, maybe it wasn’t even aimed at anybody. Afterwards the British said it was the Americans, the Americans blamed the British. The Americans were undisciplined but the British were exhausted. Everybody’s nerves were on the ragged edge.

Some folks in Lexington would later whisper that the first shot was fired by 18 year old Solomon Brown, who was not in the militia but whose home the British column had just passed. The young man had been up all night, playing spy and then soldier, and he seems as likely a source for the first shot as anybody.  Brown did later boast to a friend that he had shot an English officer, and pointed to a blood pool as proof. But whether that was the first shot fired or not is sheer conjecture. Like so much of history, you have your choice of facts.

What we know as fact is this; the first shot produced a flurry of frightened shots, then a ragged volley from the redcoats. In a breath there was so much wild shooting going on that Major Pitcairn’s horse was hit twice, while the Major was unharmed. (And maybe it was a pool of horse blood on the ground).

When it stopped one English soldier was wounded, and eight colonists were dead.  Robert Munroe and Isacc Muzzy were shot and killed on the Green. Samuel Hadley and John Brown (Solomon’s oldest brother) were shot and killed while leaving the Green. Jonas Parker was wounded and then bayoneted to death on the Green. Jonathan Harrington was shot on the Green but managed to crawl to his own front door before dying.  Caleb Harrington was shot and killed close to the church, and Ashahel Porter was shot while attempting to escape.  Nine other colonists were wounded, one of them being Prince Esterbrook, a black man who had no freedom anyone was willing to fight for just yet.

It was a messy start to what would prove to be a very messy day.  By its end some 20,000 rebels would be besieging General Gage’s 5,000 men in Boston. Gage’s reputation would be in tatters (as would his marriage) because 100 printed copies of the colonists’ version of events on Lexington Green (and Concord Bridge which followed that afternoon) would arrive in London weeks before Gage’s perfunctory official report.  And it was America’s propaganda version of the “Battle of Lexington Green” that became history. Was it true? Did it matter?

If the truth of Lexington Green seems important today that is only because the passage of time has made it safe for us to to be honest about passions that men were willing to kill and to die for when 700 British soldiers marched toward the dawn on the "Battle Road", on April 19, 1775.

- 30 -

QUEEN OF DENIAL Chapter Seven

I come back to the beginning, to the face of she who comes in beauty. Nefertiti draws you back, as if she were about to speak. But who could ever live up to her image? Icons exist because they are the human  ideal. And ideals are a human weakness, and a strength. They are what we wish we were. But they are not reality. Consider this - when she married her King, Nefertiti  (above) was just 14 years old, little more than a girl. 

But when she sat for Thutmose the sculptor she was around thirty, and had born six children, two of whom had died. There was a lifetime in those sixteen years in-between, her life time, the more so because she would be dead before she was 35. Look at her again, and see if she is the same woman, in your eyes.

Her mummy has never been found, while her King's mummy has been identified (above). We now know that Akenaten the heretic king stood just 5' 3” tall, that he a had crooked teeth. And yet he had come to see himself as a messenger of god. His beloved Nefertiti could not have lived with him without believing that as well. 

The simplest explanation for the confusion that followed Akenaten's death is that Nefertiti became Pharaoh. And after a reign of less than four years, she was replaced by her nephew, called Tukenaten until her death, and Tutankhamen afterward. He was the boy king who returned the capital to Memphis, and whose mostly intact tomb caused such a sensation when it was opened in 1922 by the Englishman Howard Carter. But King Tut left no heirs, and his was succeeded by Nefertiti's father, the ambitious Ay. After years of political and religious infighting, Ay  finally wore the twin crowns. But his rise after Nefertiti's death seems to imply he must have played some role in the event. We know with a certainty that he returned to the old faith of Amun Ra and participated in the removal of his daughter's memory from Egyptian records. What kind of father could wipe out the memory of his own daughter?   

The man who financed the expedition that brought her back into the light, Henri James Simon, died in Paris after a short illness in December of 1932 – less than a month before Adolf Hitler came into power. And then Simon became a non-person, removed from history like the Queen of the Nile. Simon's crime, like Nefertiti's, was a matter of religion. He was a Jew. As was Ludwig Borchardt (above). Both men were despised by the Nazi goons, not for their flesh but for an Antisemitic image of them. Simon was the lucky one.  Borchadt, the man who betrayed his profession for his country, was hounded out of Germany, and died in Paris in August of 1938.

On the west wall of the tomb prepared for Ay, in the cliffs east of Akhenaten, was inscribed a poem, perhaps even written by the old man himself. It ends; “Every lion comes from its den, All serpents bite.” On the tomb walls he was identified as a Grand Vizier, “God's Father”, the “Fan bearer to the right of the King”, “Overseer of All Horses”, a royal scribe and “Chief of the Archers”. The tomb's praises stop there because it was never used. The old man ruled as Pharaoh for perhaps ten years, and badly. His armies were defeated by the Hittites. After his death around 1320 B.C.E. the old man's mummy ended up sharing Tutankhamen tomb, in the Valley of the Kings. He was replaced by a commoner, his military commander, Horemheb.

It was the Pharaoh Horemheb who fully persecuted the memories of Nefertiti, Akenaten, Tutankhamen and Ay, and who finally and fully abandoned the capital of Akheaten  This must have made it difficult at home as his second wife was Mutnedjmet, Nefertiti's sister.  No Egyptian Queen would ever again beg a foreign prince to share her kingdom. It was Horemheb who saved Egypt through reforms and reestablishing order. But he left no heirs, and the 18^th dynasty died with him. What came next was the 19^th, and Setti I, and the greatest Pharaoh of all, Ramses II.

It is usually forgotten in the press that to the archaeologists, the greatest find in Akenaten was not the beautiful lady abandoned on the floor of a forgotten sculptor's workshop, nor even the empty tombs carved into the limestone cliffs, but the the Armarna Letters. These 382 cuneiform baked clay tablets were the remains of Akhaten's “House of Correspondence”, the library of bureaucratic messages between the great kings of Babylon, Mycenae, Greece and the Hittites, and the Egyptian subject peoples across the Middle East. This treasure trove was discovered not by a European scientist, but by an old Egyptian woman, scrounging for dried dung, to fertilize her garden. She actually ground up an unknown number of the priceless tablets to bury in her back yard. And that is not the most absurd thing to have happened to the ancient Egyptians over the last 3,400 years.

According to Henri Stierlin, a Swiss historian, the Nefertiti bust was created by artist Gerardt Marks, made to order for Gustave Borchardt. Stierlin contends ancient Egyptians never cut their busts vertically at the shoulders, as Nefertiti is, and would never have allowed a figure missing an eye. He does admit the pigments used have been carbon dated to the time period of Nefertiti, but reminds defenders of the Neuse museum, that the altar offered to Egyptian antiquities by Borchardt has proven to be a fake. Why would the bust not be another?

But I think the fake alter was procured to distract the Cairo Museum away from the bust. Why bother to do that if the bust was also a fake? And if Borchardt faked the bust, he must have also faked his own diary entries (above)  a decade after they were written. So we now have to ask why he would commit a crime that would has sullied his reputation among archaeologist everywhere but Germany, and then commit yet another more difficult crime guaranteed to destroy his reputation in Germany? And how do you get 3, 400 year old pigments on a 100 year old bust? There is no record of any counterfeiter ever removing and re-hydrating ancient paint. And yet, to believe Stierlin, we have to believe Borchardt did all of that. To employ Occam's Razor, the simplest explanation would seem to be that Borchardt was trying to sneak Nefertiti out of Egypt, and Stierlin is just trying to sell books.

So the bust of Nefertiti is the real McCoy, a 3,400 years old “icon of international beauty” and confirmation that ancient peoples were after all just people, as stupid and smart, as greedy and selfless, as ugly and beautiful as you and I and the average supermodel. If Nefertiti was a living breathing enchantress whose radiant “smile is animated with an inner light”, as described by French Egyptologist Christian Jacq, then Thutmose who created the limestone and plaster bust of her, was as great an artist as Leonardo da Vinci who painted the Mona Lisa. And why not? There have been, in my brief lifetime, a Sophia Loren, a Catherine Deneuve, a Michelle Pfeiffer, and a Vanessa Williams. In the 2,000 year history of the Egyptian empire, why could there not have been a Nefertiti? And the truth is, what you see in the face of a beautiful woman or a statue, is always what you hope to see there.

Except the face of Nefertiti is not exactly smiling. I sense instead an air of dismissive superiority, arrogance and vanity. Given her unlimited power of life and death over her subjects, how could you call a Queen of the Nile an egomaniac? Who did not tell he she was beautiful? Who did not tell her she was wise? I would be willing to bet, no one – twice. How could the wife of a god, a Pharaoh herself, not be pretentious, smug, and supercilious? If Nefertiti truly believed that every July she was responsible for the Nile flood, how could she not be peremptory, pompous and presumptuous? If the sun god Aten was drawn to rise every morning in response to her entreaties, it would be illogical for her to be courteous, humble or obliging. For her to have displayed any sign of uncertainty, modesty or weakness, would have been a death sentence. So we should assume she did not do that, at least until just before her death.

So we are back to the beginning, still trying to separate the living woman from the stone image, the flesh and blood from the icon. Each year half a million people journey to look upon her visage. What each sees in her face is what each wants to see. Her father Ay saw a chance for advancement. Most ancient Egyptians saw a heretic. Akanaten saw the love of his life (above). Borchardt saw a path to fame. Adolf Hitler saw confirmation of Aryan purity. Modern Egyptians see an icon of imperialist arrogance. Modern Germans see an icon of German nationality. They are all wrong.

And they are all right. And so are you.

- 30 -

QUEEN OF DENIAL Chapter Six

I know the bust of Nefertiti is not sentient. It is not aware of its surroundings or of itself. At its core it is limestone, the compressed bodies of billions of single celled living creatures, coral and plankton, that once had some chemical level of awareness. And I have imagination enough to dream of a universe where any life, once having been sparked, survives in some sense.  And I can dream of what it must have been like for cold stone to have the sculptor's warm hands cut and file and shape and soften its surface, combining in some small way his imagination, his life, and the life of Queen of the Nile with the life turned into stone.

In Thutmose's universe his stone and plaster image of Neferetiti became one of the five parts that made up the living woman; Ib, (her emotional heart), Sheut (her ever present shadow), Ren (her living name), Ba (her personality) and Ka (what we would call her soul). It is thought her left eye was left unfinished in order to prevent the capture of Nefertiti's Ka by the bust. But could it not be that the stone and plaster image had its own Ka, or heart or shadow? And if so, what must have it been like to have slowly emerged from the darkness of nonexistence, to be born into existence slowly, and to have then been loved and admired for decades, before being abruptly thrown to the floor, abused and defiled, and then abandoned and forgotten -  buried in sands for 3, 000 long dark empty years.

And then the light returned. Meticulously, the sand was brushed away, and once again warm human flesh touched her surface, lifted her up, and human eyes fell upon her shape and color, and human imaginations beheld her image, as a visitor from eons past. And then, in what must have seemed like a startlingly violent instant, she was traveling, whisked 2,000 miles from the place of her creation, into a new temple, a temple dedicated not to a god, but to the Ka of humanity, to that one part of humanity that no other creature on Earth has ever possessed but humans: our imagination. It seems that the bust of Nefertiti has enjoyed a most eventful Akh, or afterlife. She does indeed, live again.

When they first brought her to the Neuss (New) Museum, on Museum Island in the Spree River in Berlin, Germany, it was a re-dedication. The building had been erected in the 1840's, and was, like the Pharaoh’s new capital, a technological innovation – at the time. Instead of plaster, the New Museum was built with concrete poured over iron supporting rods with a brick exterior. The first floor contained Egyptian and German collections, and plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculptures (below). 

But the arrival of the Queen inspired changes. The central Greek courtyard was given a glass roof, and converted into space to display Ludwig Borchardt's collections from Akanetan, referred to by its modern Arabic name of Armarna. And it was here (below) that Nefertiti found her new home. But it  did not prove to be a permanent abode.

In January of 1933 a new Pharaoh came to town.  Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany. His new Reich minister, Herman Goring, began looking for a way to quickly and cheaply improve Germany's diplomatic standing in the world. At the time Egypt was nominally ruled by the debauched King Fariouk Fouad, but the real power behind his throne was Britain. And it occurred to Goring that returning the pilfered bust of Nefertiti on the occasion of his coronation, might cause the King to look favorably upon German diplomatic entreaties.  Letters were exchanged with the offer. But when Hitler got wind of the idea he killed it because he was convinced Nefertiti looked to be a member of his mythical“Aryan master race”  And that was, as far as I can tell, the last good thing Hitler did for Germany until he shot himself.

Adolf confidently started the Second World War on September 1^st, 1939, and even though Goring had assured citizens that Berlin would never be bombed, in an abundance of precaution Nefertiti was boxed up and temporarily locked away in the vault of the Prussian Governmental Bank. Then, on the night of 25 August, 1940, 70 obsolete British bombers dropped 21 tons of bombs on Berlin, hitting empty fields and damaging some houses. The worst injuries were some cuts and bruises, and the bombers never came near to hitting the airport, which has their target. 

The biggest causality was Hitler's equilibrium. He ordered the construction of three massive anti-aircraft gun towers in the center of  the city. The largest (above) was built in the Tiergarten park, adjacent to the Berlin Zoo. It was 7 stories tall to allow the guns clear fields of fire. The walls were of reinforced concrete 26 feet thick, the ceilings were 16 feet thick. It was so large it could shelter 5,000 civilians, and many of Germany's most valuable artistic treasures, including Nefertiti, were moved there in the fall of 1941. And there she stayed, hidden again, as safe as if she were still buried in the Egyptian sands, for another four and a half years, until the Soviet armies approached Berlin.

On 6 March, 1945,  Nefertiti made yet another trip, this one of 200 miles southwest to the rolling hills of the Thuringian Forest, where she was left for safe keeping 2,100 feet below ground level in a salt mine under the village of Merkers-Kieselbach. Late in March she was joined by 100 heavy woolen coats, 100 tons of gold bars, 550 bags of German currency (above) and 27 Rembrandt paintings. Two weeks later the entire cache was captured by soldiers of the 3rd American Army under General George S. Patton. Within days the entire treasure was transferred another 100 miles southwest to a bank vault in Frankfurt. There was so much loot that it took 2 convoys of 17 heavy trucks each. Being capitalists, the Americans shipped the gold first.

After Germany surrendered on 5 May, 1945, the Queen of the Nile was moved to Wiesbaden, Germany, on the north bank of the Rhine River. Here they brought her out into the light again to be examined by experts, and the public was even allowed to gaze upon her face. There she remained, transferred into German control, until 1956, when she was moved to the Dahelem museum in the American sector of Berlin. She could not return to Museum Island because the Neuse had been blasted to ruin during the war (above), and besides, the island was in East Berlin, the zone controlled by the Soviets.  When the East Germans demanded she be handed over, the West Germans decided to transfer her to the Egyptian museum in the Charlottenburg neighborhood of Berlin. And there the Queen stayed for almost forty years - a human life time, but a blink of her single eye to Nefertiti. Then in 1989, the East German government collapsed.  In October of 1990 Germany was officially one nation again, and Berlin one city, and it became a matter of national pride for the Germans to return their Egyptian queen to her throne.

In 2005 the German government began a 295 million Euro dollar rebuilding of the Neuse, under a plan drawn up by English Architect David Chipperfield - after all, it was the English who blew up the museum in the first place. And in 2009 the Queen once again held court in the Neuse Museum in the German capital. Her journey from the banks of the Nile to and from and to the banks of the Spree has been described as both “adventurous and beyond comparison”, and earning her the number two spot on Time Magazine's list of “Top ten plundered Artifacts”.  Egypt still wants her back, and Germany still intends upon keeping her.  And while one identity is barely 200 years old and the other goes back 4,500 years, both countries view Nefertiti as a national icon.

If you think about it, its a crazy situation, because she isn't really the queen of the Nile. She is limestone and plaster and paint, an image of a one time queen of a long dead empire that culturally has little in common with either nation. And if, like Pinocchio, she were to arise tomorrow morning, as a real woman, she would be a very confused lady, no matter which city appeared before her eyes. So far she has not had the afterlife she envisioned. And it may get stranger yet.

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