QUICK TAKES - April 1, 2009

Researchers in Germany have used a modern medical procedure to uncover a secret within one of ancient Egypt’s most treasured artworks: The bust of Nefertiti has two faces.

A team led by Dr. Alexander Huppertz, director of the Imaging Science Institute at Berlin’s Charite hospital and medical school, discovered a detailed stone carving that differs from the external stucco face when they performed a computed tomography, or CT, scan on the bust.

The findings, published Tuesday in the monthly journal Radiology, are the first to show that the stone core of the statue is a highly detailed sculpture of the queen, Huppertz said.

“Until we did this scan, how deep the stucco was and whether a second face was underneath it was unknown,” he said. “The hypothesis was that the stone underneath was just a support.”

The differences between the faces, though slight -- creases at the corners of the mouth, a bump on the nose of the stone version -- suggest to Huppertz that someone expressly ordered the adjustments between stone and stucco when royal sculptors immortalized the wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten 3,300 years ago.

John H. Taylor, a curator for Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum in London, said the scan raised interesting questions about why the features were adjusted -- but that answers would probably remain elusive.