BOSTON: Discovery has released the digital facial reconstruction image of the mummy believed to be Nefertiti.

It was in June that indiantelevision.com reported Discovery's announcement that Egyptologist Dr Joann Fletcher's had perhaps discovered and identified the mummy believed to be that of ancient Egypt's stunningly beautiful Queen Nefertiti.

The Queen was the Egyptian co-regent of Pharaoh Akhenaten during the late XVIIth dynasty some 3,000 years ago. Discovery funded Fletcher's expedition, which blended archaeology and state-of-the-art digital technology to locate and identify Nefertiti as part of the network's new initiative, Discovery Channel Quest. The Nefertiti special Nefertiti Resurrected will air in September around the world.
An official release informs that Discovery and London-based production company Atlantic Productions assembled a team of experts to create the facial reconstruction of the mummy. The experts used digital x-rays that were taken by the expedition team in February 2003 in royal tomb KV 35 in the Valley of the Kings.

Experts included Dr. Damian Schofield, a forensic animation expert from the University of Nottingham; Dr. Martin Evison, a forensic anthropologist from Sheffield University; and a facial animator specialist from Aims Solution, Ltd. The scientists were not informed of the mummy's possible identity.
The Nottingham-Sheffield team have worked on many other forensic visualisation projects, including modelling the injuries and rebuilding the faces of murder victims. Through their joint work they have developed a number of new techniques for generating more representative facial reconstructions using advanced computer graphics technology.
Dr. Schofield said: "The facial reconstruction team worked blind, with no knowledge as to who our mummy might be, throughout the project to ensure objectivity. When told who the mummy might be, we compared our reconstruction to the known images of Nefertiti and saw remarkable similarities."
Dr. Evison added: "Facial reconstruction from the skull is too imprecise to offer unequivocal proof of identity. However the resemblance of our reconstruction to the historic portraits of Nefertiti is quite striking and would have been unavoidable."

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'Nefertiti Resurrected' on Discovery 7 September

Discovery uncovers possible Nefertiti Mummy