It’d look like our obsession with beauty has never been greater, but seeking to the past tells a special story. Making Up The Past is a column taking a look at great women from history and the way they used cosmetics to shape their identities, from ancient queens to modern artists.

In 1912, a team of German archaeologists led by Ludwig Borchardt were trawling the traditional Egyptian city of Amarna after they uncovered a series of stone busts. Continuing to excavate, they stumbled upon a studio belonging to Thutmose, the official court sculptor to the ruling Egyptian dynasty throughout the 14th century BC. Borchardt dug a layer deeper, brushing away some dust to disclose a kohl-rimmed eye staring out at him. It was a face so extraordinarily lifelike, he believed for a moment he had uncovered a human body.

In point of fact, the face was to grow to be one of the vital memorable images from all of antiquity: a portrait bust of the Queen Nefertiti, who ruled Egypt alongside her husband, Pharaoh Akhenaten. Some historians even argue that after his death, she was the civilisation’s sole leader. Today it sits pride of place in its own room at Berlin’s Neues Museum, a timeless vision of female beauty recreated over the a long time and referenced by a few of the world’s most iconic women. There’s Iman in full Pharaonic drag for Michael Jackson’s 1992 Remember The Time music video, or Rihanna’s 2017 Vogue Arabia cover, where the singer sported not only Nefertiti’s signature cat-eye but additionally the normal Egyptian headdress — even after hundreds of years, some beauty trends never exit of fashion.

There are few cultures as fixated with physical appearance as the traditional Egyptians. Each men and girls wore makeup not only out of vanity, but in the assumption that adorning oneself with dazzling colors and complicated patterns would ward off evil spirits — like a sacred version of today’s “peacocking” pick-up technique. It’s this belief that left us with the legacy of extraordinary objects from Egyptian antiquity that populate museums across the globe, because of their love of durable materials like gold or precious stones and their knack for preservation, with many objects sealed away in air-tight tombs until their modern rediscovery. From Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt on the turn of the nineteenth century, to the uncovering of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, to The Mummy franchise, the general public appetite for Egyptology has rarely waned.

It’s interesting that probably the most iconic image of the might of ancient Egypt — a civilisation that spanned over three millennia — is that of Nefertiti, certainly one of its impossible leaders. Her name roughly translates to “the attractive one has come”, and it was a beauty that she used to her advantage, coming from a humble background and searing herself onto the general public consciousness with unprecedented savvy. It’s no coincidence that the fashionable women who embody Nefertiti, like Rihanna or Iman, share each physical characteristics and personality traits. They’re intelligent and industrious, using their striking appearance and skills to attain positions of influence: Iman launched a cosmetics label catering to women of color back in 1994, while the runaway success of Fenty Beauty and Fenty x Puma pay testament to Rihanna’s entrepreneurial instincts.

Looking back at probably the most significant female figures in history, they almost without fail possessed an uncanny ability to make use of their physical appearance as a propaganda tool, or a method of advancing their agenda, political or otherwise. There are the portraits of Queen Elizabeth I, for instance, produced in collaboration with the leading painters of her day to emphasize her heavily powdered, arsenic-white face as each virginal and ageless. Existing as a strong woman in an oppressively patriarchal society requires serious political acumen, and certainly one of the few tools that they had to direct public opinion was the symbolism afforded by clothing and makeup.

No one would have understood this higher than Nefertiti. Ruling throughout the most prosperous period of Egyptian history, she and Akhenaten oversaw a spiritual revolution, replacing the pantheistic beliefs of previous rulers with one divinity: Ra, the sun god. As part of those reforms, the Pharaoh and his wife were consecrated because the only direct link to this god, and together with this radical shift in religious culture got here a reshaping of the aesthetic identity of the rulers, appropriate for this recent status. One of the vital remarkable legacies of Nefertiti’s reign are the paintings discovered in her husband’s tomb, where she is represented driving chariots, attacking enemies and performing ceremonial acts normally reserved solely for the male Pharaoh.

It wasn’t just in art that she shaped this recent impression of female power: appearing directly in front of her subjects, the chances offered by makeup to fashion her own identity were rigorously exploited. Archaeological chemists examining Egyptian mummies have noted that the signature black, swooping eyeshadow worn by Nefertiti was full of toxic lead-based chemicals, potentially serving as a method of fighting bacterial infection in periods when the Nile would flood. This also had a spiritual parallel, with the painted eye becoming a form of amulet, again warding off evil spirits; when undecorated, the attention was vulnerable to the influence of the “evil eye”. It’s even been suggested that Nefertiti herself sent chemists out to reap galena leaves and refine the formula for kohl to grant her additional spiritual protection.

The immense wealth of the Egyptians meant precious stones, today reserved for probably the most opulent fantastic jewellery, were commonly crushed and ground as daring, eye-catching pigments. Cleopatra’s signature green eyeshadow, likely worn also by Nefertiti, was formulated from malachite. It’s also believed to be the birthplace of henna, with each men and girls known to wear elaborate patterns across their skin, while archaeologists have discovered strands of hair which look like the primary examples of wigs and hair extensions. Our continued interest within the Egyptian obsession with appearance isn’t nearly vanity, however the revolutionary leaps they made inside the world of beauty.

The uncovering of Nefertiti’s bust was well-timed. Two years earlier, the invention by Howard Carter of her stepson Tutankhamun’s tomb sent western Europe right into a frenzy: fashionable women were slicking back their hair and wearing jewelled scarab brooches, and the Art Deco style took direct cues from the regimented decorative schemes of ancient Egyptian art. At the identical time, there’s something about her image which feels outside of any specific trend — its power lies in its timelessness.  

A recent scan of the bust has revealed that the unique face lying underneath had wrinkles, a bigger nose and less-defined cheekbones. It appears Thutmose, based on the queen’s wishes, underwent an ancient type of Photoshopping, refining her features until the image she desired to present to the world was realised — a vision of beauty so enduring that even within the twenty first century, a British woman spent £200,000 trying to reshape herself as the Beauty of the Nile.

It’s not only the precise motif of a cat-eye that lends this sculpture, and Nefertiti herself, an indescribable magic. It’s looking back through the centuries at a girl living in wildly different circumstances who used beauty in the identical way we do today: to speak publicly who we’re, to specific our uniqueness, or as a protective, even talismanic layer. Beneath the specifics of her make-up regime and aesthetic preferences, it appears that evidently even ancient Egyptian queens were identical to us.