Nefertiti

Nefertiti ruled beside Pharaoh Akhenaten around 1370-1330 BC, at the peak of Egypt's wealth, and helped him dismantle millennia of religious tradition to install Atenism - a radical, possibly monotheistic cult centered on the sun disc and the royal family's direct access to it. After Akhenaten's death, some scholars argue she briefly ruled as the female pharaoh Neferneferuaten before Tutankhamun took the throne, though the identification remains contested. If she did hold power, her reign saw the collapse of Amarna and the capital's return to Memphis. She vanished from the record until the 20th century, when the sculptor Thutmose's buried studio yielded her bust - now in Berlin's Neues Museum and one of the most reproduced objects from the ancient world.