I first saw a photo of the bust of Nefertiti, the Ancient Egyptian queen, when I was about 12 years old, and from that moment on, she was to me the epitome of beauty. Actresses? Singers? Celebrities? Beauty queens? None measured up to this 3,500-year-old sculpture. But I did not see the original until a few months ago when, for the first time, I visited Berlin. She is there, in the Neues Museum, alone in the center of Gallery 210, the North Dome Room.

As I approached the gallery, I stopped. I held back. I almost turned away. So often a dream, an idol, an idea disappoints when it becomes a reality. Photos can lie. Impressions of a 12-year-old girl can implode. Finally, I entered Gallery 210, and there she was — as serene, as majestic, as quietly imposing in person as she was in that photo. And yes, she is beautiful.

She sits on a tall base and is covered with glass. I stood in front of her. I walked around and around her. Over the centuries, she lost her left eye. But unlike so many Egyptian statues, stilted and unreal, her sculptor, Thutmosis, carved her sometime between 1351 and 1334 B.C. as a human woman, giving her a sense of muscle tension in her neck, a slight line in the corner of her mouth. She not only looked as beautiful as I had imagined, she looked uncannily alive — about to turn her head, to speak, to smile and nod. She was married to Akhenaton and had six daughters, and her name, I read, has two meanings: “the beautiful one has come” and “perfect are the beauties of the Aton.” She does not disappoint. She is, indeed, perfection.