Germany's Minister of Culture Bern Nuemann said today that the bust of Nefertiti in the Neues Museum in Berlin will stay in Berlin. The minister was responding to the Egyptian Minister of Culture, Dr. Zahi Hawass, who keeps threatening to make an official request while never doing it.
The bust was collected at the site of Tell el-Amarna in 1912 by excavator Ludwig Borchardt for that dig's patron, James Simon, who kept it for about a decade before gifting it to the Berlin museum. Tell el-Amarna was the former capital of Egypt's heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten and his principal wife Nefertiti.
The beautiful bust of an unidentified king's wife is believed to be Nefertiti but may represent any of the royal women from that king's court. The bust has been a contentious issue between the Egyptian authorities and the German authorities.
Dr. Hawass has called for the return of the bust for many years without actually making a formal complaint to the Germans. At first, Dr. Hawass asked for the bust to be loaned, but in a speech made in Paris to UNESCO's Intergovernmental Committee for the return of cultural heritage several years ago, Dr. Hawass left many wondering what his idea of a loan was and if they did loan their artifact to the Egyptian, would those objects ever come back?
Dr. Hawass's now referring to the bust as stolen makes the loan of the Neues Museum's biggest draw more than likely unwise.
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