Egypt Wants Its Nefertiti Bust Returned

Zahi Hawass starts a petition to that end
By Kate Seamons,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 9, 2024 12:58 PM CDT
Egypt Wants Its Nefertiti Bust Returned
A man wearing a face mask walks past the bust of Nefertiti in the New Museum in Berlin on March 16, 2021.   (Paul Zinken/dpa via AP)

Nefertiti is one of Egypt's most famous queens. An equally famous bust of her resides a continent away—and Egypt is seeking to change that. The 3,400-year-old bust has been on display at Berlin's Neues Museum since 2009; it's been in Germany's possession far longer. The bust was discovered by a German archaeological mission in 1912 at Tell el-Amarna, which NBC News describes as the capital of Pharaoh Akhenaten, Nefertiti's husband. Famed archaeologist and former Egyptian antiquities minister Zahi Hawass on Saturday announced that a petition has been started to lobby for its return; it's not the first time he has attempted that very thing.

Hawass launched a similar petition more than a decade ago. This time, he's asking people "to go to my website ... hawasszahi.com, and you will sign, one signature, to show that you would love for this bust to come back," he said Saturday, per Reuters. Standout lines from his press release: "This bust, remarkable and unrivaled in history for its historical and aesthetic merit, is now in Germany, but it is time for it to come home to Egypt ... Egypt has been deprived of the bust for [111] years. Nonetheless, Egypt deeply appreciates the care and efforts undertaken by the government of Germany to preserve and display the 3,400-year-old painted limestone bust of the Queen."

Hawass started a similar petition two years ago seeking the repatriation of two of the "three main beautiful objects" that he says were illegally taken from Egypt (with the bust being the third): the Rosetta Stone, which resides at London's British Museum, and the Dendera Zodiac, which is at the Louvre in Paris. The Neues Museum hasn't commented, though Deutsche Welle reports it has previously argued that the original excavation was greenlit by Egypt under a deal that was to see the two countries evenly split the findings; a rep for the Egyptian government reportedly picked half, with thousands of other items heading to Germany. (More Nefertiti stories.)

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