In the North Dome Room of the Neues Museum in Berlin stands the magnificent painted stucco and limestone bust of the ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti that continues to draw the attention of thousands of visitors.
The timeless appearance of the bust and particularly of the face has become an icon of beauty over the past 102 years since its discovery in the workshop of the ancient Egyptian court sculptor Thutmose in the pharaoh Akhenaten›s capital city of Amarna by an archaeological team led by German Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt.
The bust is one of the most iconic images of ancient Egyptian art. It depicts Queen Nefertiti, whose name means «the beautiful has arrived,” with full red lips, a graceful, elongated neck decorated with the vibrant colours of a necklace, and a tall, blue flat-topped crown which contrasts with the sepia tone of her skin. Although one of the bust›s inlaid crystal eyes is missing, both eyelids and brows are outlined in black.
Today, the campaign to return the bust to its homeland is continuing.
The journey from Amarna to Berlin began in December 1912, when Borchardt and his team unearthed the bust of Nefertiti, wife of the monotheistic King Akhenaten, at the Amarna archaeological site inside the workshop of the court sculptor Thutmose.
According to his records, Borchardt immediately recognised the unique nature and artistic value of this piece, as well as its historical importance. Anxious to secure the bust for Germany, he took advantage of the practice at the time to split the spoils of any new discovery between the Egyptian Antiquities Authority (EAA) and the participating foreign mission. The law then required that discoveries be brought to the EAA, where a special committee supervised the distribution of the findings.
Borchardt either did not declare the bust or hid it under less important objects in order to take it out of the country. Another suggestion is that the Egyptian authorities failed to recognise the bust’s importance. According to Borchardt himself, he did not clean the bust but rather left it covered in mud when he took it to the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square for the usual division procedure. The EAA then chose to take limestone statues of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, and thinking that the Nefertiti bust was made of gypsum, a mineral also known in the form of alabaster, gave the invaluable bust to the German expedition.
Regardless of how Germany ended up in possession of the bust, the EAA, not knowing of the bust’s existence, had never expressly agreed that this piece be included in the German share of the Amarna findings. It only found out about it when the bust was put on display at the Egyptian Museum in Berlin in 1923. The Egyptian Government at the time made an attempt to have the bust returned, but German leader Adolf Hitler, who had fallen in love with it, refused and announced that it would remain in Germany forever.
After World War II, Egypt made a formal request to the Allied Control Council (ACC), which was responsible at that time for art objects in Germany. Egypt’s Legation in Prague sent a memorandum in April 1946 to the ACC requesting the repatriation of the Nefertiti bust, following it up with an official request from the Egyptian Ambassador to the US addressed to the US Secretary of State and dated February 1947.
On 8 March 1947, the ACC delivered its response, saying they it not feel that it had the authority to make such a decision, and recommended that the request be made again after a competent German government had been established.
Repatriation attempts began in earnest in 2005, when Egyptologists and former Minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass, then Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), mentioned it at a meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin held at the UN cultural agency UNESCO in Paris.
He said that Egypt had been deprived of five key items of its cultural heritage and that these should be handed over to their homeland and launched a campaign for their restitution. The objects in questions are the Rosetta Stone, now in the British Museum in London, the 18th-Dynasty bust of Queen Neferiti at the Neues Museum in Berlin, the statue of Hemiunnu, architect of the Great Pyramid, in the Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum in Hilesheim, the Dendara Temple Zodiac in the Louvre in Paris, and the Bust of Kephren’s Pyramid builder Ankhaf in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Hawass delivered an official request to UNESCO asking the UN body to act as a mediator between Egypt and the countries concerned in the return of these five items.
The dispute took a more serious turn when Hawass renewed his call in 2006 during his speech at the opening of Egypt’s sunken treasures exhibition in Berlin, where he spoke before former President Hosni Mubarak.
The following year the two countries clashed over the bust when Hawass asked for a three-month loan for the 2012 opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) overlooking the Giza Pyramids. Then German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann rejected the request and justified his refusal by claiming that experts had reservations about taking Nefertiti on a long trip.
“We have to take [these reservations] seriously,” he said.
Original transit: In 20011, the discovery of a 1924 document revealing the story behind Germany’s possession of the Nefertiti bust and charging Borchardt with cheating to secure it for Germany led to the renewal of Hawass’s request for the restitution of the iconic bust.
The German magazine Der Spiegel published a report saying that the German Oriental Association (DOG) had discovered a 1924 document claiming that Borchardt had used a trick to smuggle the bust to Germany.
It said that the document was written by an eyewitness who claimed that Borchardt intentionally disguised the bust by covering it with a layer of gypsum to ensure that the committee charged with supervising the distribution of new discoveries between Egypt and the foreign mission would not see how beautiful the bust was or realise that it was actually made of exquisitely painted limestone.
The Secretary of the DOG reported in 1924 on a 1913 meeting between Borchardt and a senior Egyptian official. Egypt and Germany had an agreement to split antiquities found by Borchardt’s team, but the Secretary reported in his memo that Borchardt “wanted to save the bust for us.”
The bust lay wrapped in a box in a dim room when the Egyptian official, Chief Antiquities Inspector Gustave Lefebvre, looked over the artefacts from the Borchardt dig. The Secretary wrote that Borchardt had presented Lefebvre with an unflattering photograph of the bust and claimed it was made of gypsum, when in fact it had a limestone core under a layer of stucco.
Whether Lefebvre went to the trouble of lifting the bust out of the box is not clear. However, the Secretary who witnessed the meeting claimed there was “cheating” involved, since the Germans misrepresented the material. A spokesman for the DOG told the British daily the Times at that time that the bust belonged to Germany. “It is not right to complain now about a deal that was struck long ago,” he said.
In response to the article in Der Spiegel, Hawass wrote to the DOG asking for a copy of the document. Meanwhile, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which has possession of the bust, rejected any charge of cheating. The idea that the antiquities were not divided according to the rules in 1913 was “false,” the Foundation claimed in a statement. Lefebvre, in other words, had simply overlooked the importance of the piece.
The DOG admits the existence of the document, but also maintains there was no serious breach of the rules. “Nefertiti was at the top of the exchange list,” a spokesman told Der Spiegel. “The inspector could have looked at everything closely... It’s not admissible to complain about the deal reached at that time.”
Earlier this week during a seminar at the Nefertiti Cultural Salon in the Prince Taz Palace in Historic Cairo, Hawass revived the initiative to repatriate the 3,400-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti and launched an international petition calling for the return of the bust to its homeland. The petition was published on Sunday on change.org and Hawass’s personal Website and Instagram accounts and calls on people to sign it in a step towards taking more steps to repatriate the bust.
In the petition, Hawass wrote that for years Egypt has been deprived of many of its most significant ancient Egyptian artefacts, one of which is the 18th-Dynasty bust, which has never failed to gather innumerable visitors in Berlin’s famed Neues Museum. Despite many calls for meaningful dialogue as well as requests for acknowledgment of how this unique artefact ended up in Germany, he was launching the petition, he said, in order to re-ignite the conversation, inspire the return of the bust to Cairo, and elicit a dignified response from the German authorities.
For the last 20 years, Egypt’s repatriation efforts have been commendable, Hawass said. From as far away as the US to as close as Europe, the Egyptian authorities, with the help of international police and diplomatic bodies, have retrieved and repatriated thousands of artefacts taken out of the country illegally. The present request, therefore, is a logical outcome of the nation’s longstanding policy of demanding the return of any historical and archaeological artefacts that have been unlawfully removed from the nation, particularly those that are thought to be unique, he said.
Regarding the particular instance of the bust, contemporaneous and subsequent records documenting the excavation and distribution of finds of the collection of artefacts comprising the bust of Nefertiti verify that it was removed from Egypt against the letter and the spirit of the Egyptian laws in effect at the time. Since the first full publication of the details of the Nefertiti bust, which did not appear until over a decade after its discovery in 1912 by Borchardt, Egypt has made a number of attempts to repatriate this priceless sculpture.
Bring the bust home: While Nefertiti has been a wonderful “ambassador of Egypt to Germany” for decades, said Hawass in the petition, her symbolic and cultural diplomacy is not bound to her physical presence at the Neues Museum in Berlin.
Even with her restitution to Egypt, travellers from far and wide, including German citizens and scholars, will remain more than welcome to study and visit her, he said. Considering that her bust tells the story of our common humanity, similarly to the iconic mask of King Tutankhamun in Cairo, that story can be told from its original country, when more than a billion tourists visit Egypt and see ancient Egyptian artefacts for themselves at their finest.
Moreover, Hawass said, in terms of legal frameworks, Article 13(b) of the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (1970) calls on all states parties to the Convention, ratified by Germany in 2007 and accepted by Egypt in 1973, to “ensure that their competent services cooperate in facilitating the earliest possible restitution of illicitly exported cultural property to its rightful owner.”
This Convention was further amplified by the “Plea for the Return of Irreplaceable Cultural Heritage to those who Created it” made by Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow, former Director-General of UNESCO, in 1978. It calls upon “those responsible for preserving and restoring works of art to facilitate, by their advice and actions, the return of such works to the countries where they were created.” The Plea also underscores the “return of at least the art treasures which best represent their culture.”
Egypt has now been deprived of the bust for 102 years. It has never been sent back to Egypt on loan, even as it changed homes in Germany and despite the context of two World Wars. Nonetheless, Egypt deeply appreciates the care and efforts undertaken by the Government of Germany to preserve and display the 3,400-year-old limestone bust of the Queen. Inspired by the long-standing and amicable relations between the two governments, the Egyptian Government is confident that the German authorities will assist in facilitating its return.
“We sincerely hope that we will soon receive a positive response, which will be greatly appreciated by the Government and people of Egypt. We accordingly ask the German Culture Minister, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, and the Neues Museum administration to heed this petition and respond to the request,” Hawass wrote.
He added that the Government, the people of Egypt, and people worldwide are eager for this unique treasure to be returned to the possession of its rightful owners, the Egyptian people. Consequently, “we are calling on the international community to demand the repatriation of this bust to us. The world knows that this remarkable artefact belongs in one of Egypt’s museums, where it will be splendidly taken care of,” Hawass said.
With other countries now demanding that their cultural heritage be repatriated, Egypt is no exception and no less deserving. The signatories of this petition support the abovementioned request for repatriation, he added.
The search for Nefertiti’s tomb and mummy has also been undertaken by Hawass, who believes he will soon be able to unveil the tomb and mummy of this beautiful queen.
He said that the discovery of the “golden city” in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor has unveiled many secrets and information about Nefertiti, the Amarna era, and the Aten religion.
“Although some believe that after the death of her husband Akhenaten, Nefertiti ruled as queen, I believe that she ruled Egypt for two years under the name Smenkhkare the throne name,” Hawass said, explaining that he found this name in the golden city celebrating the second coronation anniversary. There are also several scenes depicting Queen Nefertiti defeating enemies that are scenes typically dedicated only for kings and not for queens, he added.
“I believe that her tomb is located in the Western Valley of the Kings where the tombs of Kings Amenhotep III and Iye, as well as tombs KV 24 and KV 25 that was first dedicated for King Akhenaten, lie. He did not use it as his final resting place because he was buried in Amarna. In my opinion, Nefertiti and Tutankhamun were converted to belief in the god Amun after the death of Akhenaten,” Hawass said.
He said that during recent excavations near the tombs of both Kings Amenhotep III and Iye, evidence has been found showing the existence of other tombs. The work will be continued next month in a virgin area that has never been excavated before and neighbours King Amenhotep III’s tomb in the Khewi Valley. This might reveal the tombs of royalty and princes of the 18th Dynasty. The Wadi al-Alamat (Signs Valley) is another area that Hawass has excavated and has revealed many important finds that will be announced soon.
“We have already carried out DNA tests on the 18th-Dynasty royal mummies, such as those of Akhenaten, Amenhotep II, and Amenhotep III. There are two unidentified mummies that are temporarily labelled KV21A and KV21B. In October, we will be able to announce the discovery of the mummy of Ankhesenamun, the wife of Tutankhamun, and her mother, Nefertiti,” Hawass said.
“If the mummy of the 10-year-old boy in KV35 belongs to the brother of Tutankhamun and the son of Akhenaten, the historical problem raised by Nefertiti will be solved.”
* A version of this article appears in print in the 12 September, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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