The dispute over the ownership of the iconic bust of , which is now on display at the Neues Museum in Berlin, has reached a new level, Nevine El-Aref reports It seems that there is no foreseeable resolution to the conflict over the 3,400-year-old bust of , wife of the monotheistic Pharaoh Akhenaten. Last Monday the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) sent an official letter of request to Germany asking for the return of the magnificent painted bust of the queen to her native land. The letter was sent by Zahi Hawass, secretary- general of the SCA, to Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin. This foundation is the governing body of all the State museums in Germany, including the Neues Museum where the Nefertiti bust is on display. At the same time two copies of the bust have been made and sent to the Egyptian ambassador in Germany and Germany ambassador in Egypt. Hawass describes such an initiative as a natural consequence of Egypt's long-standing policy of seeking the restitution of all archaeological and historical artefacts that have been taken illicitly out of the country, especially those items that are considered unique. "The painted bust of Nefertiti is universally recognised as a unique and irreplaceable artefact," Hawass says. The bust is ranked first on a "Wish List" of five important objects that Egypt hopes to have returned. The other four objects in question are the Rosetta Stone, now in the British Museum in London; 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. According to a statement from the SCA, Hawass and the government of Egypt was confident that the German authorities would act in accordance with 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), which calls on all states party to the convention "to ensure that their competent services cooperate in facilitating the earliest possible restitution of illicitly exported cultural property to its rightful owner." In this context it should be pointed out that in 1978 the director-general of UNESCO issued a plea for the return of an Irreplaceable Cultural Heritage to those who created it, and called 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 saga of the bust began in December 1912, when the German excavator Ludwig Borchardt and his team unearthed the head of , with one eye missing, on the archaeological site of Akhenaten's capital city of Al-Amarna. It was found inside the workshop of the court sculptor, Tuthmosis, which indicates that it never went on display and was damaged during its creation or was used as a model and was never indented for view. It is clear from all the records that Borchardt immediately recognised the unique nature and artistic quality of this piece, as well as its historical importance. Anxious to preserve the bust for Germany, Borchardt took advantage of the practice at the time of splitting the spoils of any new discovery between the Egyptian antiquities authority and the foreign mission concerned. Back then, the law required discoveries to be brought to what was then called the Antiquities Service, where a special committee supervised the distribution. Borchardt, who discovered the head at Tel Al-Amarna, either did not declare the bust, or hid it under less important objects. Either that, or the Egyptian authorities failed to recognise its beauty and importance. According to Borchardt himself, he did not clean the bust but left it covered in mud when he took it to the Egyptian Museum for the usual division of spoils. The service, on that occasion, took the limestone statues of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, and gave the head of to the expedition because it was made of gypsum -- or so it was thought. Whatever happened, the antiquities authorities did not know about the bust until 1923, when it was put on show in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin. They had certainly never expressly agreed that the piece should be included in the German share of the Tel Al-Amarna finds. After World War II, Egypt made a formal request to the Allied Control Council, who at that time was responsible for art objects in Germany. The Legation of the King of Egypt in Prague sent a memorandum in April 1946 to the Allied Control requesting the repatriation of the Nefertiti head, and this was followed up on 8 March 1947 by an official request from the Egyptian ambassador to the United States secretary of state. In February 1947 the Allied Control responded that they did not feel that they had the authority to make this decision, and recommended that the request be made again after a competent German government had been reestablished. Hawass pointed out that Egypt recognised and appreciated the care and effort undertaken by the German government to preserve and display the painted limestone bust of . "Inspired by the excellent relations between our two countries, the government of Egypt is confident that the German authorities will assist in facilitating its return," he said, adding that the government and people of Egypt were eager that this unique treasure be returned to the possession of its rightful owners, the Egyptian people. Upon its return, Hawass suggested, the bust of Nefertiti, would be exhibited at the Akhenaten Museum in Minya governorate planned to open in early 2012. The latest request comes after four years of legal and archeological research into the right of Egypt to ask for the return of the bust. This was finally approved by the Egyptian prime minister, Ahmed Nazif, and the minister of culture, Farouk Hosni. Not surprisingly, the action has not appeared to please the German side. A few hours after receiving the Egyptian request, the German government stated that it did not view the request as official because the letter was addressed to Parzinger and not to the German government. "The [German] government's position on Nefertiti is well known and hasn't changed," Andreas Peschke, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, told reporters on Monday in Berlin. German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann told the Associated Press that his country's procurement of the bust was lawful and that Egypt had no grounds to demand its return. The Monsters and Critics online magazine wrote that Neumann's spokesman, Hagen Philipp Wolf ,had pointed out that the letter to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which runs Berlin's Egyptian Museum, was signed by Hawass as head of the SCA, who ranks as a deputy minister of culture. This meant there was no official Egyptian request, Wolf said, and he added that the foundation would be writing to Hawass under instructions from the German government. Nefertiti, he said, would be staying in Berlin.
