The dispute over who owns the iconic bust of Queen Nefertiti may end in December, reports Nevine El-Aref Since being unearthed in the workshop of the sculptor Tuthmose at Tel Al-Amarna in 1912 by German Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt, the magnificent painted stucco and lime bust of Queen Nefertiti has become an iconic image of ancient Egyptian art. The bust depicts the queen, 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, flat topped crown which contrasts with the sepia tone of her smooth skin. Although one of the bust's inlaid crystal eyes is missing both eyelids and brows are outlined in black. How Germany acquired the bust has long been the subject of controversy. Most recently, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported that the German Oriental Association (DOG) had discovered a 1924 document purporting to show that Borchardt used trickery to smuggle the bust to Germany. At the time the article appeared, the German government was celebrating the official opening of the Neues Museum, with Nefertiti the centerpiece. Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), has demanded that Germany return the bust immediately if it cannot show that the 3,500-year-old effigy was not spirited out of Egypt illegally. "We are not treasure hunters," Hawass told reporters during the opening of the Howard Carter rest house in Luxor. "If it can be shown clearly that the work was not stolen, then there is no problem. But I am pretty sure that it was." Hawass told Al-Ahram Weekly that Egypt has gathered all the documents relating to the bust's transfer to Egypt. He has, in addition, asked the Neues Museum to submit the protocol confirming their title to the bust. It has yet to be produced. Hawass added that he will soon meet with Friederike Seyfried, head of the Egyptian and Papyrus Collection at the Neues Museum, who is travelling to Egypt in an attempt to end the increasingly acrimonious arguments. Hawass said the Berlin museum official has indicated he will be carrying evidence that the statue left Egypt legally. "Our side will present documents showing the statue left in an illegal way, including ones that prove that in the allocation of the antiquities discovered by a German team there was no mention of a statue being included in the German's share." In 1912, on the east bank of the Nile opposite the modern village of Deir Mawas, Borchardt and his team unearthed the bust of Nefertiti along with other objects, including a polychrome bust of the queen and plaster casts representing other members of the monotheistic Akhenaten's family and entourage. Hawass alleges that Borchardt, anxious to secure the bust for Germany, took advantage of the then practice of splitting the spoils of any new discovery between the Egyptian Antiquities Service and the foreign mission concerned. At the time any discoveries had to be brought to a committee of the Antiquities Service which would supervise their distribution. Borchardt, says Hawass, 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. Borchardt himself admitted 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. Whatever happened, the committee decided to take limestone statues of Akhenaten and Nefertiti and, according to Hawass, the antiquities authorities did not know about the bust until it was put on show in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin in 1923. The one certainty, he says, is that Egypt never expressly agreed that the bust be included in the German share of the Tel Al-Amarna finds. The Egyptian government later made an attempt to have the bust returned, but Hitler, who had fallen in love with it, refused. He announced that Nefertiti would remain in Germany forever. The exquisite painted limestone bust has been on display in Germany ever since. In 2003 a curious curatorial decision was made, and two Hungarian artists were allowed to fuse the ancient bust onto a contemporary bronze-cast body for a few hours in an attempt to visualise what Nefertiti's body might have looked like. The dispute between Egypt and Germany over the bust blew up in 2005 when Hawass, speaking at a meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin, called for the return of five ancient Egyptian pieces on display abroad. The objects in question were the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum in London; the bust of Nefertiti in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin; the statue of the Great Pyramid architect Hemiunnu in the Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum in Hilesheim; the Dendara Temple Zodiac in the Louvre in Paris; and the bust of the Khafre Pyramid-builder Ankhaf in the Museum of Fine Art in Boston. The dispute took a more serious turn when Hawass renewed his call in 2006 during his speech at the opening of Egypt's sunken treasure exhibition in Berlin, where he spoke before presidents Hosni Mubarak and Horst Köhler. The following year the two countries squabbled over the bust when Hawass asked for it to be loaned for three-months for the 2012 opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum overlooking the Giza Pyramids. The German minister of culture rejected the request, saying experts had reservations about the viability of transporting the bust such a distance. Hawass was not satisfied, pointing out that the bust had been moved several times between German museums. A CT scan recently carried out by a German team of researchers, led by Alexander Huppertz, director of the Imaging Science Institute at Berlin's Charite Hospital and Medical School, suggests that the royal image at the centre of the controversy may well have been touched up. They discovered the bust has two faces, one on top of the other: the stone core, a detailed sculpture of the queen, differs in detail from the face we now see. The changes made, the eradication of creases at the corners of the mouth and of a bump in the nose of the stone version, have led Huppertz to suggest that the statue was altered on the express orders of someone when royal sculptors immortalised the wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten 3,500 years ago.
