BERLIN - Berlin responded cooly on Friday to renewed demands from Cairo that the prized bust of Egyptian Queen Nefertiti should be returned to its country of origin from its current home in a Berlin museum. "A request from Egypt to return (Nefertiti) has not reached us yet," said a spokeswoman for the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which runs the Berlin museum housing the 3,500-year-old sculpture. She referred to a previous statement which denied any Egyptian claim to the bust. "Everything has been said on this subject," added a spokesman for the German Culture Minister. On Thursday, Egypt's antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said that next week he would formally request Nefertiti's return to Cairo. "We are no longer discussing whether to do this, but only how to formulate this demand," Hawass told German Press Agency (dpa). Berlin insists Egypt has never officially laid claim to the bust, which was discovered during a 1912 excavation at Tell al-Amarna and allocated to the German arts patron who financed the dig. He later gifted it to the Prussian state. "The documents prove clearly that the Prussian state legally acquired the bust and that no legal claims exist from the Egyptian side," the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation said in an earlier statement.
