Face to face

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THE LONG-STANDING dispute between Cairo and Berlin over the iconic bust of Nefertiti, currently housed in Berlin's Altes Museum, reached new heights this week when German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann rejected a request to loan the bust to Egypt for three months, reports Nevine El-Aref.

The decision came a year after the Supreme Council of Antiquities' (SCA) Secretary-General Zahi Hawass requested the loan in a speech delivered before presidents Hosni Mubarak and Horst Khöler at the inauguration of the Egypt's Sunken Treasures exhibition in Berlin last May. Hawass asked for the loan of the bust so it could go on show at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo to coincide with the centenary celebrations of the German Archaeological Institute in Egypt. In return, Hawass pledged during his speech, that the SCA would offer another statue to the Egyptian Museum in Berlin for the three months that Nefertiti was in Egypt.

"Experts have reservations about taking Nefertiti on a long trip, which we have to take seriously," said Neumann.

This response triggered anger among local Egyptologists who claim that the bust, discovered in 1912 by German excavator Ludwig Borchardt in an artist's atelier in Tel Al-Amarna, was taken illegally from Egypt. Anxious to take the bust to Germany, Borchardt took advantage of the practice, common at the time, of splitting any new discovery between the Egyptian Antiquities Authority and the foreign mission concerned. Borchardt himself reported that 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 museum took two limestone statues of Akhenaten and Nefertiti and gave the head of Queen Nefertiti to the expedition because it was made of gypsum -- or so they thought.

Rumours over what actually went on that day have persisted, one common claim being that Borchardt disguised the head, covering it with a layer of gypsum to ensure that the committee would note that it was actually made of painted limestone.

Culture Minister Farouk Hosni described the German decision as "unjustified, especially given that Egypt has never withheld permission for archeological exhibitions held in Germany".

Last Thursday Hawass announced that he will resubmit the request to borrow the bust.