Nefertiti bust ‘Nazi loot that should be returned to Egypt’
An ancient bust of Egyptian queen Nefertiti on display in Berlin should be treated as looted Nazi art and returned to Cairo, an expert said.
The statue of the wife of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten was taken from Egypt by German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt and is now on show at the Neues Museum.
The bust, which is more than 3,000 years old, was discovered in 1912 but the manner in which Mr Borchardt was able to take it to Germany has been shrouded in debate.
Egypt has called for its return since it first went on public display in Germany in 1923.
Egyptologist Monica Hanna has helped to organise a petition calling on Egypt’s Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly to submit an official request to repatriate the bust. Ms Hanna has researched how it was taken from Egypt and its links with the Nazi leadership, which refused to hand it back.
Ms Hanna, associate professor and acting dean of the College of Archaeology and Cultural Heritage at the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport in Cairo, said the German authorities agreed to return the statue in the 1930s but this was vetoed by Adolf Hitler, who was said to be “in love with Nefertiti”.
Ms Hanna has discovered evidence that Mr Borchardt committed fraud to move the bust out of Egypt and presented her findings in Berlin.
“I think they know about Egyptian attempts at restitution, but it was Hitler who vetoed that. So it should be treated as Nazi looted art,” she told
The National. At the end of the war, the bust was discovered along with a hoard of looted art in a salt mine in the western German city of Wiesbaden.
Ms Hanna has found letters written by the Egyptian government to the allied administration running Germany at the time and the US State Department, seeking the return of the bust.
“Now that Hitler is no more and his will is no longer law, there is no obstacle to putting an end to a spoliation based on fraud and maintained by force,” Mahmoud El Nokrashy Pasha, Egyptian prime minister at the time, said in a letter to the State Department.
“This masterpiece of ancient Egyptian art must return to Egypt, which it should never have left.”
Ms Hanna said Egypt was rebuffed, with a letter from the National Gallery of Art warning that “if the Egyptian authorities succeed in their plan, we might be faced with a similar problem, which might not be easily solved once the Nefertiti precedent has been established”.
She said “this is to do with colonialism, with the West looking at itself as heir of ancient Egypt”.
Her research found that Mr Borchardt “tried to hide Nefertiti in a way that the Egyptian officials would not suspect” when he took it from Egypt.
Returning the bust to Egypt would offer an economic boost to the area of the country where it was found, she said.
“It should go back to Minya and then it would change the whole face of Minya and the whole area would be open for better tourism,” she said.
“That would improve the livelihoods of many Egyptians.”
Ms Hanna said the mood among the German public was changing slowly in favour of the restitution of the bust. “Scholars are more sympathetic and [so are] the younger generation of the public,” she said.
The Neues Museum has been approached for comment.