CAIRO — The splendor of the Queen of the Nile is the star not of any Egyptian museum, but of the Neues Museum in the German capital, Berlin, where thousands admire the 3,400-year-old bust of Nefertiti every day in a domed hall.
Now a campaign led by Zahi Hawass, a renowned archaeologist and Egypt’s former antiquities minister, aims to change that and end the country's decadeslong struggle to bring the queen home, along with dozens of other historical artifacts.
“This bust, remarkable and unrivaled in history for its historical and aesthetic merit, is now in Germany, but it is time for it to come home to Egypt,” Hawass said in a news release Saturday announcing the launch of a petition calling for its return.
Hawass said in a telephone interview Monday: "This is a masterpiece of art. It is considered the most beautiful statue ever found. Therefore, the home of the bust should be the Grand Egyptian Museum. All the evidence shows that this bust left Egypt illegally."
The painted limestone bust was uncovered by a German archaeological mission in 1912 at Tell el-Amarna, a site about 185 miles south of Cairo that was the capital of Nefertiti's short-lived husband, the 18th dynasty Pharaoh Akhenaten. It was transported to Berlin a year later.
Akhenaten, also known as the heretic king, came to promote the worship of Aten over other Egyptian gods during his reign, which lasted until 1335 B.C. and was characterized by a radical transformation of Egyptian art.
But the bust was not publicly displayed until more than a decade later alongside other Amarna finds. It was hidden away during World War II — Hawass said Hitler "fell in love with it and refused to return it to Egypt" — and it was later moved to the Neues Museum for its reopening in 2009.
“Egypt has been deprived of the bust for 102 years,” Hawass said. “Nonetheless, Egypt deeply appreciates the care and efforts undertaken by the government of Germany to preserve and display the 3,400-year-old painted limestone bust of the Queen.”
Hawass also spoke of the previous attempts to retrieve Nefertiti, including one over a decade ago when he organized a similar petition. He said this petition "will be more successful than the first one because Nefertiti is in the heart of all the people," pointing to the attendance at his announcement. "And I see that President El-Sisi supports the national campaign to return our stolen artifacts."
In Berlin, some have dubbed the queen the city’s Mona Lisa, and she has a green and blue room of her own in the museum.
The Neues Museum did not respond to a request for comment.
Egypt’s campaign to repatriate its artifacts has led to thousands of antiquities’ being returned to the country.
Last year, an ancient wooden sarcophagus at the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences was returned to Egypt after U.S. authorities deemed it was stolen. In 2021, Cairo succeeded in getting back 5,300 stolen artifacts from around the world, The Associated Press reported, amid government efforts to stop trafficking of its antiquities.
Other countries have also called for the return of their artifacts, which they say are symbols of colonialism.
In July, the New York Museum of Metropolitan Museum of Art returned more than a dozen Cambodian artifacts.
Hawass said at a news conference Saturday that he is not calling for the repatriation of artifacts taken out of Egypt legally — only the “three main beautiful objects” that were removed from the country illegally: the Rosetta Stone, Dendera Zodiac and Nefertiti's bust.
Hawass has called for supporters to sign the petition on his website, where a campaign to return the Rosetta Stone and Dendera Zodiac that was launched in 2022 has gathered more than 2.2 million signatures.
“Museums that continue to display these artifacts and refuse to return them only continue to participate in imperialism,” he says on his website.
Bearing inscriptions in several languages, the Rosetta Stone, which is considered key to understanding hieroglyphic writing, is one of the most visited artifacts at the British Museum in London.
The museum has maintained its resistance and says the stone was transferred to London upon the Treaty of Alexandria in 1801 after the defeat of Napoleon, whose army is believed to have found the stone in Egypt.
The Dendera Zodiac, a giant stone diagram from an Egyptian temple dating to mid-1st century B.C., is housed in the Louvre in Paris.
Charlene Gubash reported from Cairo and Mithil Aggarwal from Hong Kong.
