Visitors look at the famed ancient Egyptian bust of Nefertiti at the Neues Museum in Berlin in October 2009 after the museum reopened, decades after World War II bombing left much of the building in ruins. (Gero Breloer/Associated Press)
BERLIN -- When Monica Hanna first visited Berlin in 2007, even before checking into her hotel, she rushed to the Altes Museum to visit Nefertiti.
The Egyptian archaeology graduate student was eager to see the legendary nearly-3,400-year-old bust of the 14th-century B.C. pharaonic queen -- her painted hues of red, blue, yellow and black remarkably preserved, her lips curved into a faint smile, her serene gaze fixed ahead.
"I was very emotional," Hanna recalled. "I felt, how come she's here? She's in the wrong place."
Nearly two decades later, Hanna is one of two prominent Egyptian archaeologists leading campaigns for the bust to be returned to Egypt, 112 years after it was first taken to Berlin.
It's the largest effort to date to bring Nefertiti back to her homeland. But German museum authorities are hardly eager to hand over one of the country's most famous artifacts, which draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each year to Berlin's Neues Museum, where it's been displayed since 2009.
There have been various attempts in the past century to get the bust sent back to Egypt. They almost bore fruit under the Nazis, when Adolf Hitler's right-hand man, Hermann Göring, reportedly argued that repatriating the bust could win Egyptian backing for Germany -- but Hitler refused to give up what he called "a true treasure." Subsequent attempts at restitution haven't gained much traction.
There's one major difference now: the opening last month of the 5.4-million-square-foot Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, a world-class facility decades in the making.
Advocates of repatriation say the museum should encompass the full sweep of Egypt's archaeological heritage and is incomplete without some of the country's most heralded artifacts. They also see it as a gleaming rebuttal to the old argument that Egypt's treasures are better protected, preserved and displayed outside the country.
"The countries that refused to send us our artifacts said, 'Why should we send you our artifacts? You have bad museums,'" said archaeologist Zahi Hawass, Egypt's former antiquities minister, who is leading his own petition drive to repatriate the bust. Now it's not clear that Europe's museums are safer," he said, pointing to recent thefts of artifacts from London's British Museum and the October jewelry heist at the Louvre in Paris.
"You cannot say that Egypt cannot protect its artifacts," Hawass said. "There is no museum that has the quality of display of the Grand Museum."
The original Egyptian museum, located in the heart of downtown Cairo, was more than a century old and notorious for its poor lighting, lack of explanation and the generally dubious level of its curation.
The quality of the new museum -- located just outside Cairo -- is beside the point, said Friederike Seyfried, director of Berlin's Egyptian Museum, which oversees the collection that includes the bust of Nefertiti under the umbrella of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. Her institution, like many others, is unwilling to take the risk of transporting such a valuable and delicate object.
"The issue is transportation," she said. "It's not the conditions at the partner museum. ... Even if museums anywhere in the world offer the best conditions ever, when they request it, all I can say is: 'You know I can't lend it. It's impossible. It's too fragile.'"
The bust was brought to Germany in accordance with the laws at the time, Seyfried said, and any discussions about restitution would occur on a political level. She is not aware of any current conversations at the Foreign Ministry about returning the bust, she said.
The German and Egyptian foreign ministries did not respond to requests for comment. An Egyptian official said the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities set up a department in 2011 dedicated to retrieving artifacts illegally taken out of the country, and that this year, it has succeeded in retrieving dozens of smuggled artifacts from countries including Germany, Switzerland and Belgium.
"Egypt is committed to retrieving its national treasures from all around the world and bringing them home,"
the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
The exact circumstances surrounding the Nefertiti bust's extraction to Germany remain contested. What's clear is that in 1912, a team led by German Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt found the bust at the archaeological site of Tell el-Amarna, about 200 miles south of Cairo. A legal framework under Egypt's British colonial authorities established a 50-50 rule by which archaeologists were supposed to split their finds with Egypt.
Borchardt kept the bust as loot was divided; advocates for repatriation say he concealed its true nature and value from French antiquities administrators in charge of enforcing arrangements. (There is evidence Borchardt's party held a solemn farewell ceremony for the bust assuming they'd have to give it up; it was kept out of public view for a decade after being taken to Germany.)
"The bust came to Germany legally -- that is, in accordance with the laws of the time,"
said Sebastian Conrad, a German historian and author of a book on the Nefertiti bust. "The moral and normative question hinges on whether one considers the laws of that era ethical -- whether one considers the laws of that time, which arose under imperial conditions, to be laws that would still be morally enforceable today."
To Hawass, the answer to that question is easy: European colonial powers plundered Egypt's artifacts without consent from Egyptians themselves.
"These countries raped the Nile,"
said Hawass, who is also circulating petitions for return of Rosetta Stone from British Museum and Dendera Zodiac from Louvre. "It's time to give us back something."
Hawass said his petition for Nefertiti bust has more than 200,000 signatures so far; he's hoping to reach 1 million. Hanna, who is likewise pushing for Rosetta Stone's return, did not share number of signatures she has obtained.
But getting Germans to give up what Conrad calls "the heart of Berlin's museum landscape" will be an uphill battle.
It doesn't help that two petition drives are operating in competition. Hawass is a controversial figure for his work with autocratic former president Hosni Mubarak; Hanna called him "corrupt" and said he initiated his restitution campaign "just to be in media." Hawass by contrast says his campaign has official backing since Egypt's prime minister gave him permission to formally request bust's return from Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in 2011.
But political climate around repatriation may be working Egyptians' favor. Around world cultural institutions have begun returning stolen artifacts and remains; in 2022 Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation began returning Benin Bronzes to Nigeria 125 years after British forces looted them; last month 12 Ethiopian artifacts were returned after being held by German family for over a century.
Still Nefertiti is different. For one thing some other artifacts were clearly stolen illegally or violently; bust is also far more famous than these returned items. Nefertiti is Germany’s Mona Lisa illuminated by skylight in her own domed room decorated with faded frescoes. Website of Berlin State Museums describes her as “the undisputed star” of Neues Museum. Bust’s fans include singer Beyoncé who in 2018 headlined Coachella in a Nefertiti-inspired costume and visited artifact.
On a December afternoon reverent visitors from around the world paid silent tribute to the queen.
"I didn't expect to be so moved when I stood in front of this,"
said Berlin resident Philipp Seipelt, 43, who came to the museum to see the bust. He understands the arguments for repatriation but said, "It would be a shame for Berlin not to be able to see it."
"I'd rather have it here,"
said Arvin Aguda, 34, visiting from Miami. “The political climate in Egypt is too much right now.”
“It’s very well protected,”
agreed his wife,Nina,33.
Elvis Gugg,68,who traveled from Austria,say she understands that“this is part of Egypt’s cultural heritage.”But he said returning it to Egypt“would open Pandora’s box”of restitution campaigns for famous artifacts across Europe.His wife,Karin ,63,struggled to describe the bust’s powerful effect on her as tears came to her eyes.
The bust’s fame makes it“a harder fight,”Hanna concedes.She doesn’t think repatriation will happen in the next year,but maybe in the next decade.
“I hope I’m still alive to see it happen,”
said Hanna,whose parents are from Minya,the present-day location of Tell el-Amarna ,where Nefertiti reigned .She added,“I always felt that she’s an estranged great-grandmother of mine who was taken forcefully.”
Nefertiti is likewise always on Hawass’s mind;he keeps a reproduction of the bust in his office.But unlike Hanna ,he has never visited the original in Berlin.
“I refuse to go and see the bust of Nefertiti at all,”
he said.“This bust should be in Egypt ,and I will bring it to Egypt .”
Nefertiti was the principal wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten ,known for his experiment in monotheism and worship of sun disk Aten ,to exclusion of Egypt’s other gods.Few details of her life are known ,but thanks to bust ,she has become a symbol of both beauty and female empowerment.Her name translates roughly to “the beautiful one has come.”For Egyptian archaeologists ,that remains an aspiration.
Heba Farouk Mahfouz in Cairo contributed to this report.