The Battle For Nefertiti's Bust

The bust is 3,400 years old - which means it was made before the creation of the world itself, if you're a Baptist.

In 1912, while the Germans and Italians were slowly infiltrating the entire Middle East in preparation for... oh... I don't know... German archaeologists unearthed the bust at a place called Tell el Amarna. It was brought to Germany in 1913. It's been there ever since.

It gets interesting again 90 years later, in 2003 - but let me come back to that. At present (2007) there's a guy named Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (you know a country has a lot of antiquities when there's a title like that!). Well this guy has requested that the museum in Berlin that holds the Nefertiti sculpture return it to Cairo for three months for a temporary exhibit.

Naturally, in the nature of scholastic friendship and co-operation the Germans say 'Nein'. "It's too fragile to travel", says Bernd Neumann, Germany's Minister of State for Culture. In other words, for 3,310 years it was okay to travel but now 90 years on -- way too fragile.

So Hawass replies, well if they won't give it back for three months then they're never allowed to play with ANY of our antiquities EVER!

The Germans think this is totally uncalled for and disproportionate saying, "this vehemenence is a new stage!" (Dietrich Schulenburg, spokesperson for the aforementioned Minister)

Oh it gets better.

Remember I mentioned 2003. All the way back then the bust was NOT too fragile to be mounted on top of a bronze body statue - naked, of course, and filmed for some Italian project. Naturally the fundamentalist Islamic Egyptians got testy about that.