The Neferti bust is one of the most high profile artefacts that Egypt is requesting the return of. Germany’s latest actions only draw attention to this case though, by organising a special exhibition to commemorate the fact that it is 100 years since they acquired the artefact.

From:
Time

The Bust of Nefertiti: Remembering Ancient Egypt’s Famous Queen
By Ishaan Tharoor
Dec. 06, 2012

On a sunny afternoon on Dec. 6, 1912, an Egyptian worker at a dig along the banks of the Nile came across what may be the most striking find in the history of Egyptology. Ludwig Borchardt, the German archaeologist in charge of the excavation, scribbled excitedly in his diary a century ago: “The tools were put aside, and the hands were now used … It took a considerable amount of time until the whole piece was completely freed from all the dirt and rubble.” What emerged was a 3,300-year-old limestone bust of an ancient queen, colored with a gypsum lacquer. A flat-topped crown perched above a finely defined brow. Her cheekbones were high, nose distinguished. A thin, elegant neck — some now describe it “swanlike” — rose from the bust’s base. “We held the most lively piece of Egyptian art in our hands,” wrote Borchardt.

The bust is of Nefertiti, queen of Egypt and wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten, who reigned in the 14th century B.C. A hundred years after Nefertiti’s bust was lifted out of the ground at Amarna, some 480 km south of Cairo, it remains one of the most iconic figures of Egyptian antiquity, far smaller than the pyramids or the Sphinx, but no less globally resonant. The bust adorns souvenir schlock throughout Egypt and history schoolbooks worldwide. When it went on display at a museum in Berlin in the 1920s, it was almost immediately held up as a symbol of universal, timeless beauty. That’s not surprising. Nefertiti’s name means “the beautiful one has come.”
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The Egyptian Museum in Berlin is celebrating the centenary of the discovery of the bust of Nevertiti. Perhaps this would be a fitting point, for them to also enter into serious discussions with Egypt, who also claims ownership of the artefact.

From:
Hurriyet

Berlin marks 100 years of discovering Nefertiti
BERLIN – Agence France-Presse

Berlin’s Egyptian Museum has said that it will celebrate the centenary of the discovery of the 3,400-year-old fabled bust of Egypt’s Queen Nefertiti amid an ongoing feud with Cairo over its ownership.

The museum said it would open an exhibition on Dec. 6 honoring the famous sculpture and other jewels of the Amarna period in its collection on the German capital’s Museum Island.
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The International Council of Museums has published a list of categories of items from Egypt that they believe should not be acquired by dealers, collectors or museums, unless there is a clear provenance to the artefact. (The link is from a few months ago, because I had not come across it earlier – but it is still relevant)

From:
The Art Newspaper

Icom publishes “red list” of Egyptian antiquities at risk
Objects include statues, vessels, coins, textiles and manuscripts that the council warns should not be acquired without documented provenance
By Martin Bailey. Web only
Published online: 21 February 2012

The International Council of Museums (Icom) published an “emergency red list” of Egyptian cultural objects at risk of being illegally traded earlier this month. It presents categories of objects (rather than individual looted pieces) that should not be acquired by dealers, collectors or museums without documented provenance.

The list, which is being circulated internationally, includes statues, vessels, funerary objects, architectural elements, coins, textiles and manuscripts. It is also designed to help police and custom officials identify the types of objects that are susceptible to illicit trafficking.
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The trial of a smuggler of looted Egyptian antiquities is currently ongoing in the USA. Once again, it is great to see real action being taken in such cases, but it serves to highlight the oddity of how artefacts taken using similar means, not that many years ago, are legitimately on display in many museums, with little fear of any sort of legal comeback.

You can read a more in-depth analysis of this case here.

From:
Independent Online

SA Time: 25 April 2012 15:01:30
Dealer admits smuggling Egyptian treasures
April 19 2012 at 12:21pm

New York – An antiques dealer pleaded guilty on Wednesday to smuggling ancient Egyptian treasures, including a coffin, to the United States.

Mousa Khouli, also known as Morris Khouli, aged 38, faces up to 20 years of prison for “smuggling Egyptian cultural property into the United States and making a false statement to law enforcement authorities,” the federal prosecutor’s office in New York said.
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Egypt & Greece have both been beset by rioting in the past twelve months & have both had high profile thefts from their museums. Every effort must be made, to try & stop similar events happening again. Once items disappear once, there is no guarantee that the country will recover them – they are pieces of their history that has been preserved for many years, yet is now no longer there. They are losing part of their cultural identity.

From:
Guardian

Precious past: why the ancient assets of Greece and Egypt must be saved
20th Feb 2012

While Greece and Egypt are destabilised by the eurozone debt crisis and revolution, we must do more to protect their vast store of the world’s antiquities

In the British Museum on a Sunday afternoon, ancient faces look back at children and adults alike. Inside their glass cases, pharaohs and priests are unfazed by the crowds. And crowds there always are, for these are the painted coffins and carved masks of the ancient Egyptians, relics of a culture that has entranced the world for thousands of years.
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A criticism that is often levelled at country which focus on preserving their ancient heritage is a lack of attention to the more recent items of historical importance. In Greece for instance, when the country got independence, the bulk of the Ottoman, Venetian & Byzantine remains were removed from the Acropolis, in an attempt to revert it to how it had been in the time of Pericles. This is despite the fact that the more recent remains are still often of importance in telling the country’s history. There are no right or wrong answers in this sort of debate – but all the options need to be considered, before decision can be made.

In this case though, where the argument is protection, versus no protection, it seems that the answer is clearly that more effort needs to be spent on preserving this heritage.

From:
Al Jazeera

Who should save Egypt’s archives?
Egyptian government institutions have failed to safeguard its ‘modern’ cultural heritage, focusing only on the ancient.
Last Modified: 25 Jan 2012 09:58

Oxford, United Kingdom – It has sometimes been claimed that, like human rights and democracy, the protection of Egypt’s cultural heritage cannot be left to the Egyptians. Corruption, poverty and ignorance, Egypt’s critics maintain, pose a serious threat to the preservation of artefacts of “global importance”.

Egypt’s own Antiquities Council, of course, claims otherwise. Attempting to demonstrate its commitment to safeguarding “national heritage”, erstwhile director Zahi Hawass waged a mildly successful international campaign to repatriate what “rightly belongs” to Egypt. In one case, a mummy returned from Atlanta, Georgia, was given a farcical state-funeral, serenaded by singing schoolchildren and marching military bagpipers.
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The St Louis Art Museum claimed in 2010, when asked about the return of requests for the return of the Lady Ka-Nefer-Nefer mummy mask, that “we would do the right thing … if there was something that refuted the legitimacy of the provenance“.

The courts have now ruled that they can keep the mask – although a lot of questions have to be asked, about how something that was know to have previously been on display on another museum & then went missing, can be considered an entirely legitimate purchase without first discussing the matter with the original owners.

David Gill has a lot more commentary on the case on his Looting Matters website.

From:
Washington Post

Federal judge rules 3,200-year-old Egyptian mummy mask can remain at St. Louis Art Museum
By Associated Press, Published: April 5

ST. LOUIS — A St. Louis museum can keep hold of a 3,200-year-old mummy’s mask, a federal judge has ruled, saying the U.S. government failed to prove that the Egyptian relic was ever stolen.

Prosecutors said the funeral mask of Lady Ka-Nefer-Nefer went missing from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo about 40 years ago and that it should be returned to its country of origin. The St. Louis Art Museum said it researched the provenance of the mask and legitimately purchased it in 1998 from a New York art dealer.
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Belzoni, along with Bernardino Drovetti were perhaps the two people, who more than any others started the raiding of Egypt’s antiquities, to fill the museums & palaces of the west. Were they just doing, what was accepted at the time, or was a lot of history plundered to their reckless methods?

Belzoni: The Giant Archaeologists Love to Hate
Author: Ivor Noel Hume
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813931401

From:
Wall Street Journal

A Pre-Digital Tomb Raider
Sifting sand, opening crypts, raising fallen statues and scooping up anything marketable—and transportable—to Britain.
By GERARD HELFERICH

In the Egyptian gallery of London’s British Museum stands a 3,400-year-old statue carved from polished black stone. Lifted from the city of Thebes, the figure depicts Amenhotep III, who ruled Egypt from about 1386 B.C. to 1350 B.C., when the kingdom was at the peak of its power and prosperity. Sitting erect but serene, his hands resting on his thighs, Amenhotep seems every inch the pharaoh. But one detail disturbs the regal impression: Beside the king’s left foot, with all the subtlety of a Times Square billboard, appears the crudely carved name “Belzoni.” How this Italian commoner came to be forever linked with an Egyptian pharaoh is now the subject of a lively, witty biography by Ivor Noël Hume.

Though Giovanni Battista Belzoni is not generally recalled today, he is still infamous among archaeologists. Born in 1778 in Padua, Italy, Giovanni worked in his father’s barbershop until age 16, then left to study in Rome. After Napoleon Bonaparte captured the Eternal City in 1797, Belzoni wandered Europe for a time, ending up in London, where he hoped to secure work as a hydraulic engineer. But the only job the 6-foot-6 Italian could find was as a circus performer, billed as “the Patagonian Sampson” and toting a dozen lesser men about the stage.
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When the UK was beset by episodes of riots & looting in August 2011, parliament was (quite rightly) quick to condemn the actions of a small minority. It seems though that many of our museums are filled with artefacts acquired through episodes of similar behaviour – the only difference being that it took place in the past & in foreign countries.

On a similar note, some in the UK were quick to sit back smugly during the looting of Egypt’s museums, noting that it was fortunate that the UK had so many of their antiquities to protect them from such episodes. One wonders though, during bouts of lawlessness in the UK, whether the same people support the idea of shipping British artefacts abroad to safer places… permanently… with little chance of ever getting them back – and little choice in the matter?

From:
Guardian

UK riots: When is a looter a heroic entrepreneur?
Edward Lawrence
guardian.co.uk, Friday 19 August 2011 10.00 BST

Parliament denounced the 21st century Britons who looted their own high street, but 18th century looters who plundered distant nations to build the British Empire became heroes

The scenes of widespread mayhem and looting that were the main news items of the last week were profoundly shocking, and for me personally, a cause of deep anxiety. Because of my disability I felt vulnerable, which isn’t a sensation I exactly relish. It isn’t as if since my severe brain injury I have had a surfeit of good experiences.
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Four looted Egyptian artefacts have been spotted for sale at auction in London & are now being returned to Egypt.

From:
Egypt Independent

Egypt to receive four stolen artifacts from the UK within days
Mohamed Azouz
Sat, 06/08/2011 – 12:51

Four antiques from the time of King Amnehotep III will be returned to Egypt by the UK within days, said Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Mohamed Abdel Maksoud in a statement on Saturday.

They were seized when an American amateur collector tried to sell them in London.
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The artefacts that the Met agreed to return in 2010 are now ready to be returned to Egypt.

From:
Reuters

New York’s Met to return 19 artifacts to Egypt: MENA
CAIRO | Sat Jul 30, 2011 6:23am EDT

(Reuters) – New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has agreed to return to Cairo 19 artifacts dating back to the time of ancient Egypt’s teenage king Tutankhamen, the state news agency MENA said on Saturday.

Egypt has been pushing for the repatriation of major pharaonic treasures it says were plundered by foreign powers, including the Rosetta Stone now in the British Museum and Queen Nefertiti’s bust from Berlin’s Neues Museum.
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Zahi Hawass is a man who stirs up controversy wherever he goes, whether with his own goading of foreign governments to return disputed artefacts, or through the way that his blatant self publicising approach irritates others. He has done a lot to help Egypt’s archaeology in his time in the job, but at the same time has managed to annoy many people. It appears that this will no longer be the case however, as he has lost his job as the head of Egypt’s Supreme Archaeological Council.

(Yes – I know that this post is out of date – as are most others on the blog at the moment), but I wanted to keep it here so that the blog represents a relatively complete archive of events).

From:
Daily Telegraph

‘Real Indiana Jones’ sacked as keeper of Egypt’s heritage
He called himself the real Indiana Jones and keeper of Egypt’s heritage, and was an almost permanent presence on any television programme about the country’s colourful past.

But Zahi Hawass, the public face of the pyramids, has become the latest casualty of the revolution sweeping the Egyptian government after being sacked as minister of antiquities.

Dr Hawass was head of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities for 10 years, and before that in charge of the Pyramids and Sphinx on the Giza plateau outside Cairo. He staged regular press conferences unveiling new discoveries from the time of the pharaohs.
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