Despite vigorous campaigning, by Egypt’s Zahi Hawass, indications are that Berlin’s Neues Museum has no plans to return the Nefertiti Bust that is currently in their museum.

From:
Examiner

Queen Nefertiti will stay in Berlin
December 24, 9:05 AM
Archaeology – News – Examiner – Will Hunt

Egypt has been on a crusade of late, demanding the return of apparently stolen ancient artifacts from Europe’s museums. Last week, the Louvre buckled under the pressure of Zahi Hawass, the media-friendly (ok, media-mongering) secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, and returned five 3,200-year-old fragments of a tomb painting from Luxor.
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Egypt is continuing their efforts to secure the return of the Nefertiti bust from Germany with a planned formal request.

From:
Independent Online (Zaire)

Cairo ready to demand the return of Nefertiti
December 21 2009 at 02:59AM
By Marwa Awad

Cairo – Egypt will formally ask Germany to return a bust of Queen Nefertiti after a Berlin museum official presented papers showing the 3 400-year-old treasure was taken unethically, Egypt’s antiquities chief said on Sunday.

Zahi Hawass said in a statement that documents presented by the head of Berlin’s Neues Museum confirmed that Ludwig Borchardt, who found the bust, tried to pass it off as a less significant find to secure it for Berlin.
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German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt discovered the Nefertiti bust in 1912. The bust was taken from Egypt to Germany, but wheter or not this removal had official permission is something that is disputed by the Egyptian authorities.

From:
Modern Ghana

Egypt pushes for return of antiquities to origin countries
By Kwame Opoku, Dr.
Feature Article

JASON KOUTSOUKIS HERALD CORRESPONDENT
December 7, 2009
CAIRO: Egypt will host an international conference next March for countries seeking the return of ancient indigenous treasures being kept in foreign museums.

The secretary-general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, said the conference would be a world first.
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Egypt is carrying on building pressure on Germany to try & secure the return of the Nefertiti Bust.

From:
Bikya Masr

Egypt, Germany to duke it out over Nefertiti bust
Joseph Mayton
6 December 2009 in Culture, Egypt, Egyptology, Europe, News

CAIRO: It has become the neverending story of Egypt’s Zahi Hawass to get Germany to return the famous Nefertiti bust. He has made threat upon threat against Berlin, demanding they give back what is rightfully Egypt’s. The threats have been met with laughter and skirting. Germany has no intention of returning their prized possession, taken from Egypt’s sands in the early part of last century.

Either way the diplomacy falls, the two sides will hold talks this month in order to see what will be done about the statue. Hawass believes the 3,400-year-old treasure was illegally taken from Egypt and should be returned.
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Zahi Hawass is going to have a meeting twith the director of Berlin’s Neues Museum to discuss the future of the Nefertiti Bust. Whilst no wanting to pre-empt whatever is going to be discussed, it seems to me to be a positive step, in that any meeting is better then the requests being completely ignored with no opportunity for further discussion.

From:
Reuters

Egypt to hold talks over Nefertiti bust
Thu Dec 3, 2009 6:19am GMT
By Marwa Awad

CAIRO, Dec 2 (Reuters Life!) – Egypt, in a diplomatic tug-of-war with Germany over the bust of Queen Nefertiti, will hold talks this month to try to recover the 3,400-year-old pharaonic treasure Egypt says was smuggled out of the country.

Egyptian antiquities chief Zahi Hawass told Reuters he will meet the director of the Egyptian Papyrus Collection at Berlin’s Neues Museum, where the bust is on display, on December 20 to resolve the row over Nefertiti, the mother-in-law of boy king Tutankhamun.
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Zahi Hawass’s requests for the return of the bust of Nefertiti by Germany has generated large amounts of publicity, encouraging people to enter into discussion on why the artefacts is in Germany & whether it should be returned to Egypt.

From:
Christian Science Monitor

Germany: Time for Egypt’s Nefertiti bust to go home?
A German museum has a bust of the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti as its centerpiece. But should Germany and other Western nations keep or return Egypt’s cultural artifacts?
By Isabelle de Pommereau | Correspondent 11.02.09

BERLIN – Queen Nefertiti, who lived 3,500 years ago, was a wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten. In 1912, German Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt found her on the banks of the River Nile – her bust that is, made of stucco and lime. Her new home became Berlin’s Neues Museum. But World War II annihilated the museum and the German Democratic Republic’s communist government let it decay.

This past October, seven decades later, Queen Nefertiti found her home again, as the centerpiece of a new, €200 million (about US$300 million) restored Neues Museum.
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Despite requests to provide any available evidence of the legitimacy of Nefertiti’s journey from Egypt to Berlin by Zahi Hawass, the newly re-opened Neues Museum hasn’t been forthcoming.

From:
Spiegel

10/20/2009
Berlin’s Nefertiti Trouble
Egyptian Official Calls Museum Behavior ‘Suspicious’

She’s been dead thousands of years but she’s still causing trouble. The bust of Queen Nefertiti has taken pride of place in Berlin’s New Museum, re-opened this weekend after 70 years. Now Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, says Berlin should give it back.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you really want to take Nefertiti away from her privileged new position in the newly re-opened New Museum in Berlin and bring her back to Cairo?
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The British Museum continues to hold onto the Parthenon Marbles, despite polls show that most people in Britain are in favour of their return. Whether or not Elgin had some form of permission at the time to remove the pieces, times have now changed & most would argue that it is ethically & morally right that the artefacts are returned.

From:
New West Network

Should Nefertiti and the Elgin Marbles Go Home?
By Nick Gier, New West Unfiltered 7-28-09

Once again the Greek government has demanded that the Parthenon Marbles, better known in imperialist circles as the Elgin Marbles, be returned from the British Museum to the Greek people. The stunning new Acropolis Museum has just opened, and there is a gallery where a plaster copy of half the famous frieze waits to be replaced with the original.

Noting that the Greeks had previously been amenable to a generous loan policy, the British journal The Economist states that “the Greek government risks driving museums everywhere into clinging to their possessions for fear of losing them. If the aim is for the greatest number of people to see the greatest number of treasures, a better way must be found.”
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More coverage of the recent return of various looted artefacts from a number of sources to Greece. As with any restitution act involving Greece, parallels are immediately drawn with the case of the Parthenon Marbles.

From:
Associated Press

Fifth century BC objects returned to Greece
1 day ago

ATHENS (AFP) — Greece on Tuesday reclaimed scores of ancient objects dating to the fifth century BC that Belgian, British and German authorities returned, the culture ministry said.

The list includes over 100 clay fragments and coins held by the Belgian Archaeological School, 70 ancient funerary offerings seized by German customs officials in Nuremberg in 2007 and a marble decorative fragment from a Byzantine church donated by a British ceramist, the ministry said.
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Various looted artefacts seized by customs officials in Germany have now been returned to Greece, along with a fragment taken in the 1950s by a British tourist. This return of ancient fragments by the public is similar to another recent case in Rome involving a fragment of the Colosseum.

From:
Deutsche Presse Agentur

Greece recovers stolen antiquities from Germany, Belgium, Britain
Posted : Tue, 19 May 2009 13:59:53 GMT
Author : DPA
Category : Culture (General)

Athens – Germany, Belgium and Breitain have returned hundreds of priceless artifacts to Greece, the oldest a 5th century coin, Greek Culture Ministry officials said Tuesday. Among the items retuned from Germany included 96 copper and ceramic pots and vessels, dating from the 3rd or 4th century BC from Thessaly, in northern Greece.

Officials said the items were seized by customs authorities at Nuremberg, Germany in 2007 in a truck arriving from Greece.
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New research suggests that the archaeologists who took the bust of Nefertiti from Egypt deliberately misled officials to allow them to do so – suggesting that they felt that they would have been stopped had they told the truth at that stage. This can only add weight to Egypt’s argument for the return of the sculpture.

From:
The National (Abu Dhabi)

Germans ‘cheated’ to get Nefertiti
David Crossland, Foreign Correspondent
Last Updated: February 13. 2009 1:12AM UAE / February 12. 2009 9:12PM GMT

The bust of ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti has been one of Germany’s most treasured cultural possessions since German archaeologists discovered the exquisitely crafted 3,350-year-old artwork in the sands of Egypt almost a century ago.

Renowned for its timeless beauty, the sculpture attracts more than half a million visitors a year to the Berlin museum where it is on display, and it has long been a source of friction between Germany and Egypt, which has been demanding its return for decades.
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James Cuno may have other views as well as those on Encyclopaedic Museums – however, his views on that one subject seems to be his favourite topic at the moment, despite being widely discredited.

From:
Princeton University

James Cuno on “Where do the great treasures of ancient art belong?”
by James Cuno
Jan 27 2009

Two questions dominate our consideration of the fate of the world’s ancient heritage. The more vexing and urgent one — how can we prevent the looting of archaeological sites and the illicit trade in antiquities -– is not the topic of this article. The second one is.

“Where do the great treasures of ancient art belong? In Western museums or in countries where the civilizations that created them once flourished?”
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