{"id":38758,"date":"2025-12-27T00:33:40","date_gmt":"2025-12-27T00:33:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/egyptian-archaeologist-vows-to-bring-bust-of-nefertiti-back-from-germany\/"},"modified":"2025-12-27T00:33:40","modified_gmt":"2025-12-27T00:33:40","slug":"egyptian-archaeologist-vows-to-bring-bust-of-nefertiti-back-from-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/egyptian-archaeologist-vows-to-bring-bust-of-nefertiti-back-from-germany\/","title":{"rendered":"Egyptian Archaeologist Vows to Bring Bust of Nefertiti Back from\u00a0Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tZahi Hawass, a well-known Egyptian archaeologist, renewed his promise to bring an ancient bust of Nefertiti home this week, claiming that his country was readier than ever to host it once more, thanks to the recent opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum near Giza.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe called once more for Berlin\u2019s State Museums to return the bust of Nefertiti, which dates to ca. 1351 BCE\u20131334 BCE and is among the most famous ancient Egyptian artifacts held outside Egypt. It has repeatedly faced calls for repatriation across the years, and was very nearly given back to Egypt during World War II, when the Nazi regime thought that doing so would help Germany curry favor with Egyptians.<\/p>\n

\n\tLudwig Borchardt, a German Egyptologist, found the bust in 1912 at Tell Al-Amarna and brought it back with him. Since 2009, the bust has been on view at the Neues Museum.<\/p>\n

\n\tGermany has maintained that the bust was exported legally. Hawass\u2019s position on what really happened in 1912 has changed over time. In 2010, Hawass told National Geographic<\/em><\/a> that the sculpture was not looted, though he added, \u201cI really want it back.\u201d But in 2024, he described the bust as \u201cbrazenly stolen\u201d in an interview<\/a> with Deutsche Welle<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a Washington<\/em> Post<\/em> interview<\/a> published this week, Hawass rebutted a familiar argument against repatriation often given by Western museums: that institutions in parts of the Global South are not up to standard because they lack proper climate control systems and other measures found in American and European museums. \u201cYou cannot say that Egypt cannot protect its artifacts,\u201d Hawass told the Washington Post<\/em>. \u201cThere is no museum that has the quality of display of the Grand Museum.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHawass is a controversial figure in archaeology, having previously faced allegations of corruption and claims that he was overly involved<\/a> with the autocratic Mubarak regime. Yet his pronouncements on Egyptian archaeology are closely followed\u2014especially with the Grand Egyptian Museum now fully open following a partial inauguration in 2024. The 968,000-square-foot museum, known as GEM for short, has attracted at least 15,000 visitors daily, according to the Egyptian government.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking to the Post<\/em>, Hawass said GEM was the best place to view Nefertiti\u2014and that he won\u2019t visit Berlin to see the bust. \u201cI refuse to go and see the bust of Nefertiti at all,\u201d he said. \u201cThis bust should be in Egypt, and I will bring it to Egypt.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zahi Hawass, a well-known Egyptian archaeologist, renewed his promise to bring an ancient bust of Nefertiti home this week, claiming that his country was readier than ever to host it once more, thanks to the recent opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum near Giza. He called once more for Berlin\u2019s State Museums to return the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-art"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-25 14:46:56","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}