Cairo, December 21: Egypt’s chief antiquities official says he will formally demand the return of the bust of Queen Nefertiti from a Berlin museum after he received documents to back his claim the statue is there illegally.
Zahi Hawass said in a statement Sunday that the director of Berlin’s Egyptian Museum presented documents revealing that the German excavator of the 3,300-year old limestone bust concocted fraudulent papers to take it out of Egypt in 1913.
Hawass said the excavator was acting “unethically with intent to deceive.” He will hold a meeting this week to formally demand its return.
Hawass has been aggressively campaigning to recover Egypt’s lost treasures. He successfully retrieved wall fragments of a 3,200-year-old-tomb from the French Louvre.
–Agencies