Thursday, April 26, 2007

Overview of the current Nefertiti situation

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1706283.ece
The Times has put together a summary of the main points concerning the ongoing dispute between Germany and Egypt over whether the Nefertiti bust should, or should not, travel to Egypt for the opening of the Grand Museum in 2012: "The special beauty of the Nefertiti bust — the face painted on limestone, poised on top of a swanlike neck — was apparent to Borchardt as soon as he found it in the old settlement of Amarna, 150 kilometres (90 miles) south of Cairo.
'Suddenly we had the most alive Egyptian artwork in our hands,' he wrote in his diary. 'You cannot describe it with words. You can only see it.' To take it out of the country, Borchardt had to hide the bust on an inventory and declare it as a minor find.
Ironically, the only official who ever considered giving it back was Hermann Goering, the Nazi air force chief, who later plundered Europe’s art collections. Hitler overruled him: Nefertiti was to be the jewel in the crown, he said, of a redesigned Berlin that was to be called Germania, the capital of the Thousand-Year Reich."
See the above page for more.

I've stopped posting about this subject. There are lots of reports, but they all duplicate what has already been covered in earlier articles. When something new turns up on the subject, I'll start posting again.

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