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Saturday, January 29, 2011

Germany Unmoved by Egypt’s “Demands“

The Local wrote on January 24:
“Egypt's antiquities chief said Monday that Cairo has demanded that Germany return the 3,400 year-old bust of fabled Queen Nefertiti, 98 years after it was uncovered on the banks of the Nile. Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities head, Zahi Hawass, announced an ‘official request’ for the bust's return, backed by Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif and Culture Minister Faruq Hosni.

“The demand was sent in a letter to Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, the governing body of the Neues Museum in Berlin where the piece has pride of place, he said. But the German government, which has always refused to return the bust, unearthed in 1912 by German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt, was unmoved.

"’This is not an official request. An official request is a request from one government to another,’ foreign ministry spokesman Andreas Peschke told a regular government briefing in Berlin. He added that the position of the German government was ‘unchanged and not new’…“Cairo began to demand the restitution of the Pharaonic-era statue back in the 1930s, but successive German governments have insisted the piece was bought legally by the Prussian state, and that there are documents to prove it. 

“Nefertiti, renowned as one of history's great beauties, was the wife of Pharaoh Akhenaton, remembered for having converted his kingdom to monotheism with the worship of one sun god, Aton. The bust is at the top of a ‘wish list’ of five major artifacts exhibited abroad that Egypt wants returned as part of its cultural heritage… Hawass… asked that ‘this unique treasure be returned to the possession of its rightful owners, the Egyptian people.’"

This article is culled from the weekly's of the church of Eternal God 
 
Olufemi

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