Zahi Hawass, archaeologist and former Egyptian minister of antiquities, has launched an online petition calling on Germany to return the famous bust of the ancient Egyptian queen, Nefertiti (circa 1370-circa 1330 BC). The German Oriental Society shipped the painted limestone bust of Pharaoh Akhenaten’s great royal wife to Berlin in 1913, a move the Egyptian minister and archaeologist deems illegal. Egyptian authorities have attempted several times to repatriate the artefact.
Debate has long raged about Nefertiti’s racial identity. Her name means ‘the beautiful one has come forth.’ Western media has portrayed her with white skin, such as in the 1961 film, ‘Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile.’ However, late Senegalese historian and anthropologist Cheikh Anta Diop (1923-86) spearheaded decolonial research to re-establish ancient Egypt’s Black African racial, cultural, and political identity.
The beauty of the Nefertiti bust still influences fashion, jewellery, and popular culture 3,000 years after the Egyptian queen graced the Nile River Valley.
In a separate petition, Hawass calls for France to return the Dendera Zodiac, a bas-relief from a chapel’s ceiling dedicated to the Egyptian god of fertility, Osiris, and for Britain to return the Rosetta Stone, a fragment of a stele (stone monument) inscribed in 196 BC with Egyptian King Ptolemy V’s royal decree.
These petitions can be found at hawasszahi.com/repatriation
Let us know in the comments what you think of this effort to repatriate the artefacts.