CAIRO — The Egyptian government is trying to reclaim the bust of Queen Nefertiti from Germany, but the latter is refusing calls for returning the Pharaoh statue to Cairo. Meanwhile, Egypt has emphasized that it is taking all necessary measures to restitute Egyptian antiquities that were smuggled out of the country illegally, including Nefertiti’s bust.

German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt and his team had discovered the Nefertiti bust on Dec. 6, 1912, in what had been the workshop of sculptor Thutmose in Amarna in Minya governorate. Borchardt took the statue out of Egypt in 1913, in breach of the rules on the division of architectural finds at the time. 

Back then, the division rules stated that exceptional antiquities discovered by foreign excavation teams would be handed over to Egypt, while the remaining artifacts would be distributed among the party that discovered them and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. 

Germany claim that the division of architectural finds in Amarna was legal and that Nefertiti’s statue was Berlin’s share, as per the German Deutsche Welle website. Egypt accuses Borchardt of wrapping the bust to conceal its value and smuggling it out of the country.