The diplomatic row between Germany and Egypt over the 2,400-year-old bust of the beautiful Queen Nefertiti is heating up. Berlin's refusal to allow her to travel is "unacceptable" says Cairo. She may be 3,400-year-old foreigner, but she is still one of Berlin's best-known beauties. Her delicate features adorn posters all over town; there's an entire calendar devoted to her entrancing image; and thousands flock to the city's museum island each day just to catch a glimpse of her. Now, Egypt wants her back. Queen Nefertiti's bust has been the jewel of the Berlin museum system since it was first put on display in 1923 -- and the German capital is unwilling to part with the temptress. Last month, when Egyptian authorities asked to borrow the sculpture for three months, German authorities turned them down, saying the sculpture was too fragile to travel. The response was immediate -- and outraged. "We will make the lives of these museums miserable," Zahi Hawass, the flamboyant director of the Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities, threatened in April. "It will be a scientific war." Hawass stepped up his campaign last week, asking five other museums in Germany, Great Britain, France and the US to loan iconic Egyptian artifacts -- including the British Museum's Rosetta Stone and the Zodiac in the Louvre -- for the opening of Egypt's National Museum in 2011.
The diplomatic row between Germany and Egypt over the 2,400-year-old bust of the beautiful Queen Nefertiti is heating up. Berlin's refusal to allow her to travel is "unacceptable" says Cairo.
She may be 3,400-year-old foreigner, but she is still one of Berlin's best-known beauties. Her delicate features adorn posters all over town; there's an entire calendar devoted to her entrancing image; and thousands flock to the city's museum island each day just to catch a glimpse of her. Now, Egypt wants her back.
Queen Nefertiti's bust has been the jewel of the Berlin museum system since it was first put on display in 1923 -- and the German capital is unwilling to part with the temptress. Last month, when Egyptian authorities asked to borrow the sculpture for three months, German authorities turned them down, saying the sculpture was too fragile to travel. The response was immediate -- and outraged.
"We will make the lives of these museums miserable," Zahi Hawass, the flamboyant director of the Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities, threatened in April. "It will be a scientific war."
Hawass stepped up his campaign last week, asking five other museums in Germany, Great Britain, France and the US to loan iconic Egyptian artifacts -- including the British Museum's Rosetta Stone and the Zodiac in the Louvre -- for the opening of Egypt's National Museum in 2011.
On the one hand, I do understand countries' desire to get their looted ancient artifacts back. But on the other hand, Zahi Hawass is such a megalomaniac and petty tyrant -- who runs Egypt's antiquities council like his own personal fiefdom and never saw a television camera he didn't like (unless it was pointed away from him) -- that I have trouble wishing him success in this. His strongarm tactics are well-known in the field of Egyptology, and honestly this extortionate behavior is not just unseemly but unprofessional.
I also don't believe for a second that he would give those "borrowed" antiquities back. Which then brings us back to the issue of "borrowing" something that's rightfully yours....
Gah. It would be so much easier if I either thought Hawass was wrong... or if I knew less about him.
Of course that doesn't change the basic principle that Egyptian antiquities should be Egyptian, but he's a real horror show.
But of course we have plenty of questions about returning looted property to our former colonies.
In my own field of bellydance, we often find that the worst purveyors of fakelore are the egyptians themselves. Never, never, never ask an egyptian about the origins of any form of their dance or traditions. As Morocco, a US dancer who is the foremost authority on ME dance history, once said; "the egyptians seem to be be culturally disinclined to inquire into their own history." keep to the Fen Causeway
Which is not to say that the Egyptians should not now have a say in examining and explaining their own history but, whilst they allow that egotistical slug to be a gatekeeper on the egyptian study of egypt, it is likely that the west's dominance of the subject will continue. keep to the Fen Causeway
The pyramids must have been rather alien to Islamic Egypt
Which islam do you mean ? The current increasingly fundamentalist egypt only has its roots in the Nasser revolution of 48, where the muslim brotherhood were invited into his government (they declined).
You only have to go on the streets of the poorer districts to see the truth that culturally the egyptians do not have austere traditions, they are largely a party people who love music and dancing (and drinking booze and smoking dope). So, if there is a disinclination towards intellectual examination of history, I don't think it comes from islam.
I have often suspected that the egyptians know that their history is pretty complicated with much that conflicts with islam and several points of disconnection with ancient egypt. Like most peoples they want to be proud of their country and so effect a cultural disinterest as there is a difference between knowing something and having to assimilate that and thinking something is possible but let's not look too closely. keep to the Fen Causeway
Perhaps it is a testament to the Egyptians' appreciation for their cultural heritage that the pharaonic mounments were not destroyed or defaced. Well, not except by those who destroyed or damaged them in the act of stealing them, like for example the Champollion at tomb of Seti I. I'm sure he was just showing his respect when he removed those walls.
*Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
The one-meter-wide nose on the face is missing. A legend that the nose was broken off by a cannon ball fired by Napoléon's soldiers still survives, as do diverse variants indicting British troops, Mamluks, and others. However, sketches of the Sphinx by Frederick Lewis Norden made in 1737 and published in 1755 illustrate the Sphinx without a nose. The Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi, writing in the fifteenth century, attributes the vandalism to Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr, a Sufi fanatic from the khanqah of Sa'id al-Su'ada. In 1378, upon finding the Egyptian peasants making offerings to the Sphinx in the hope of increasing their harvest, Sa'im al-Dahr was so outraged that he destroyed the nose. Al-Maqrizi describes the Sphinx as the "Nile talisman" on which the locals believed the cycle of inundation depended.
Generally, as I understand the wars of conquests, the muslims were far far too busy fighting each other's schisms to worry too much about artefacts and buildings that were obviously abandoned. By and large, so long as (non-Abrahammatic) peoples converted, everything was pretty much left alone. I'm pretty sure that Taliban are the only muslims to have destroyed a non-functional religious site. keep to the Fen Causeway
So how does that contradict the claim that they were "alien", and that there was no cultural continuity, or interest in systematically exploring them? Bush is a symptom, not the disease.
Here are my Western blinders at work: "nos ancêtres les grècques". I omitted the Persians. Bush is a symptom, not the disease.
You can't grow the same level of intellectual inquiry in 50 years. It doesn't surprise me at all there is a certain aggression to the Egyptian's methods; there's a lot of catching up to do. Certainly when the historic intellectual inquiry of Europe was inevitably coupled to ruthless plunder.
We're back to colonialism/imperialism again. Sigh.
And the Mamluks were mainly Turkish and Circassian. So until the Free Officers, Egypt hadn't really been ruled by Egyptians since the Persian conquest in 353, unless you count the Fatimids, who were also technically outsiders....
Perhaps "the West's head start" can be partly explained by the fact that Egypt was to varying degrees a colony, occupied by British troops, until 1952-53? It's hard to be an archaeologist with someone standing on your head.
And for the record, Cairo University has been granting graduate degrees in Egyptology since well before Nasser, so it seems that somebody was interested in Egypt's cultural heritage before then.
Where do you get this stuff? Some people might deserve "a say" in their cultural heritage, but only if their motives are pure?
Oh, come on. I didn't mean that and you know it. My view is that the guy is doing this for egotistical purposes only and he represents as much a problem for other egyptian egyptologists as he does non-egyptians. keep to the Fen Causeway
Oh, I see, it's the old "we sophisticated Westerners appreciate your cultural artifacts more than you lowly savages do" argument.
I was never going to be given the benefit of the doubt. keep to the Fen Causeway
That said, one of the biggest of Said's criticisms of Orientalism is that it takes an area as large as the Middle East and imposes a cultural homogeneity upon it, usually comprising extreme examples of exotica that are re-formed into a supposed norm. Unfortunately Said did much the same in reverse; imagining a "western" view that remains consistent across 3 centuries and two continents comprising many countries with differing interests and agenda. keep to the Fen Causeway
The bust of Nefertiti was unearthed in 1912 by the German excavator Ludwig Borchardt, and is considered to be the most famous work of art from Ancient Egypt. Hawass says that Borchardt, anxious to preserve the bust for Germany, took advantage of the practice at the time of splitting the spoils of any new discovery between the Egyptian Antiquities Authority and the foreign mission concerned. In those days the law required discoveries to be brought to what was then the Antiquities Service, where a special committee supervised the distribution. Borchardt, who discovered the head at Tel Al-Amarna, did not declare the bust and hid it under less important objects. The Egyptian authorities failed to recognise its beauty and importance. According to Borchardt himself, he did not clean the bust but left it covered in mud when he took it to the Egyptian Museum for the usual division of spoils. The service, on that occasion, took the limestone statues of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, and gave the head of Queen Nefertiti to the expedition because it was made of gypsum -- or so they thought. There were those who said that Borchardt had disguised the head, covering it with a layer of gypsum to ensure that the committee would not see its beauty or realise that it was actually made of beautifully painted limestone. Whatever happened, the antiquities authorities did not learn about the bust until it was put on show in Berlin's Egyptian Museum in 1923, and had certainly never expressly agreed that this piece should be included in the German share of the Tel Al-Amarna finds. Ever since the earliest days of cultural property legislation, the principle has been that the country of origin must expressly permit the export of every single national cultural treasure. With respect to the bust of Nefertiti, the Egyptian authorities did not give that permission.
There were those who said that Borchardt had disguised the head, covering it with a layer of gypsum to ensure that the committee would not see its beauty or realise that it was actually made of beautifully painted limestone. Whatever happened, the antiquities authorities did not learn about the bust until it was put on show in Berlin's Egyptian Museum in 1923, and had certainly never expressly agreed that this piece should be included in the German share of the Tel Al-Amarna finds.
Ever since the earliest days of cultural property legislation, the principle has been that the country of origin must expressly permit the export of every single national cultural treasure. With respect to the bust of Nefertiti, the Egyptian authorities did not give that permission.
To be taken with a grain of salt, as one takes the official version of everything in Egypt....
