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A document recently discovered at the German Institute for Oriental Studies revealed a German archaeologist's trick to smuggle the statue of the Pharaonic Queen's head of Nefertiti from Egypt to Germany in the early twentieth century.
The German archaeologist Ludwig Borjardt Has included the statue of Nefertiti in the discoveries' list he supervised in 1913,but he described the gypsum-made statue as being worthless whereas the queen's royal features is sculpted in the limestone.
Borjardt, Then, concealed the statue inside a box in a dark room deliberately handing over the authority a pale photo of the statue that does not reflect the actual beauty of the monument.
The bust of Nefertiti which is a priceless antiquity attracts half a million visitors every year to the Egyptian Museum in Berlin.
It is believed that the statue had been carved around 1350 BC and was unearthed by Borjardt in Tel el-Amarna on December 1912 before being transporting to Germany by virtue of an agreement signed in 1913.
On his part, Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities declared that the Egyptian Foreign Ministry had sent a letter to Germany demanding the return of the statue to its homeland but the request has raised a considerable debate in Germany which refuses to return the Egyptian monument.
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