Egyptian Woes in Germany

For about one hundred years....Germany has held this fine Egyptian antiquities piece.....the statue of Queen Nefertiti.

The guys in Berlin have built this fine museum to house it....which if you are ever in Berlin....this is one of the top five things in the city to go and see.

There has always been this discussion over ownership of the 3,400 year old statue.

The German guy in 1913....who made the discovery of the statue....worked up a fine agreement of sorts with the government of Egypt at the time. Basically, he described the piece as a discovery...made of plaster and just depicting a royal princess....nothing more.

It would come out later that this was a limestone statue of Queen Nefertiti....and the Egyptians figuring out a major lie occurred with the agreement.

This past week....a new effort has been mounted to recover what the Egyptians consider to be their own property.

As the media has dragged up the topic over the past decade....Germany has continually said it acquired the statue legally and just won’t even discuss ownership....or even a loan because moving the “fragile” bust might be dangerous.

I sat there and pondered upon the German argument....and if this were a piece of plaster....they’d be actually right about the danger in moving it. But strangely enough....since it is limestone....there just isn’t any danger. Course, maybe they are still in the stupid mode from 1913, and still believe they hold just a plaster statue....of some princess....and nothing more.

The more you ponder on this issue....you see some folks who made up a deal that was kinda underhanded and involved some trickery of sorts. It wasn’t a legitimate contract between the two countries in 1913 because of the false claim on the German’s part.

The problem is that there are thousands of pieces of art in German, British, French and Italian museums....which were gained through questionable methods. If you open up the door to this episode....then you start to question alot of stuff gained from Greece, Turkey, Syria, and Egypt. The bottom line is that if you took out thirty percent of the current holdings and handed them back over...then what? Could you even run a 4-star museum with a 3-star collection? That’s what this really comes down to.