Germany: We're Keeping Nefertiti

Museum says ancient bust too fragile to go back to Egypt
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 23, 2009 3:21 AM CST
Germany: We're Keeping Nefertiti
German Chancellor Angela Merkel looks at the bust of Nefertiti,at the Neues Museum in Berlin.   (AP Photo/Bundespresseamt, Guido Bergmann)

Germany has refused Egypt's latest request for the return an ancient bust of Queen Nefertiti held in a Berlin museum. Officials say the 3,300-year-old bust is too fragile to be moved and insist it was acquired legally by Prussia nearly 100 years ago, the BBC reports. The bust was smuggled out of Egypt by a German archeologist in 1913, and Egypt has been asking for it back since 1930.
(More Egypt stories.)

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