The Nefertiti bust left Egypt in 1913 listed as a plaster princess, and Berlin has kept it through a century of Egyptian demands

On 6 December 1912 a German Oriental Society team led by Ludwig Borchardt found the painted bust of Queen Nefertiti, wife of Akhenaten, in the workshop of the sculptor Thutmose at Amarna. Borchardt's diary reads, "Suddenly we had in our hands the most alive Egyptian artwork." Egypt's 1912 antiquities law made finds state property, with a division between Egypt and the excavator. In January 1913 the French inspector Gustave Lefebvre divided the finds. He had seen a photograph of the bust; whether he examined it closely is unknown. The signed protocol listed it as a "painted plaster bust of a princess." A 1924 document by the society's secretary says Borchardt "wanted to save the bust for us." The bust went to Berlin to James Simon, who had paid for the dig. He kept it at his villa and in 1920 gave it with the other finds to the Berlin museums. It went on public display on 1 April 1924, and Egypt's demands began. Egypt offered other objects in exchange in 1929. In 1933 Hermann Göring considered returning it to King Fuad I; Hitler refused. In March 1945 the US Army found it in a salt mine. It returned to the Neues Museum in 2009. In September 2024 Zahi Hawass started a petition for its return. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation says Egypt's government has not formally demanded it.