Egypt leads multinational efforts to restitute relics

7 April 2010

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Egypt wants Germany to return this 3,300-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti. Photo: Picasa

This week, Egypt hosts an international conference centered on the retrieval of disputed antiquities from Western museums to their land of origin.

On the target list are such objects as the 3,300-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti from Berlin’s Neues Museum and the Rosetta Stone from London’s British Museum.

Among other prominent demands from the affected nations: Greece wants the British Museum to return the Elgin Marbles, sculptures removed from the Parthenon in the early 19th-century; Mexico seeks the feathered headdress of Montezuma, the Aztec ruler deposed by Spanish conquistadors, which is now in Vienna’s Museum of Ethnology; Nigerians wants bronzes back from the British Museum.

Read more at BusinessWeek

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