# Bust of Nefertiti
> Workshop of Thutmose - c. 1345 BCE
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## Tombstone
- **Artist:** Workshop of Thutmose
- **Date:** c. 1345 BCE
- **Medium:** Painted limestone core with modelled gypsum stucco surface; rock crystal, beeswax and pigment inlay in the right eye
- **Dimensions:** 49 x 24.5 x 35 cm; approx. 20 kg (unmounted bust)
- **Object type:** Sculpture
- **Period:** New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, Amarna Period, reign of Akhenaten
- **Current location:** Neues Museum, Berlin (North Dome Room), part of the Egyptian Museum of Berlin / Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz
- **Attribution:** accepted
## Summary
A painted limestone-and-stucco portrait model of Queen Nefertiti, made around 1345 BCE in the workshop of the royal sculptor Thutmose at Akhetaten (modern Amarna) and left behind when the city was abandoned. Ludwig Borchardt's German expedition found it on 6 December 1912, and it passed to Berlin the following year under the division-of-finds system then governing foreign excavation in Egypt. It has been the single most contested object in German-Egyptian cultural relations for more than a century, and remains on permanent display in the Neues Museum, Berlin.Two disputes define the record: whether Borchardt's conduct at the 1913 partage meeting, including a since-recovered account describing an unflattering photograph and a false material description, amounted to deliberate deception of the Egyptian inspector who signed off on the division, and, separately and much more recently, whether the museum that will not let the bust travel can still claim copyright over photographs and 3D scans of a 3,300-year-old public-domain object. Both questions are open in different ways: the first is argued from a single archival document neither side reads the same way, the second was settled in practice in 2019 when the museum released its own scan data under legal pressure.The object itself is also a lesson in what stucco hides. CT imaging in 2006 showed a different, more careworn face carved into the limestone core beneath the smoothed and idealised painted surface that visitors see, and the bust's own missing left eye, never recovered despite a reward offered at the time, remains unexplained.
## Provenance
Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it.
- **c. 1345 BCE-c. 1332 BCE** Workshop of Thutmose, royal sculptor `[documented]` (manufacture and use)
Made in the sculptor's studio complex at Akhetaten (Amarna), the short-lived capital built by Akhenaten for the cult of the Aten. The bust is generally read as a master model, an approved likeness kept in the studio for apprentices and workshop sculptors to copy so that official images of the queen leaving the workshop matched a sanctioned pattern. It was found alongside numerous other plaster and stone heads and casts of the royal family in varying stages of completion. When the court abandoned Amarna after Akhenaten's death and Tutankhamun's return to Thebes and the old religion, the workshop was left to fall into ruin with its contents inside it.
- **c. 1332 BCE-6 December 1912** None; buried in the ruined workshop `[documented]` (gap)
The bust lay in the debris of the collapsed workshop building, quadrant P47.1-3 in the modern excavation grid, for roughly thirty-two centuries. It was found lying on the floor of a storeroom, face down according to some accounts, wrapped in effect by its own burial, with the missing left eye already absent. No intervening find, sale or disturbance of the site between the Amarna period and 1912 is documented.
- **6 December 1912-20 January 1913** Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft (German Oriental Society) excavation, under Egyptian Antiquities Service license `[documented]` (excavation)
Excavated under Ludwig Borchardt's direction on a licensed concession of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, financed by the Berlin department-store magnate and patron James Simon. Borchardt's own diary entry for the day records the discovery in the workshop and describes the moment of uncovering the neck, ribbon and wig. The find was kept from Egyptian inspectors' immediate close examination pending the formal division of finds six weeks later.
- **20 January 1913-1913** Division between Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft/James Simon and the Egyptian Antiquities Service `[disputed]` (partage (division of finds))
At the formal partage meeting, chief Egyptian antiquities inspector Gustave Lefebvre approved a division in which the bust, itemised in German paperwork in terms Egyptian officials later said undersold it, went to the German share against a stela of Akhenaten's family retained by Egypt. An internal Oriental Society memorandum, reported in press accounts as dating to 1924 and recovered and published by German researchers and cited by Egyptian officials including Zahi Hawass from 2009 onward, records that Borchardt 'wanted to save the bust for us,' that it was shown to Lefebvre in a poorly lit setting via a photograph that did not present it to advantage, and that Egyptian partage paperwork described it in terms consistent with a lesser material. The SPK's own current published position states flatly that 'there can therefore be no question of deception during the partage' and that the finds were divided by standard contemporary practice, with pre-divided lots inspected by Egyptian officials before selection. No account from Lefebvre himself, describing what he understood at the time, has surfaced in either position; the dispute rests on reading the same 1924 secondhand memorandum two different ways.
- **1913-1920** James Simon, Berlin `[documented]` (private ownership)
As sole financial sponsor of the excavation, the German finds passed by contract to Simon personally rather than to the state. He kept the bust privately at his villa on Tiergartenstrasse and, at Borchardt's request, did not put it on public display for roughly a decade, reportedly to avoid drawing early attention to it before the political and archaeological situation in Egypt settled.
- **1920-present** Berlin State Museums (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), later the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (SPK) `[documented]` (donation and institutional custody)
James Simon donated his share of the Amarna finds, including the bust, to the Berlin museums in 1920. It went on public display for the first time in 1924 in the reopened Neues Museum's 'Amarna Courtyard.' During the Second World War it was moved for safekeeping (Zoo flak tower, then the Merkers-Kieselbach salt mine), was recovered by US forces in 1945, held at the American Central Collecting Point in Wiesbaden, displayed publicly in Wiesbaden from 1946, then moved to West Berlin (Dahlem, 1956; Egyptian Museum, Charlottenburg, 1967; Altes Museum, 2005) before returning to the rebuilt Neues Museum on Museum Island in October 2009, where it remains.
## Exhibitions
- Opening of the Amarna Courtyard, Neues Museum, Berlin, 1924
- Public display at the American Central Collecting Point, Landesmuseum Wiesbaden, 1946-1956
- Body of Nefertiti (Little Warsaw installation), Hungarian Pavilion, 50th Venice Biennale, 2003
- Reopening of the Neues Museum, North Dome Room, Neues Museum, Berlin, 2009
## Open questions
- What did Gustave Lefebvre himself understand about the bust's material and importance when he approved the 1913 division? No first-person account from Lefebvre has surfaced; the case for deception and the case against it both rest on interpreting the same secondhand 1924 memorandum.
- Why is the left eye missing, and was it ever fitted? Borchardt's contemporaneous diary recorded no inlay material found on site, but this does not resolve whether the bust was left deliberately unfinished as a working model, lost its inlay after completion, or was never meant to carry one.
- Who, specifically, within Thutmose's workshop carved this particular bust? Attribution rests entirely on findspot and an inscribed object found separately in the same courtyard, not on any mark on the bust itself; workshop practice with multiple hands working under one named master is undocumented for this piece.
- What became of the fourth royal or comparably significant object the Egyptian side received in the 1913 division, and how did contemporary Egyptian antiquities officials value it relative to the bust at the time, independent of the German paperwork?
- Would modern non-destructive analysis of the missing eye socket and stucco microstructure, beyond the 2006 and 2009 imaging, resolve the intentional-versus-accidental question, and has any museum proposed such a study?
## Sources
- [1] Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Aegyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, 'The Find: Where was the bust of Nefertiti found?'
- [2] Wikipedia, 'Thutmose (sculptor).' Flagged as tertiary; corroborated on the workshop identification and ivory blinker by the museum's own discovery page (source 1).
- [3] Wikipedia, 'Nefertiti Bust,' consolidating discovery, partage, wartime relocation, display history and repatriation chronology. Flagged as tertiary and for replacement with the primary Borchardt diary publication and SPK archival releases where cited claims cannot be independently verified.
- [4] Smithsonian Magazine, 'German Archaeologists Discovered the Iconic Bust of Nefertiti in an Ancient Egyptian Sculptor's Studio. Find Out Why Their Discovery Is Now One of Archaeology's Most Controversial.'
- [5] Ferrell's Travel Blog, summarising 2009 press reporting (Times/Spiegel) of the recovered 1924 Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft memorandum describing the 1913 partage meeting between Borchardt and Gustave Lefebvre.
- [6] Ahram Online, 'Renowned Egyptologist Zahi Hawass launches int'l petition to repatriate Bust of Nefertiti from Berlin.'
- [7] Al Jazeera, 'Egyptian archaeologist urges German museum to return Nefertiti's bust,' 8 September 2024.
- [8] The Collector, 'James Simon: Art Collector and Owner of The Nefertiti Bust.'
- [9] Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Aegyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, 'Description of the bust of Nefertiti.'
- [10] Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Aegyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, 'The presentation of the bust of Nefertiti.'
- [11] Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, 'The History of the Finds: Nefertiti and the Pergamon Altar,' official statement, 13 January 2023.
- [12] Phys.org, 'Researchers use CT to examine hidden face in Nefertiti bust,' reporting on Huppertz et al., published in Radiology, April 2009.
- [13] Historical Eve, 'Why is Nefertiti missing an eye?', summarising Borchardt's diary statement and competing theories including Dietrich Wildung's workshop-model reading. Flagged as tertiary.
- [14] The Art Newspaper, 'No plans to return Berlin's star museum attractions Nefertiti and Pergamon Altar, German official says,' 20 January 2023.
- [15] Slate, 'The Neues Museum is claiming copyright over 3D-printing files of the Nefertiti bust,' November 2019.
- [16] Hyperallergic, 'Official 3D Scans of Nefertiti Bust Are Released After Three-Year Battle,' November 2019.
- [17] Cosmo Wenman, 'Nefertiti 3D Scan FOIA Project,' project documentation and timeline by the researcher who forced the scan's release.
- [18] Techdirt, 'The Curious Case Of The Bogus CC License On A 3D Scan Of A 3000-Year-Old Bust Of Nefertiti,' November 2019.
- [19] The Washington Post / Boston Globe (AP wire), 'New Egyptian museum brings fresh pressure for return of Nefertiti's bust,' 26 December 2025.
- [20] ArtNews, 'Egyptian Archaeologist Vows to Bring Bust of Nefertiti Back from Germany,' on Zahi Hawass's renewed campaign after the Grand Egyptian Museum's opening.
- [21] Wikimedia Commons, File information and license metadata for images used in this record, verified via the Commons API (extmetadata.LicenseShortName) on 2026-08-17.
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