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PARIS - More than 3000 years after her reign as queen to a mysterious pharaoh, Nefertiti has sparked a row between Egypt, which wants her bust returned for an exhibition, and Germany, which is refusing to let it leave Berlin, where it is the city's greatest treasure.
The painted limestone sculpture of the great queen is one of the most famous depictions of beauty and female power, showing a woman with exquisite features in the prime of life.
After lying in sand on the banks of the Nile for more than three millennia, the life-size bust was brought back into daylight in 1912 by a German archaeologist, Ludwig Borchardt.
How Borchardt got his find home remains a controversy. One version is that he talked Ottoman empire officials into letting him keep the bust. Another is that he smuggled it out of the country, falsifying an inventory.
In 1933, Egypt began what would be a long campaign to bring her home, but its request was quashed by Hitler.
"Nefertiti continually delights me. The bust is a unique masterpiece, an ornament, a true treasure ... I will never relinquish the head of the queen," the Fuehrer wrote.
Under a grandiose scheme conceived by Hitler to rebuild Berlin and rename it Germania, Nefertiti was to have been placed on a throne under a large dome, the centrepiece of a new Egyptian museum.
The quarrel has now stirred anew, for Egypt wants the bust to be lent for the opening exhibition in 2011 of a Grand Egyptian Museum, being built near the Great Pyramids.
"I really want it back," Egyptian chief archaeologist Zahi Hawass told the Egyptian Parliament last week.
"If Germany refuses the loan request, we will never again organise exhibitions of antiquities in Germany ... it will be a scientific war."
Hawass said the Germans were afraid the bust would never be allowed to return to Berlin.
"They think we will be like the Raiders of the Lost Ark, that we will take it and not return it."
Germany's response is similar to the British Museum's rebuttal of Greece's demand for the Elgin Marbles, the frieze that once adorned the Parthenon.
Dietrich Wildung, head of the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, said he was unfazed by the threat of an antiquities boycott, as Egypt had not lent anything since 1985 and there was already a rich collection in Germany.
He added that the bust was too delicate to be sent abroad: "Nefertiti is not a pop star that can simply go on tour."
But Wilfried Rogasch, a German historian and museum curator, said political will was what was keeping Nefertiti in Berlin.
"People are opposed to the loan, saying the bust might not return, but that's nonsense."
He described the real problem as grandstanding, in which culture officials seized on certain artefacts, elevating them to the status of national treasures, to boost their political stature.
Work of beauty
* Queen Nefertiti was the co-ruler of Egypt in the 14th century BC.
* Her name means "a beautiful woman has arrived".
* It is believed the bust of Nefertiti was made around 1350BC.
* The bust was unearthed at Amarnain, Egypt, by a German archaeologist, Ludwig Borchardt, in December 1912.
* Nefertiti's bust was taken to Germany in 1913 and has been on public display in Berlin since 1923.
