Berlin kept Nefertiti out of sight for eleven years. Egypt has asked for her back since 1925.

02House P 47.2 · room 19

6 December 1912: “Describing it is no use”

The excavation was led by the Egyptologist and building historian Ludwig Borchardt for the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, and paid for by one man, the Berlin entrepreneur and patron James Simon. In house P 47.2, room 19, the workshop, the bust came out of the rubble close to the east wall, after a man’s portrait head had been lifted away.

“Beschreiben nützt nichts, ansehen.”Describing it is no use: look at it. Ludwig Borchardt’s diary, on the bust

Photographs were taken on the day. The objects were photographed properly in the dig house later that month, ready for the division of the season’s finds with Egypt’s Antiquities Service.

03The division of finds

Fourteen lots, chosen by Egypt’s inspector

On 20 January 1913 the finds were split into 14 equal lots, 7 for each side. Gustave Lefebvre, the inspector for the Antiquities Service, wrote the document, and Borchardt countersigned it. The folding altar now in Cairo headed the Egyptian side; the bust was set against it on the German side.

Simon kept the bust in his villa in Tiergartenstraße and lent the originals to the Egyptian Museum. In 1920 he made the loan a gift. When the Amarna finds went on show in 1913, the bust was left out. Whether Borchardt played down its worth at the division has been argued ever since; part 05 sets out the positions.

041912 to today

Nine homes in a century, and a war in a mine

Every place the bust has been kept since 1912, on one linear scale. Where a source gives a day or a month, the bar starts or ends there; where it gives only a year, the bar fades across that year.