Berlin defends authenticity of Nefertiti bust

In his book, Le Buste de Nefertiti – une Imposture de l'Egyptologie? (The Bust of Nefertiti – an Egyptology Fraud?), Stierlin has claimed that the bust was created to test ancient pigments. But after it was admired by a Prussian prince, Johann Georg, who was beguiled by Nefertiti's beauty, Borchardt, said Stierlin, "didn't have the nerve to make his guest look stupid" and pretended it was genuine.

Berlin author and historian Edrogan Ercivan has added his weight to the row with his book Missing Link in Archaeology, published last week, in which he has also called Nefertiti a fake, modelled by an artist on Borchardt's statuesque wife.

Public and political enthusiasm about the find at the time gave the artefact its "own dynamic" and led to Borchardt ensuring it was kept out of the public gaze until 1924, the authors have argued.

He kept it in his living room for the next 11 years before handing it over to a Berlin museum, since when it has been one of the city's main tourist attractions.

The statue was famously admired by Adolf Hitler, who referred to it as "a unique masterpiece, an ornament, a true treasure".

Recent radiological tests carried out on the statue by Berlin's Charite hospital supposedly proved that the bust is indeed more than 3,000 years old. The tests uncovered a hidden face carved into the statue's limestone core. But Stierlin has argued that while it is possible to carbon date the pigments, which appear to be ancient Egyptian, it is impossible to accurately date the bust because it is made of stone covered in plaster.

Other aspects of the find, which he has claimed support his theory, are the facts that the bust has no left eye, which the ancient Egyptians would have considered a sign of disrespect towards their much-loved queen, and that the first scientific reports on the discovery were not written up for 11 years.

Borchardt's diary entries remain the main written account of the find. He wrote: "Suddenly we had in our hands the most alive Egyptian artwork. You cannot describe it with words. You must see it."

But Dietrich Wildung, the director of Berlin's Egyptian Museum, where Nefertiti is currently housed, has fiercely dismissed the allegations as an attempt to exploit the bust's popularity. "A beautiful woman and a putative scandal," he said. "That always sells."

He said the claims could easily be dismissed because of the detailed computer tomography and material analyses that had been carried out on Nefertiti.

El Museo Egipcio de Berlín certificó hoy que el busto de Nefertiti es auténtico y tiene 3 mil 400 años de antigüedad, en contra de lo que sostiene el autor suizo Henrie Stierlin, según el cual tendría apenas un siglo. La historia del busto ha sido suficientemente documentada y los nuevos análisis realizados por tomografía computerizada así lo corroboran, afirmó el director del Museo, Dietrich Wildung. Stierlin es "sin duda un científico muy popular y un excelente fotógrafo", pero sus teorías son muy fáciles de desmontar por un experto, añadió Wildung.

El director del Museo salió así al paso de las informaciones contenidas en un libro de Stierlin, según el cual el busto de la Reina del Nilo se hizo durante las excavaciones de 1912 por el escultor Gerhard Marks y luego, ante la dimensión dada al hallazgo, ya no se desmintió su veracidad.

El famoso busto se exhibe actualmente de forma provisional en la Alte Nationalgalerie de la Isla de los Museos, a la espera de que en octubre quede instalada en el Neues Museum, dañado en los bombardeos aliados de la Segunda Guerra Mundial y que se abrirá tras la remodelación obra del arquitecto británico David Chipperfield.