Politician for the return of Nefertiti and the Pergamon Altar

Created: 2022-12-30Updated: 2022-12-30, 4:32 p.m

Left-wing politician Saraya Gomis comes to a press conference.

© Jörg Carstensen/dpa/archive image

The politician and Berlin State Secretary for Diversity and Anti-Discrimination, Saraya Gomis, has spoken out in favor of returning the bust of Nefertiti and the Pergamon Altar.

"Personally, I'm in favor of the return of the Pergamon Altar and the bust of Nefertiti," Gomis told the Tagesspiegel in Berlin.

"But it's up to others to judge and decide."

Berlin – Elsewhere in the interview, she took her view even further.

"From an anti-discrimination perspective, one has to say: All the cultural assets from other regions of the world do not belong to us, they are here illegally," said Gomis.

According to a spokesman for the Senate Department of Justice, where Gomis' office is based, the interview was authorized in this form.

It was about pieces from colonial contexts.

Nefertiti is a tourist magnet.

The bust of Pharaoh Amenophis IV's main wife, made around 1340 BC, is in Berlin's Neues Museum, which belongs to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.

According to the foundation, she was not illegally taken out of the country.

It was found during an excavation approved by the Egyptian Antiquities Administration.

As was customary at the time, a fund sharing was agreed.

James Simon, who financed the excavation, donated the bust along with other finds from the excavation to the Berlin museums in 1920.

According to the foundation, this history of excavations and the division of finds has been documented, processed and published.

From the Egyptian side there are always private initiatives for the return of Nefertiti.

According to the foundation, there is no such requirement on the part of the Egyptian state.

The altar of Pergamon dates from the first half of the second century before the turn of the century.

It stood on the castle hill of the city of Pergamon in Asia Minor and was discovered during excavations at the end of the 19th century.

The presentation in the eponymous Pergamon Museum on the Museum Island goes back to a treaty on the sharing of finds between the German government and the Ottoman Empire, from which Turkey emerged, after negotiations in 1878/79.

There are repeated attempts by Turkish parties with different levels of legitimacy towards a return.

dpa