German museum confirms loan of disputed statue to Egypt

Apr 11, 2010, 11:51 GMT

Hildesheim, Germany - A German museum confirmed Sunday plans to lend its greatest treasure, the seated statue of Hemiunu, to Egypt for the 2013 opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza near Cairo.

Doubts over the loan cropped up after Zahi Hawass, the flamboyant chief of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities who visited Germany last month, called for the statue and other Pharaonic treasures to return to Egyptian permanently.

Hemiunu is believed to have been the architect of the Great Pyramid of Cheops at Giza. The life-size statue, depicting him in nothing but a loin cloth, is the top draw at the Roman and Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim, Germany.

Hawass has regularly insisted he also wants Germany to return the Berlin bust of Queen Nefertiti. The Germans have shrugged off the appeals, saying they know of no official claim by the Egyptian government that the treasures are Egyptian property.

Kristina Zappen of the Hildesheim Museum said there had never been any official request from Cairo to give the statue back. She confirmed an agreement had been reached on the 2013 loan and she added that it provided for the statue to then return to Germany.

Hildesheim was not even considering giving the statue back, she added. The whole museum collection was of honest provenance.

'Every item in our collection arrived in Germany legally,' she said. If the Egyptian government were to officially question the statue's ownership, the museum would have to reconsider the loan.

'The whole thing would have to be thought out again,' she said.

Hans-Joachim Gehrke, president of the German Institute of Archaeology, has similarly insisted in the past that Cairo has never officially claimed the bust of Nefertiti, an exquisite plaster and limestone head of a woman.

Hemiunu was a vizier under the 4th Dynasty, about 2,500 years before the Christian Era.