With her almond-shaped eyes and striking cheekbones, Queen Nefertiti is regarded as a symbol of female beauty. Her bust is one of the most iconic images in the world — a crowd puller, attracting 500,000 visitors every year to the Altes Museum in Berlin.
But have we all been misled? Swiss historian, Henri Stierlin, has spent the past 25 years researching Nefertiti. He believes that the famous bust, allegedly discovered by Ludwig Borchardt in 1912, is a fake.
Stierlin claims that instead of being a 3,400 year old statue of an ancient Egyptian queen, the bust was commissioned by Borchardt himself and is modelled on his own wife. Is he right? How can we explain the remarkable condition of the bust, especially when compared with other objects from the same era?
In this unprecedented investigation we shadow specialist police units and investigative archaeologists to reveal a vast black market for priceless stolen antiquities.
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The Rouen Museum has just returned a severed Maori head, which has been in its collections for 150 years, to New Zealand’s Te Papa Institute. Behind this apparently insignificant piece of news lies a remarkable story.
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This documentary investigates the clash of principles between these rich museums and source countries. Is art universal and belong to humanity or is it right to return it to its country of origin?
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