The renewed campaign for the return from Germany of the iconic bust is among plans for the return of other artifacts to enhance the exhibits at the new Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza.

The Egyptian government said it has sent an official petition to German authorities asking for the return of the 3,300-year-old limestone bust of the ancient Queen Nefertiti. Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the council had sent a letter requesting the bust to Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.

Egyptian demands for the bust of ancient queen Nefertiti to return to Cairo fell on deaf ears, as Germany's State Minister for Culture Bernd Neumann said the statue belonged in Germany. Egypt's antiquities chief Zahi Hawass announced last week that he was about to formally request Nefertiti's return to Cairo. Neumann insisted that the bust was lawfully acquired in 1913 by the German Oriental Company, and was later rightfully passed to the Prussian state.

Berlin responded cooly on Friday to renewed demands from Cairo that the prized bust of Egyptian Queen Nefertiti should be returned to its country of origin from its current home in a Berlin museum. 'A request from Egypt to return (Nefertiti) has not reached us yet,' said a spokeswoman for the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which runs the Berlin museum housing the 3,500-year-old sculpture. She referred to a previous statement which denied any Egyptian claim to the bust.

The Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) will form a committee to be headed by Nabil el-Arabi, head of the International Arbitration Center and former judge at the International Court of Justice, to prepare a legal request for the return of the Nefertiti bust from Berlin museum.

New tests show the limestone and plaster bust of Queen Nefertiti is too fragile to fly home to Egypt for a temporary exhibition, the Berlin museum that owns the disputed artwork said Tuesday. It issued the statement two days after the Egyptian Museum's director, Friederike Seyfried, met in Cairo with Egypt's antiquities chief, Zahi Hawass. She said she did not negotiate over the 3,500-year-old bust with Hawass.

German authorities on Monday again rebuffed Egyptian claims to the rightful ownership of a 3,400-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti, after a high-level meeting in Cairo. Friederike Seyfried, director of the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection at the Neues Museum in the German capital, said Cairo had clear evidence that Berlin's acquisition of the priceless sculpture nearly a century ago was legal.

The talks between Zahi Hawass and the director of the Egyptian Papyrus Collection Friederike Seyfried at Berlin's Neues Museum has been postponed to december 20, 2009.

A German antiquities expert will attend talks next month to discuss Egypt’s demand for the return of a 3,500-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti. Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt’s antiquities council, said that a meeting planned in Egypt on Dec. 8 to discuss the possession of the statue would be attended by the director of the Egyptian antiquities department at the Berlin museum.

The Nefertiti sculpture has been in Germany since 1913. But it is only now that Egypt is demanding that this fragile and haunting object, perched alone in a domed room that overlooks the length of the museum, be returned. In interviews with Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger and Spiegel Online, Mr. Hawass said that an official investigation had begun into how Nefertiti arrived in Germany. “If she left Egypt illegally, which I am convinced she did, then I will officially demand it back from Germany,” he said in both interviews.