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.

Zahi Hawass, the secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) had said last year that the coffin likely belongs to pharaoh Ames of the 21st Dynasty, which ruled over Egypt from 1070-945 B.C. The nearly 5-foot-long wooden coffin was confiscated by U.S. customs officials at Miami International Airport from a Spanish merchant in 2008. The dealer did not possess the necessary documentation to prove ownership of the artifact.

Egypt's Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni and Dr. Zahi Hawass returned a piece of red granite belonging to an ancient Egyptian temple to its rightful place - the base of Amenemhat I's naos. The naos piece was returned to Egypt last October by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, after it was purchased by the Museum from an antiquities collector in New York.

Parliament amended Egypt's antiquities law on Monday to bring in stiffer punishments for the theft and smuggling of relics while granting patent rights to the country's antiquities council. The amendment requires Egyptians who have antiquities to report their possessions to the Supreme Council of Antiquities, headed by Zahi Hawass, in six months. The sale of antiquities is still banned.

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.

France has handed over to Egypt five disputed, frescoed fragments that were held by the Louvre museum in Paris. French President Nicolas Sarkozy presented one of the slabs, or steles, to his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak, who was on a visit to Paris.

France will hand back to Egypt five stolen relics on Monday when President Hosni Mubarak visits Paris, ending a row over the wall fragments sold to the Louvre. President Nicolas Sarkozy will confirm during his luncheon with Mubarak at the Elysee palace on Monday the decision to return the 3,000-year-old relics from Luxor's Valley of the Kings, aides said Thursday.