Editor”™s Note: W.J. Elvin III”™s LiteratEye column about literary hoaxes is featured here, and only here, every Friday. This is a LiteratEye Extra:
LiteratEye Extra: Hitler’s Fake Nefertiti is Real. Maybe.
by W.J. Elvin III, May 11, 2009
Adolf Hitler, world-class crazy-ass psycho with a fascination for the occult, apparently had a real thing for ancient Egyptian beauty Nefertiti, co-regent and central figure in a religion introduced by her Pharaoh husband. Hitler had big plans for a stunning bust of her housed in the Berlin Museum.
There was a problem, though. Egypt was demanding return of the artifact. So, rumor had it, Hitler commissioned a fake to give back to Egypt. Then the original was lost in the Second World War and so, it has been believed, only the fake remains.
But researchers from Berlin’s Imaging Science Institute at Charite Hospital recently made a series of CT scans of the allegedly 3,400-year-old bust and have pronounced it the real deal.
At the same time, however, a Swiss art historian, Henri Stierlin, who has studied the case for 25 years, insists it is indeed a fake. He maintains it was created by a German artist using ancient pigments, at the request of the archaeologist credited with the find.
“Stierlin is not a historian. He is delirious,” Zahi Hawas, Secretary General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities told the news agency AlArabiya. Hawas is considered by many to be the world’s leading expert on ancient Egypt and its artifacts.
Hitler is quoted as having said: “Do you know what I’m going to do one day? I’m going to build a new Egyptian museum in Berlin “¦ I dream of it. Inside I will build a chamber, crowned by a large dome. In the middle, this wonder, Nefertiti, will be enthroned. I will never relinquish the head of the Queen.”
While the Nefertiti bust would be the centerpiece in his museum, Hitler’s plan included another huge work to be housed there that would overshadow it: a bust of himself.
photo: Wikipedia
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