31.05.2017
Neues Museum
A treasure of Ancient Egypt recently returned to Berlin will soon be on display in the Neues Museum on Museumsinsel Berlin again.
The object concerned is the upper part of a stele (a commemorative pillar or slab) that was made around 1250 BC. It consists of limestone with a covering of turquoise-colored faience. This glaze makes the item especially valuable, because the faience technique was seldom applied to stelae in Ancient Egypt.
This upper part of a faience stele (ÄM 19718) had been considered lost since the end of the Second World War, like many items from the collections of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (National Museums in Berlin). It was identified in the course of academic research work at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology of the University of Michigan, U.S.A. The museum has now returned the object to the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung (Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection) of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
Hermann Parzinger, the President of the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation), welcomed the move: "I am very grateful to the Kelsey Museum for returning the stele as a matter of course – it is a noble gesture. Now, after more than seventy years, it will once again take its place in the permanent exhibition of the Ägyptisches Museum on Museumsinsel (Museum Island) in Berlin."