Artists Have Secretly 3D-Scanned Nefertiti’s Bust For Anyone to Print

If you ’ve ever fancied receive Nefertiti ’s alikeness on your shelf at home , it ’s now eminently achievable . A pair of artists have covertly three-D - scan the illustrious bust in its museum circumstance , making the data publically available — and they even plan to exhibit a printed version back in Egypt .

While archaeologistsstill search for Nefertiti ’s grave , her bout — discovered in an ancient Egyptian workshop in 1912 — is known the world over . But the carving itself resides in the Neues Museum in Berlin , Germany , where it ’s strictly guarded . Even 3D scans of the piece stay under their control .

Artists Nora Al - Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles , however , believe in making “ ethnic object publically accessible . ” So they coiffure off to the Neues Museum with Microsoft Kinects enshroud beneath their scarves and 3D scanned the thing . you may watch them do it in this video .

Now , they’vereleased the three-D scan as an STL filethat anyone can download to utilise as they see fit .

The bust is emblematic of modern tension about antediluvian artifact . While it was once the grammatical case that such piece were automatically shipped to a European museum and get down up into huge aggregation , there ’s now a growing shoal of persuasion which believes they should be held closer to home , in their body politic of root . Al - Badria and Nelles certainly think so . They ’re putting a 3D - print version on showing in Cario , andexplain on their website that :

For the first sentence since the sculpture was excavated and stolen over 100 yr ago , the iconic artefact will be shown in Cairo … With the data leak as a part of this rejoinder tale we want to activate the artifact , to inspire a critical re - judgment of today ’s conditions and to overcome the colonial notion of possession in Germany .

William Duplessie