Nefertiti Research Paper

From playable chess pieces to functioning houses, 3D modeling/printing has been a major technological advancement and its pragmatic use brings light to new ideas. Advocates of this technology claim it is the future. No matter how big or small a project is a 3D printer can make it happen. So would it be possible to replicate an iconic sculpture that has been in solitary confinement and kept well guarded, deep within the Neues Museum of Berlin, Germany? Mysterious yet elegant in beauty and in power, Nefertiti was queen of Pharaoh Akhentaten from 1353 to 1336 B.C. Her reign after her husband’s death was a revolution of political power and worship of the sun god Aten, and quite possibly ruled the wealthiest period of Ancient Egyptian history.
Today, the bust of Nefertiti still remains in Berlin with the German foundation refusing any act to return her to her homeland in Egypt. As a result of this, a pair of Iraqi-German artists started an artistic intervention titled “The Other Nefertiti”. What does this have anything to do with 3D printing? Well, Jessica Lachenal from the Mary Sue stated, Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles pulled off what might be “one of the most digitally enhanced art heists in recent time” in ‘stealing’ the bust of Nefertiti and uploading it as a downloadable torrent 3D file for public use. How? Reports say Al-Badri tied an Xbox 360 Kinect Sensor to capture an accurate image of Nefertiti, while others speculate it was made possible by hacking into the server that contained the original scans and then released the plans online. Nonetheless, the “one object in the museum’s collection that’s off-limits to photographers” is now available on the World Wide Web. The artist’s reason: an act of defiance… by publicly releasing the 3D plans online, they’ve “effectively ‘de-looted’ the bust, placing it back into the hands of the people to where it belongs” to, says