Germany is willing to negotiate the return to Turkey of a Hittite sphinx that has been in Berlin for almost 100 years, Culture Minister Bernd Neumann has said.
The 3,300-year-old sphinx was part of a gate to the Hittite capital Hattuşa in modern-day Anatolia. It was excavated in 1907 and sent to Berlin for restoration and study about 10 years later, according to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. Turkey has been urging Germany to return it since 1938, the foundation said in a statement.
Neumann and his Turkish counterpart, Ertuğrul Günay, met Wednesday to discuss the sphinx’s return, according to a statement from the German Culture Ministry. They agreed to find a solution in a meeting in Turkey in April.
“I think it should be possible because it is a unique case with no parallels, so would not create any kind of precedent for other restitution demands,” Neumann said.
Germany has rejected Egyptian calls for the return of Queen Nefertiti’s bust from Berlin’s Neues Museum, saying the more than 3,000-year-old bust was legally exported after being excavated by a German archaeologist in 1912.
Turkey had threatened to close German excavations in Anatolia if the sphinx was not returned. Such an ultimatum “does not create the right climate for finding a positive solution,” Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, said Feb. 25.
The sphinx, one of a pair, was sent to Berlin for restoration in about 1916 along with 10,000 fragmented Hittite clay tablets damaged by fire, according to the foundation.
The second sphinx, which was in better condition, was returned to Istanbul in 1924 along with the first clay tablets to be restored. It is now in Istanbul’s Ancient Orient Museum, the foundation said.
It should be returned to where it belongs to as soon as possible. Like this there are other precious historic things were taken out of Turkey secretly.We should be insistent of demanding all that belong to Land of Anatolia.