Found in the United States: Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation recovers Egyptian stele that had been lost since the Second World War
Press release from 05/30/2017
Valuable faience stele resurfaced in Michigan after seventy years during research work / Parzinger thanks American museum for great gesture
A valuable Egyptian object that recently returned to Berlin can be seen again in the Neues Museum on Museum Island from mid-June. The upper part of a faience stele (ÄM 19718) was thought to have been lost since the end of the Second World War, along with numerous other objects from the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. It was identified in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan, USA, in connection with a scientific research project. This museum has now returned the piece to the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection of the National Museums in Berlin.
Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, says: "I would like to thank the Kelsey Museum for the uncomplicated return of the stele - a great gesture. After more than 70 years, it will now return to its place in the permanent exhibition of the Egyptian Museum on Museum Island Berlin."
The returned object is the upper part of a stele covered with a turquoise-blue glaze (Egyptian faience). This glaze makes the piece (made around 1250 BC) particularly valuable because the faience technique was rarely used for stelae in Ancient Egypt. The picture on the right shows the stela owner Ptahmose, the mayor of Memphis under Ramses II (ca. 1279-1213 BC). He raises both hands in worship of Osiris, the god of the underworld, and his divine consort Isis.
The stele was acquired by the National Museums in 1910 from an English collection and exhibited in the Neues Museum. During the Second World War, the museum was closed and most of the artefacts were moved out of storage to protect them. Only large, heavy sculptures and architectural pieces remained on the Museum Island. Many of them were damaged or destroyed after being hit by bombs. However, the faience stele with the inv. no. ÄM 19718 survived the bombing, as has been clear since its recovery. According to the inventory book, it was housed in a porphyry sarcophagus that remained in the museum's exhibition area, protected by sandbags, and was listed as missing after the war. It was donated to the Kelsey Museum in 1981 by Samuel Abraham Goudsmit.
Born in The Hague, Goudsmit (1902-1978) had moved to the United States shortly after completing his doctorate in physics to work at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. After his interest in Egyptology had already been awakened during his studies, he also built up a collection of antiquities over the years, which he later bequeathed to the Kelsey Museum. According to his personal notes, Gouds acquired the faience stele from a private collector in Germany in 1945. He was working there as the scientific director of the so-called Alsos Mission, a secret US Army operation to find out how far Nazi Germany's efforts to develop the atomic bomb had progressed.
The Dutch Egyptologist Nico Staring identified the stele in the Kelsey Museum by comparing a historical photograph from Berlin with a current colour photograph from Ann Arbor. He immediately informed the then responsible curators of both museums, who contacted each other. After some archival research, the American museum decided to return the stele to Berlin. It will be on display in the Mythological Hall (Room 1.11) in the Neues Museum from mid-June).