German art experts deny that Nefertiti was taken out of Egypt illegally.

Mr. Hawass made his comments just weeks after Egypt’s culture minister, Farouk Hosny, complained over his failure to win election as the new director of the United Nations culture agency, Unesco, based in Paris.

Once considered a front-runner, Mr. Hosny stirred controversy because of remarks made in 2008, when he told the Egyptian Parliament that he would burn Israeli books if he found them in a library in Egypt.

Even though he distanced himself from those remarks, the United States, France and others fought his appointment.

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A German Foreign Ministry official said there was “no connection between the Egyptian request to have Nefertiti returned and the outcome of the Unesco vote.” The official, who requested anonymity according to diplomatic protocol, would not say how Germany voted.

Days after Mr. Hosny’s defeat, Mr. Hawass accused France of stealing antiquities — including five painted wall fragments dating from the Pharaohs that ended up in the Louvre in 2000 and 2003 — and insisted that they be returned.

After Egypt threatened to suspend cooperation for exhibitions organized with the Louvre as well as any work done by the Louvre on the pharaonic necropolis of Saqqara, south of Cairo, France’s culture minister said his country was ready to return the antiquities if they were stolen.

In the case of Nefertiti, Mr. Hawass said that Egyptian officials may have been misled over how the bust had been taken to Germany in 1913, but several German art experts disagreed.

“There was a complete understanding about what would remain in Egypt and what would be taken to Germany,” said Monika Grütters, an art historian and cultural expert in the Christian Democratic Union, the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel. She added, “The process was legal.”

According to Der Spiegel, a document written in 1924 that was found in the archives of the German Oriental Company recounted a meeting in 1913 between a senior Egyptian official and the German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt, who found the bust during a dig in 1912.

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The secretary of the German Oriental Company, who was present at the meeting, said it had been called to divide up the spoils of the dig between Germany and Egypt. He claimed that Mr. Borchardt “wanted to save the bust for us.”