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The Nefertiti Hack
- 1. The Nefertiti Hack Costas Papadopoulos Assistant Professor in Digital Humanities & Culture Studies k.papadopoulos@maastrichtuniversity.nl
- 2. Background 1912 Nefertiti is uneartherd in Thutmose’s workshop in Tell el- Amarna, Egypt 1913 Nefertit i is shipped to Germany 1923 Nefertit i is exhibite d at the Egyptian Museum in Berlin During/ After WWII Nefertiti was moved to different locations 1946 Nefertit i was displaye d at the Museum Wiesbade n 1956 Nefertit i was moved to Dahlem Museum, Berlin 1967–2005 Nefertit i was moved to the Egyptian Museum in Charlott enburg 2005 Nefertit i was moved to Altes Museum 2009 Since 2009, Nefertit i is exhibite d at Neus Museum, Berlin. Photos: https://www.smb.museum/en/museums-institutions/aegyptisches-museum-und- papyrussammlung/collection-research/bust-of-nefertiti/discovery-and-partage/
- 3. Background: The Partage House Altar depicting Akhenaten, Nefertiti and Three of their Daughters, limestone, New Kingdom, Amarna period, 18th dynasty, c.1350 BCE (Ägyptisches Museum/Neues Museum, Staatliche Museen zu BerlinNeus Museum Berlin, Museum of Berlin Nefertiti Bust, Egypt, Tell el-Amarna, New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1351–1334 BC, height: 49 cm; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung / Sandra Steiß
- 4. The Controversies https://www.pressreader.com/uk/bbc-history- magazine/20171228/282956745523737 (image by Ludwig Wegmann via Wikimedia, originally provided by the German Federal
- 5. The Controversies Huppertz, A., Wildung, D., Kemp, B. J., Nentwig, T., Asbach, P., Rasche, F. M., & Hamm, B. (2009). Nondestructive insights into composition of the sculpture of Egyptian Queen Nefertiti with CT. Radiology, 251(1), 233-240.
- 6. The Other Nefertiti Aksioma - Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2017. Photo: Jure
- 7. https://nefertitihack.alloversky.com/ “Nefertiti is returning to the place where it was found. For the first time since the sculpture was excavated and stolen over 100 years ago, the iconic artefact will be shown in Cairo….Al-Badri and Nelles scanned the head of Nefertiti without permission of the museum, and they hereby announce the release of the 3D data under a Creative Common License”
- 9. How did they do it?
- 10. But did they really do it?
- 11. The Artists’ Response Maybe it was a server hack, a copy scan, an inside job, the cleaner, a hoax. It can be all of this, it can be everything...The whole question about originality and authenticity is the same in data as well as in artifacts, and as well in our effort. And, of course, that is our point...museums are telling fictional stories, their stories, just because they control the artifacts and the way of representation.
- 16. “Those rules only matter if the institution imposing them actually has an enforceable copyright. … There is no reason to think that an accurate scan of a physical object in the public domain is protected by copyright in the United States.” Michael Weinberg
- 17. 3D & Copyright Representational vs. Expressive 3D Scans Weinberg, M. (2016). 3D Scanning: A World without Copyright. Whitepaper. Shapeways. https://www.shapeways.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/white-paper-3d-scanning-world- without-copyright.pdf
- 18. The head of Nefertiti represents all the other millions of stolen and looted artifacts all over the world currently happening, for example, in Syria, Iraq, and in Egypt…Archaeological artifacts as a cultural memory originate for the most part from the Global South; however, a vast number of important objects can be found in Western museums and private collections. We should face the fact that the colonial structures continue to exist today and still produce their inherent symbolic struggles. Nora Al Badri, The Other Nefertiti
- 19. The Nefertiti Hack Costas Papadopoulos Assistant Professor in Digital Humanities & Culture Studies k.papadopoulos@maastrichtuniversity.nl
Editor's Notes
- In the next few minutes I will talk to you about an artistic intervention from a few years ago that I have always found fascinating especially because of the discussions and debates it has generated. The so-called Nefertiti Hack, or ‘The Other Nefertiti’ as its two artists named it. And although the original intervention dates back to 2016 it resurfaced a few months ago in the context of the celebrations for the New Egyptian museum and The Pharaohs' Golden Parade. But let’s take things from the beginning….
- Very few artefacts have been admired and copied as much as the bust of Nefertiti. It was unearthed in 1912 in Amarna, Egypt. It is dated in the mid 14th century BCE (1345 BC). The site was excavated by a German archaeological team and as was typical of all foreign excavations, toward the end of the excavation campaign, there was a partage to equally divide the finds between the two groups.
- And this was done only with pictures. The person who oversaw the excavation presented the pictures of the finds and then the two sides created a list. At the top of the list for the Egyptian side was an altarpiece now known as the “Stele of Akhenaten and his family”; on the German side the bust of Nefertiti was listed in this position as an object of equal value. And there are many rumours about these negotiations, for example, that the German archaeologist diminished the bust's value by arguing that it was made of Gypsum and showing a photograph that concealed the bust's beauty.
- Nefertiti was shipped to Germany in 1913. The bust was revealed to the public ten years later as part of the Egyptian Museum of Berlin. During and after WWII the bust was moved to different locations, including the cellar of the Prussian Governmental Bank and a salt mine in Thuringia. It was moved to different museums from 1946 until 2009. Since then, it is exhibited in the renovated Νόιες (Neues) Museum in Berlin. Since the public display of the bust in Germany, in 1923, Egypt has repeatedly asked for its repatriation – with the most recent one last year. However, Germany has denied all such requests, even despite the threats from Egypt to ban the exhibitions of Egyptian artefacts in Germany. Among the various controversies that the bust has sparked is the one that claims that it is fake, either created by Borchardt to test ancient pigments or crafted by Hitler's orders as the original was lost in WWII. -- was publicly displayed at the Museum Wiesbaden until 1956 when it was moved to west Berlin, at the Dahlem Museum. From 1967 to 2005 the bust was moved to the Egyptian Museum in Charlottenburg. In 2005 it was moved to the Altes Museum and since 2009 it is exhibited in the renovated Neus Museum.
- However, a computed tomography scanning of the bust in 2009 (Huppertz et al.) proved its genuineness. And there are many more controversies, especially in terms of cultural appropriation, but we don’t have the time to delve into these now…because
- what I want to really talk to you about is another controversy that was sparked by the 2016 artistic intervention 'The Other Nefertiti' by two German artists, Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles (Νέλς). And what you see on your screen is the two artists posing next to a life-size 3D printed Nefertiti bust.
- In 2016, the two artists released this website which included a hi-resolution 3D model of the bust, under a Creative Commons Licence for anybody to 'access, study, print or remix’ it. A digital version of the bust although existed long before this intervention, it was never released to the public. As the two artists said ‘Nefertiti is returning to the place where it was found. For the first time since the sculpture was excavated and stolen over 100 years ago, the iconic artefact will be shown in Cairo….Al-Badri and Nelles (Νέλς) scanned the head of Nefertiti without permission of the museum and they hereby announce the release of the 3D data under a Creative Common License’
- As a proof of how the two artists did it, they released a video that shows them scanning the bust in the museum. As you can see in the video, the two artists entered the museum together. Nelles (Νελς) is video recording Al-Badri, who has a scanning device hidden under her scarf. The video shows her going around the display case, and revealing the device to 3D capture the bust.
- For those of you who are into gaming you may remember Kinect that was released my Microst 10 years ago. Essentially, Kinect was a motion capture device that worked as an interface that allowed playing by using your body and gestures. Essentially, recording movement in 3D. And when this device was released fascinated computer engineers so much that they started modifying it to use it as 3D scanner. Because that was essentially what the device did: identified and captured elements of three dimensional space. *And this is the device that Al-Badri had under her scarf.
- But did they really do it? Did they use this device to scan the bust and produce a 3D model? The answer is No! And this is for many reasons: The 3D model they released is of really high quality and Kinect could not produce such high-end results The bust is in a glass display case. Glass, and reflections by lights and people are the enemy of 3D scanning. These devices work by emitting a laser or light pattern and these get distorted by glass or reflections. Also, in order to produce an accurate 3D model, the whole object needs to be sufficiently scanned. Based on the position of the kinect sensor, the upper part of the bust was not in the field of view and therefore the amount of detail produced cannot be justified. Everything pointed to a hoax. It seems that the artists were not alone in this intervention. It is not clear with whom they collaborated but there is a chance that the 3D model was an internal leak, since the museum had already produced a high-quality scan of the Nefertiti bust in the past.
- To these allegations the two artists responded that “Maybe it was a server hack, a copy scan, an inside job, the cleaner, a hoax. It can be all of this, it can be everything...The whole question about originality and authenticity is the same in data as well as in artifacts, and as well in our effort. And, of course, that is our point...museums are telling fictional stories, their stories, just because they control the artifacts and the way of representation.”
- Despite this controversy, it is very interesting to see how the public and other artists responded to this intervention by 3D printing in different materials, remixing it, producing artistic interventions and interactive exhibits, as well as digital artworks.
- After the hoax heist, Cosmo Wenman, an artist specializing in 3D, and also an open access activist, launched his own campaign to acquire the museum’s original scans. He was one of the first who argued that Al-Badri and Nelles could not have done it themselves. Therefore, his motivation was to compare the model they released with the model that the museum already had In August 2016,, he sent the Egyptian Museum a request for the scan, citing German freedom of information laws, which grant everyone an unconditional right to access official information from federal agencies. The museum quickly referred the matter to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which oversees Berlin's state museums. When it received my records request, it acknowledged the existence of the Nefertiti scan and acknowledged that the organization was required by law to give access to it. But the used the ‘gift shop defense’ declared that directly giving copies of the scan data would threaten its commercial interests“ The foundation offered to let Wenman "inspect" the data in a controlled setting, at the German consulate in Los Angeles. but the consulate then mysteriously withdrew its offer to assist. Instead, SPK made arrangements for me to inspect the scan at the Los Angeles office of the law firm WilmerHale, one of the most expensive, well-connected law firms in the world.
- The foundation had provided a slow, underpowered laptop that was barely capable of displaying the large files. Wenman argues that it was simply impossible to effectively examine the scan, let alone learn anything new about the original artifact. He therefore made a new freedom of information request, this time for info about the revenue the museum had from the Nefertiti scan (because that was their argument). Finally, he asked them if they would accept a financial donation in exchange for making their Nefertiti data freely available to the public. The foundation rejected the idea of accepting a donation in exchange for unrestricted public access to the Nefertiti scan, but it invited Wenman to negotiate over terms and a price for a license to use the scan for his own commercial purposes. Also, they confirmed that they had earned less than 5,000 euro, total, from marketing the Nefertiti scan, or any other scan for that matter. The gift shop defense essentially fell apart.
- A USB drive containing the Nefertiti scan. SPK reiterated that it had no legal obligation to provide the data in this direct format. This was only to address Wenman’s specific concerns about being able to examine it effectively. Wenman has produced a 35page document that outlines the whole process of negotiation and discussions with authorities and so forth.
- But the 3D file also included something very interesting. They had digitally etched a Creative Commons Attribution copyright notice at the bottom of the sculpture. The license outlines three conditions for use of the scan: The model must be attributed to the museum, it cannot be used for commercial purposes and anything made from it must be available for reuse by others. Michael Weinberg, from the NYU School of Law (Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy), notes that * “Those rules only matter if the institution imposing them actually has an enforceable copyright. … There is no reason to think that an accurate scan of a physical object in the public domain is protected by copyright in the United States.”
- Copyright in particular is still a grey area when it comes to 3D technologies. In a recent whitepaper, Weinberg (2016) argues that there is a difference between representational and expressive 3D scans. In the first case, the 3D model is an exact copy of the original, and the person who is producing it, only intends to create an accurate digital representation of the original. On the other hand, expressive scans are used to produce another work of art based on the original, which may have some resemblance to it but it is not its exact representation. Therefore, the scan is the result of a creative approach that involves much more than the technology used in the capturing process. This may mean that in the case of representational scans, the copyright may be retained by the owner of the original, while in the case of expressive scans, copyright of the digital may stay with the person/team who created the digital object.
- The (3D) digitisation of heritage artifacts brings to the fore questions in relation to ownership, provenance, and authenticity. Who owns the digital data? Is it the institutions that own the original artefacts or do notions of ownership collapse in the digital realm? Are the digital objects and their remixes less authentic in comparison to the original? Do they retain the aura of the original or do they generate a new aura as the result of the different types and levels of engagement with the public? the ethical dimension of 'hyperownership', i.e. when the rightful owners of an artefact that is part of the public domain may decide to exert their rights, e.g. by maintaining control over copying or use of copies. This will ultimately bring economic benefits (while protecting the artefacts), however, the question that we should ask here is: is it ethical to do so? Should the distribution of public domain artefacts be allowed or even encouraged or shall they remain part of cultural and political hegemonies (χιτζέμονις) and authorised heritage discources? In 2015, artists Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles intervened in order to disrupt this “digital colonialism.” drawing attention to hoarding practices not only of ancient collections but also of their digital counterparts. The hack used the tools of “data collection and presentation to undo the regimes of authority and property over which the museum still asserts sovereignty (σόβερντυ).” Thank you! ------ Haidy Geismar Museum Object Lessons for the Digital Age the hack drew “attention to museum hoarding [practices] not just of ancient collections but of their digital doubles.” Such museum interventions also underscore that the “digital repatriation” of objects by museums can never replace physical repatriation.