Prominent Egyptian archaeologist and former Antiquities Minister Zahi Hawass has launched a petition for the return to Egypt of the pharaonic bust of Queen Nefertiti from the Neues Museum in Berlin.

A petition by an ex-antiquities minister asks for the return of the bust, saying it was removed from Egypt illegally in the early 1900s.

Nefertiti’s famous painted limestone bust was uncovered at Tell el-Amarna, about 300km (185 miles) south of Cairo, in 1912 by a German archaeological mission, which shipped it to Berlin the following year.