Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles, an Iraqi/German artistic duo, covertly scanned a famous looted Egyptian treasure, the Bust of Queen Nefertiti, from its contested perch in Berlin’s Neues Museum.

The hi-rez 3D file is now free to download and print – the artists have printed their own full-size epoxy resin replica.

The original is the crown jewel of the Neues Museum, but Egyptian curators have long agitate for its repatriation to Egypt – it was looted from an Egyptian site in Amarna in 1912 by German archaeologists. The artists have donated their replica bust to the Cairo museum.

The Neues Museum is believed to have made its own scan of the bust, but it does not share 3D models of its collection as a rule, and has a generally guarded posture towards such »