Editor’s Note: March 10, 2016

After this article was published, questions were raised by some 3-D scanning experts about the artists’ account of what they did. An article about the questions and the artists’ response can be found here.

BERLIN — Two German artists walked into the Neues Museum in central Berlin in October and used a mobile device to secretly scan the 19-inch-tall bust of Queen Nefertiti, a limestone-and-stucco sculpture more than 3,000 years old that is one of Germany’s most visited attractions. They used the data to create copies of the bust and delivered them to Egypt.

Then last December, in the tradition of Internet activism, they released the data to the world, allowing anyone to download the information and create their own copies with 3-D printers.

On Thursday, German museum authorities responded publicly for the first time. They were not amused.

Birgit Jöbstl, a spokeswoman for the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which oversees the national museum system in Germany, cast doubt on the quality and authenticity of the scan, saying in an email that the museum had “noticed the ‘artistic intervention’ regarding the Nefertiti bust, but sees no necessity to react.”