The Rosetta Stone helped break the code of Egyptian hieroglyphics – before being taken by Europeans.
200 years after the Rosetta Stone’s deciphering revealed the mysteries of the hieroglyphic script and heralded the advent of Egyptology, prominent Egyptian archaeologists have renewed their appeal for its return from the British Museum to Egypt.
The archaeologists’ online campaign has gathered 2,500 signatures so far and aims to “tell Egyptians what has been taken from them”, said Monica Hanna, acting Dean of the College of Archaeology in the Egyptian city of Aswan.
The Rosetta Stone dates to 196 BC and was unearthed by Napoleon’s army in northern Egypt in 1799. It became British property after Napoleon’s defeat under the terms of the 1801 Treaty of Alexandria, along with other antiquities found by the French, and was shipped to Britain. It has been housed at the British Museum since 1802.
Bearing inscriptions of the same text in hieroglyphs, Demotic (an ancient Egyptian script) and Ancient Greek, it was used by Frenchman Jean-Francois Champollion to decipher hieroglyphs from 1822, opening up an understanding of ancient Egyptian language and culture.
Egyptian archaeologists have previously called for its return, but are hoping that increasing moves by Western museums to return artefacts that were removed from countries under the colonial rule will help their cause.
“I am sure all these objects eventually are going to be restituted because the ethical code of museums is changing, it’s just a matter of when,” said Hanna.
“The stone is a symbol of cultural violence, the stone is a symbol of cultural imperialism.
“So, restituting the stone is a symbol of changing things – that we’re no longer in the 19th century but we’re working with an ethical code of the 21st century.”
A British Museum spokesperson said there had been no formal request from the Egyptian government for the return of the Rosetta Stone.
In an emailed statement the spokesperson noted that 28 stelae engraved with the same decree written by Egyptian priests had been discovered, starting with the Rosetta Stone in 1799, and that 21 remain in Egypt.