Egyptian archaeologists ask the British Museum to return the Rosetta Stone

A group of prominent Egyptian archaeologists has launched a petition addressed to the Government of their country to submit a formal request to repatriate the famous Rosetta stone, a stela fragment from 196 before our era that allowed ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics to be deciphered two years ago. centuries and is in the British Museum.

The promoters of the petition consider that this object, along with 16 others that they also claim, left Egypt illegally at the beginning of the 19th century and maintain that its presence in the London museum perpetuates a colonial situation.

The lawsuit claims that the Rosetta stone was war loot taken by British troops and criticizes the fact that its country of origin is deprived of both the recovery of a key piece of its cultural heritage and a process of repairing the damage caused by centuries of violence and colonial occupation.

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“We have been working on this petition for the last two years, since July 2020. And we wanted to launch it [now] with the memory of the 200 years of the deciphering of the Rosetta stone”, explains archaeologist Monica Hanna, acting dean of the Faculty of Archeology and Cultural Heritage at the university in Aswan, in southern Egypt, and one of the leaders of the repatriation campaign.

The Rosetta Stone is a fragment of an ancient stela on which a decree issued in the city of Memphis in the time of Pharaoh Ptolemy V (204-180 BC) is inscribed.

The object is unique because it contains the same inscription in three languages ​​– hieroglyphics, demotic and Greek – which made it easier for the French historian Jean-François Champollion in 1822 to decipher ancient Egyptian writing and lay the foundations of Egyptology.

The Rosetta Stone was found a few years earlier, in 1799, in a Mamluk-era fort in the city of Rosetta, once Egypt's main port center, by members of Napoleon Bonaparte's French expedition that occupied the country between 1798 and 1801. This last year, British troops defeated the Gauls and both sides signed a treaty that, in one of its articles, stipulated that the French must hand over all the antiquities they had discovered to the British-Ottoman army.

Among those objects was the stone.

For this reason, the request to repatriate her indicates that Egypt was under occupation and that it did not have sovereignty over its patrimony when said treaty was signed, and also considers that it violates customary international law.

The request wants to go further by pointing out that the return would be a reparation for historical injustices.

“Before, most repatriation requests were made on behalf of the government, but this time we are changing the dynamic.

We want the official request to be made by the people and the government to act on their behalf.

We believe that this route is much more powerful, it has a different impact and changes the narrative that it is not the Executive, but the people who demand the return of stolen property", declares Hanna, who advances that the Egyptian Prosecutor's Office has already been put in contact them to study the case.

The initiative also believes that the return of a piece of the Rosetta Stone's significance provides a powerful opportunity for the UK to demonstrate moral leadership, supporting the repair of wounds inflicted by colonial powers.

One of the examples on which they rely is that of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which in 2010 voluntarily returned to Egypt 19 objects from the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

The British, which this Thursday, October 13, has inaugurated an exhibition on hieroglyphs and ancient Egypt mounted around the Rosetta stone, affirms that it does not contemplate the possible repatriation.

A spokesman for the institution has assured this newspaper that "there has been no formal request from the Egyptian Government" and points out that Egypt already has twenty pieces similar to Rosetta that also help understand hieroglyphs.

However, in Hanna's eyes, it is a baseless argument.

“If you have five children and someone kidnaps one of you, would [she justify herself by saying] that you already have four and that one can be kidnapped?”