Recently, exchanges of accusations between museums throughout Europe and Africa regarding the ownership of important archaeological objects and findings have increased. Now, the Egyptians are demanding that the British Museum return the “Rosetta Stone”, an ancient Egyptian granodiorite stele, on which a royal decree from 196 BC was engraved. The inscriptions on the stone became a breakthrough in deciphering the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, after it was taken from Egypt by the forces of the British Empire in 1801.
Monica Hanna, Dean of the Arab Academy of Science, said that “the holding of the stone by the British Museum is a symbol of Western violence against Egypt.” The stone was associated with the imperial battles between Great Britain and France, after Napoleon’s military occupation of Egypt, when French scientists uncovered the stone in 1799, in the town of Rashid in the north of the country, known to the French as “Rosetta”. When the British defeated the French in Egypt, more than a dozen antiquities were handed over to the British, as part of the terms of the cease-fire agreement in 1801.
Meanwhile, the former Minister of Antiquities of Egypt, That’s right, joined the request to return the find to his country and said that “it is a war booty that was taken illegally”. According to him, “Egypt was not a party to the agreement between the British and the French in 1801. The British Museum, for its part, replied that “the treaty from 1801 includes the signature of an Egyptian representative”, when the reference is to the Ottoman admiral who fought alongside the British against the French.
Also, the British Museum also stated that the Egyptian government has not submitted an official request for the return of the find. It was also said that “there are 28 known copies of that engraved decree and 21 of them remain in Egypt”. The debate over Ibn’s original copy stems from the significance it gives to Egyptology. The tablet carved in 2 BC contains three translations referring to the arrangement between Ptolemy II and a sect of Egyptian priests. The first inscription is in classical hieroglyphs, written in cursive script, and the third copy is in ancient Greek.
The stone is one of more than a hundred thousand Egyptian and Sudanese relics housed in the British Museum. A large percentage of the remains were obtained during Britain’s colonial rule in the region, from 1883 to 1953. While in some cases, findings are indeed returned to the country of origin by court ruling, other times it is voluntary, symbolizing an act of atonement for a historical injustice.