Archaeologists demand the British Museum return Rosetta Stone to Egypt
More than 2,500 archaeologists have signed a petition for the British Museum to return the Rosetta Stone to Egypt.
This effort, which was launched last month, has urged the Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly to officially request the object’s return, along with 16 other artefacts that were illegally and unethically removed from the country.
Earlier this year, renowned Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass called for the return of the Rosetta Stone, and announced his plans to form the petition.
“Previously it was the government alone asking for Egyptian artefacts,” Monica Hanna, an archaeologist who co-founded the current restitution campaign, told CBS News. “But today this is the people demanding their own culture back.”
The Rosetta Stone, a 2,200-year-old granodiorite stele inscribed with hieroglyphs, Ancient Egyptian Demotic script, and Ancient Greek, was discovered in 1799 during a Napoleonic campaign in Egypt, in which Napoleon’s troops apparently stumbled upon the stone while building a fort near the town of Rashid, or Rosetta.
It was then acquired by the British Museum in 1802 from France under a treaty signed during the Napoleonic Wars.
“The confiscation of the Rosetta stone, among other artefacts, is an act of encroachment on Egyptian cultural property and identity, and is a direct result of cultural colonial violence against Egyptian cultural heritage,” states the petition. “The presence of these artefacts in the British Museum to this day supports past colonial endeavours of cultural violence.”
“History cannot be changed,” the document continues, “but it can be corrected, and although the political, military, and governmental rule of the British Empire withdrew from Egypt years ago, cultural colonisation is not yet over.”
The British Museum, however, maintains that there has never been a formal request by the Egyptian government for the stone’s return.
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