Prominent Egyptian historians have renewed a demand for the return of the Rosetta Stone from the British Museum to Egypt, 200 years after the deciphering of the slab unlocked the secrets of hieroglyphic script and marked the birth of Egyptology.
Key points
- The demands also reflect the growing acceptance towards the idea of Western countries returning historically and culturally important artefacts taken largely from the global South during the colonial era.
- Many such objects are housed in various museums or owned by private collectors in the West.
About Rosetta Stone
- The Rosetta Stone is a large stone slab with inscriptions on it and is believed to be a piece of a bigger rock.
- It has inscriptions in three scripts-hieroglyphs, Demotic (an ancient Egyptian script) and Ancient Greek, all of which convey a decree or public message.
- It was used by Frenchman Jean-Francois Champollion to decipher hieroglyphs from 1822, opening up understanding of ancient Egyptian language and culture.
- 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.
