Egyptian Archaeologist Reveals Request

Recently, Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass has publicly requested that the Rosetta Stone, housed at the British Museum, be returned to Egypt. He announced that “a group of Egyptian intellectuals” plan to forward a signed petition to the European museums at the start of October. [i]

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The Rosetta stone is inscribed with various hieroglyphs, cursive Egyptian letters, and Ancient Greek. The British Museum acquired the Rosetta Stone in 1802 from France. The stone was obtained following a treaty established during the Napoleonic wars after Napoleon’s troops allegedly stumbled upon the stone while building a fort near Rashid, AKA Rosetta. [ii]

The discovery of the Rosetta stone resulted in archaeologists’ ability to decipher ancient hieroglyphs for the first time, as detailed in the video below.

The appeal to return the stone comes from former antiquities minister Zahi Hawass. Zahi Hawass believes that “the Rosetta Stone, along with the bust of Nefertiti (in Berlin’s Neues Museum), and the Dendera Zodiac ceiling (in the Louvre) should be returned permanently to Egypt. Many artifacts displayed by the British Museum were “looted from across the world during the eighteenth century.” [iii]

The ‘bust of Nefertiti’ is prominently displayed in the refurbished Neues Museum in Berlin. The Egyptian government has repeatedly requested that the bust be returned to Egypt.

Despite these requests, the museum asserts that “the bust was acquired legally by the German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt in 1912.” Borchardt allegedly excavated it from “the studio of the ancient Egyptian sculptor Thutmose.” He then transported his ‘finds’ to Germany “as part of an agreement with the Egyptian Antiquities Service. [iv]

Although “there is no proof that Borchardt’s dealings were explicitly illegal,” the Egyptian government has disputed the arrangement as early as 1925. In 2016, two German artists staged an event they dubbed “NefertitiHack.” The pair “secretly mapped the sculpture using a consumer-grade 3-D scanning device and then released the data openly under a Creative Commons license as seen in the video below [v]

Many believe using digitally-produced replicas in place of objects repatriated to their proper homes is necessary. It is alleged that “French, German, and British excavators were often supercilious in their defense of looting cultural heritage from classical sites in the Eastern Mediterranean.”

In 1858 Auguste Mariette, the first Conservator of Egyptian Monuments, “opposed training native Egyptians as professional archaeologists.” [vi]

Mariette believed if Egyptians learned to translate hieroglyphics and other languages, European archaeologists would be replaced. It is alleged that in the early 20th century, Nefertiti was presented as a black and white photograph.

The sculpture was played down as “unmemorable, forgettable, [and] prosaic.” This was allegedly so that the bust would not be required to be returned during the “50/50 division of cultural heritage between European licensees and the Egyptian state.” [vii]

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The resurfacing of requests to return the Rosetta Stone ignited the conversation that society worldwide may soon be forced to “consider the ways in which objects and their data are acquired, displayed, and shared,” with the debacle being proclaimed to “still produce inherent symbolic struggles,” because many important artifacts are found in Western museums or private collections instead of where they originate from. [viii]