Egypt to Ask British Museum to Return Rosetta StoneBy STAN PARCHINDecember 14, 2009 Rosetta Stone (Egyptian, Ptolemaic Period, 196 B.C.). El-Rashid, Egypt. Grandiorite. 114.4 x 72.3 x 27.9 cm (45.0 x 28.5 x 11.0 in.). © The Trustees of the British Museum. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities and Deputy Minister of Culture, revealed to Reuters news service last week that he plans to formally ask the British Museum for the repatriation of the Rosetta Stone (196 B.C.) to his country. He wants it to be permanently displayed in Giza's Grand Egyptian Museum upon its completion in 2013. Dr. Hawass said, "I did not write yet to the British Museum but I will. I will tell them that we need the Rosetta Stone to come back to Egypt for good. The British Museum has hundreds of thousands of artifacts in the basement and as exhibits. I am only needing one piece to come back, the Rosetta Stone. It is an icon of our Egyptian identity and its homeland should be Egypt." Discovered by Napoleon Bonaparte's army in 1799, the Rosetta Stone was ceded to Great Britain in 1801 under the terms of the Treaty of Alexandria. It has been on public view in the British Museum since 1802. The grandiorite antiquity, with its inscriptions in hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek, was key to the decipherment of the ancient Egyptian language in 1822 by French scholar Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832).
Egypt to Ask British Museum to Return Rosetta StoneBy STAN PARCHINDecember 14, 2009
Rosetta Stone (Egyptian, Ptolemaic Period, 196 B.C.). El-Rashid, Egypt. Grandiorite. 114.4 x 72.3 x 27.9 cm (45.0 x 28.5 x 11.0 in.). © The Trustees of the British Museum. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities and Deputy Minister of Culture, revealed to Reuters news service last week that he plans to formally ask the British Museum for the repatriation of the Rosetta Stone (196 B.C.) to his country. He wants it to be permanently displayed in Giza's Grand Egyptian Museum upon its completion in 2013.
Dr. Hawass said, "I did not write yet to the British Museum but I will. I will tell them that we need the Rosetta Stone to come back to Egypt for good. The British Museum has hundreds of thousands of artifacts in the basement and as exhibits. I am only needing one piece to come back, the Rosetta Stone. It is an icon of our Egyptian identity and its homeland should be Egypt."
Discovered by Napoleon Bonaparte's army in 1799, the Rosetta Stone was ceded to Great Britain in 1801 under the terms of the Treaty of Alexandria. It has been on public view in the British Museum since 1802. The grandiorite antiquity, with its inscriptions in hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek, was key to the decipherment of the ancient Egyptian language in 1822 by French scholar Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832).
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