Egypt Calls on UK to Return Rosetta Stone

Egypt renewed its request for the British Museum to return the prized Rosetta stone to its country of origin.

In an interview with the Evening Standard, director of the new Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) Tarek Tawfik said he was engaged in a "vivid discussion" regarding the return of the stone, which had allowed 19th-century scholars to understand and translate Egyptian hieroglyphs for the first time in modern history.

"It would be great to have the Rosetta Stone back in Egypt, but this is something that will still need a lot of discussion and cooperation."

The British Museum, which hosts the stone as its most valuable possession, has long been reluctant to return it. A spokesperson from the museum recently claimed, "We have not received a request for the return of the Rosetta Stone from GEM."

Instead, she continued, Tawfik and British Museum director Hartwig Fischer had visited GEM last April, when Dr. Tawfik proposed virtual reality technology to allow visitors of the GEM to view the stone without requiring its presence. She quoted Dr. Tawfik as saying it was "a way of co-operation and means of complementing each other between the museums".

Rediscovered during Napoleon's 1798 campaign to Egypt, the stone acquired its name from its location near the Egyptian City of "Rashid", known in the west as "Rosetta".

It was transferred to British possession following France's defeat against the Brits and Ottomans in 1801, and finally, held in the British Museum since June 1802.

A single message by King Ptolemy V, engraved in three different languages (Ancient Greek, Demotic and hieroglyphs) allowed scholars of the 1800s to finally translate and understand the hieroglyphic language.

The artefact became a point of contention...