Egypt Wants Its Rosetta Stone Back From the British Museum

Nearly 200 years after the Rosetta Stone was deciphered , unlocking the key to understanding Ancient Egyptian heritage , the iconic slab ride far from where it initiate . But a radical of Egyptian archeologist is hop to alter that , renewing a plea to return the Rosetta Stone back to its provenance .

The group launched a petition to call on country officials to submit a formal asking to England for the riposte of the Rosetta Stone , which is currently on display at the British Museum , Al - Jazeerareported . The petition has pull together around 2,500 signatures so far .

The Oliver Stone is part of a larger gemstone slab with a message write in code in three unlike transcripts ; hieroglyphics , demotic ( cursive Egyptian script for quotidian use ) , and Ancient Greek . When it was first get a line , nobody knew how to understand hieroglyphics , the language of the Ancient Egyptians . But in the early nineteenth hundred , scholars were able to use the Ancient Greek writing to crack the computer code of the Rosetta Stone , and finally , read the language of Ancient Egypt .

The Rosetta Stone has been housed at the British Museum since 1802.

The Rosetta Stone has been housed at the British Museum since 1802.Photo: Daniel Kalker (AP)

The significance of the Rosetta Stone holds especially truthful for Egyptians , allowing them to understand the account and culture of their ancestors . But as the British Museum remark on its website , the Rosetta Stone is , “ one of the most renowned object in the British Museum , ” even though the stone signifies the land ’s compound history . away from the Rosetta Stone , the British Museum has scores of stolen artifact that it refuse to return to their true proprietor .

But there may be hope that with enough pressure , the museum could relinquish some of the stolen piece of other multitude ’s account . In August , the British Museum agreed toreturn72 artifacts that were plunder from Nigeria over a hundred yr ago during a British military intrusion back to the Nigerien governance . Nigeria had been asking for its stolen artefact for decades before the British Museum finally decided to return them . The institution only relented after a 2018 endeavor to get Nigeria to accept a temporary loanword of the objects instead .

Egypt , on the other hand , has had no luck negotiating the return of its steal artifacts . The Egyptian governing has also been call for the return of the female chest of Queen Nefertiti from Germany for decades , but the German government has repeatedly refused to give back the 3,400 - year - old queen ’s statue . Egyptian artefact are litter all over the world in various exhibits , meanwhile , Egypt swear on its ancient history to promote its tourism industry . The manufacture apply a heftyworkforceof around 2 million people and is an important source of extraneous currentness for the country .

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