went to Egypt and were amazed by all these intriguing picture-like signs on the temple walls," said Regulski. The exhibition does acknowledge attempts by non-Europeans to grasp the symbols but focuses on the race between Western scholars to crack the code. "For the first time in 3,000 years, Ancient Egyptians spoke directly to us," the museum's director Hartwig Fischer said. It explores the rich discoveries about life in ancient Egypt that came from unlocking the symbols. Regulski added that it was a "universal object" and "it doesn't really matter where it is, as long as it's available to people".Īctivists from a group called Culture Unstained protested in the museum on Tuesday calling for Cairo to release political prisoners including British activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, and criticising sponsorship by BP oil giant. The British Museum told AFP that Egypt has never made a formal request for the Rosetta Stone's return. Yet the anniversary exhibition is controversial to some.Įgyptian archaeologist and former antiquities minister Zahi Hawass recently released a petition for the return of the stone and other foreign-held treasures he considers "stolen". "We decided because the Rosetta Stone was such an important key to that decipherment that we will do this properly: with an exhibition that also features our star objects," said Ilona Regulski, curator of Egyptian written culture at the museum. The basalt slab dating from 196 BC was so crucial because it has inscriptions of identical meaning in three languages: hieroglyphs, an ancient Egyptian vernacular script called Demotic and Ancient Greek, which provided the translation key. The British Museum has displayed it since 1802. French troops had discovered the stone in the walls of an Egyptian fort in 1799 and gave it to British forces as part of a surrender agreement.
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