Barely 48 hours after France handed over stolen relics to Egypt, the authorities have demanded that Britain returns the Rosetta Stone, an ancient Egyptian artifact.
The Egyptian Council of Antiquities (ECA), stated Thursday that the stone, which was discovered by Napoleon and given to Britain as part of a peace settlement more than 200 years ago, contains translations which first enabled archaeologists to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs.
As one of the British Museum’s most valuable and extraordinary items, trustees are unwilling to give it up on a permanent basis, and argue that it legally belongs to Britain.
Campaigners led by Dr Zahi Hawass, the Secretary General of the ECA, had initially asked to loan the stone but they were angered by the museum’s stringent security requirements and they are now insisting that it should be returned to Egypt permanently.
The pressure on Britain emerged two days after fragments of ancient wall paintings, which have been the subject of a long-running dispute between Egypt and French Louvre Museum, were handed over to the North African country.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy showed one of the five fragments to his Egyptian counterpart, Hosni Mubarak, some minutes after the two leaders arose from a memorable lunch in Paris on Tuesday.
Egyptian officials said the artifacts (a slab with sepia and blue tones featuring two figures in profile) from a 3,200-year-old tomb near Luxor, were stolen in the 1980s.
Egypt severed ties with the Louvre museum in October 2009, as France insistently claimed the fragments had been acquired “in good faith” in 2000 and 2003, amid lingering doubts as to whether the artifacts had been taken from Egypt illegally years before.
Egypt’s chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, has been leading aggressive strategies aimed at reclaiming what he insists are antiquities stolen from his country and sold to leading world museums.
Source African Press Agency
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