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The British Museum has free ~20min tour guides scattered throughout the museum who begin at set times. I stumbled into the one for the Rosetta Stone and it was
by jonnybgood 4y ago
The British Museum has free ~20min tour guides scattered throughout the museum who begin at set times. I stumbled into the one for the Rosetta Stone and it was really informative.
- ourmandave 4y agoThere's been a bunch of articles lately about the British Museum under pressure to return artifacts to their original owners / nations. The argument being they don't need the original and could make a near perfect copy with 3D printing and display that.
- fknorangesite 4y ago> The argument being they don't need the original and could make a near perfect copy with 3D printing and display that. Well, also the argument that they were looted and stolen in the first place.
- adastra22 4y agoIt’s a controversial argument. Many of the chief pieces on display were officially purchased from the country in question.
- suzzer99 4y agoJust like a lot of land in the United States was purchased from some Native American chief who may have been bought off, or under duress to save his tribe.
- adastra22 4y agoSo can we reverse any trade because X centuries down the road we don’t like the outcome? I said it was controversial, not wrong. There are two sides to the argument.
- Thrymr 4y agoSpecifically, the Rosetta stone was looted by the French during Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, and then carted away by the British after they defeated the French. There are two sides to this, but none of them are Egyptian.
- ourmandave 4y agoNo, the Egyptians want their shit back.
- gherkinnn 4y agoWho are the Egyptians? The Arabs got there in 700AD, long after the Rosetta Stone had been engraved. Remnants of the Copts perhaps? Maybe the Greeks want a piece of it too. And it was Napoleon who found it, so surely Corsica has a claim as well. You have to tie yourself in to all sorts of knots to untangle this Ship of Theseus. And while where at it, all filth of Roman, Norse, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman descent better fuck out of GB. It belongs to the Celts and I want my Gaelic back.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- KoftaBob 4y agoAs somewhat of an aside from the debate on giving back artifacts, I have a fun fact: The Coptic Christians of Egypt and the Muslims of Egypt are largely the same ethnic/genetic group. Modern day Muslim Egyptians are descendants of Coptic Egyptians who converted to Islam at some point after the Arabs conquered Egypt. One of the (many) interesting things about Egypt is that despite being conquered by several foreign empires, their genetic/ethnic makeup has stayed largely consistent, with only minor intermixing from those foreign groups.
- krapp 4y agoSo "Egyptians" don't even really exist, but "the British" absolutely, unequivocally, 100% do, and the latter claim to the Rosetta stone is ironclad and irrefutable, whereas the former is basically fantasy. Shit like this is the reason half the world danced when the Queen died, you know.
- ourmandave 4y agoEvery piece has it's own story and a lot of research has to go into each one.
- poulpy123 4y agoThe Rosetta stone was looted from the French. The French invaded Egypt but didn't loot the Rosetta stone, it was just a rock used for a wall in a fort they were reinforcing. Egypt at the time was part of the ottoman empire. Egypt at the time of the Rosetta stone was Greek. The Greeks conquered it from a Persian empire. Neither Egypt now or Egypt in the 1800 are the Egypt of the time of Rosetta stone. So who should the real owner of the stone ?
- bobsmooth 4y agoI think the priceless historical artifacts should be kept where they can be properly maintained. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Museum_of_Brazil_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Museum_of_Brazil_fire
- ourmandave 4y agoI can take better care of the stuff I stole than you.
- LunaSea 4y agoApparently they can