4 ms·
Egypt Wants Its Rosetta Stone Back from the British Museum
- jfengel 4y agoIt's an interesting comparison with the Parthenon Marbles. The Marbles are nothing more than a relic of conquest to the UK. Much of the British Museum is a museum of British empire -- a significant historical event, to be sure, but from a purely historiographic point of view the Marbles make more sense at the (excellent) museum in Athens. The Rosetta Stone, by contrast, is a relatively unimportant object. Everybody has heard of it, but few know what it says or the person being commemorated. That's because its significance is in the role it plays in the translation of heiroglyphics -- in France. It is less clear, from a historiographic point of view, that its best context is in Egypt. I don't mean to detract from the simple argument that all of this is looted and should be returned on that basis -- emptying out not just the BM but also the Louvre and the Pergamon, among others. But the history of these objects did not stop with the end of the civilizations that produced them, and that is worth considering as well.