The Rosetta Stone

Museums have long been heralded as a great thing for society. They encourage learning about past societies and stress the importance of art in history. There are many different types of museums, art museums, history museums, science museums, etc. But in the last few decades, a darker side of museums has been revealed. With their artifacts being obtained either illegally or in dubious ways. With objects that were looted being bought and sold, their history being erased, and their ascetics becoming more important than historical significance. Even when objects are not obtained illegally, rules and laws can have changed over time to make the “legal” obtaining of an artifact, now suspicious. Take the Rosetta Stone for Example.

Backstory

The Rosetta Stone is one of the most iconic artifacts in recent history. Not only has it clarified our view of the past, but it also has become the name for a company that teaches languages, and a word commonly used in decoding ciphers. The Rosetta Stone is a dark-colored stele made of granodiorite. On it are 3 languages, Greek (54 lines), Hieroglyphics (14 lines), and Demotic (32 lines). The Rosetta Stone that we have is unfinished. It would have been part of a larger stone that stood 2 meters or 6.6 feet. The Rosetta Stone was created around 196 BCE. It is a decree about King Ptolemy V, at the time of his official coronation, he was only 13 years old at this time. It is a complex document that verifies the negotiation between two powerful groups of that time. By the time the Rosetta Stone was created, hieroglyphics had gone out of fashion for the most part. They were used solely by priests, and just a few hundred years later they had been completely forgotten. The decree is written in 3 languages; the hieroglyphics for the priestly decree, the Demotic because it was the native language and was used for daily purposes, and Greek as the administrative language. When people translated the first line of Greek it stated “​​This decree shall be inscribed on a stela of hard stone in sacred (hieroglyphic), native (Demotic), and Greek characters.”

Discovery and Translation

The Rosetta Stone was discovered in June of 1799 by the French during their occupation of Egypt. It was found by Pierre François Xavier Bouchard (1772–1832), who recognized the importance of seeing the three scripts written next to each other. It is named the Rosetta Stone because it was found in the city of Rosetta, which is now called Al- Rashid. The French tried to take the stone as a war trophy but after Napoleon’s defeat in 1801, the Stone went to the British under the Treaty of Alexandria, which had a section including the handing over of antiquities. Although the Rosetta Stone technically has three languages written on it, there is actually a fourth. The side of the Stone has “captured in Egypt by the British army 1801” and “presented by king George III” written on it. The stone has remained in the British Museum under registration number BM EA 24 since 1802, only once being removed during the 1st World War. The discovery of the Rosetta Stone represented big leaps for both political hegemony and scientific discovery. Figuring out the translation of the Rosetta Stone sparked competition in the academic world. Scholars would first translate the Greek and then worked on matching the Greek to the Hieroglyphics. Both Thomas Young and Jean-Francois Champollion were essential to decoding the Rosetta Stone, with Young discovering the name Ptolemy, and Champollion discovering that Egyptian Hieroglyphics indicated phonetic sounds.

"This stone so makes me think of how often Egypt has been the theatre of other 
peoples' battles. It's one of the earliest objects through which you can trace 
Western colonial interest in Egypt, because of course it was found by the French 
in the context of Napoleon's invasion of the country, and then appropriated by 
the British when they defeated him, and the French and the British argued over it.
No-one seems to have considered that it belonged to neither of them.
But Egypt's foreign rulers, from the Romans to the Turks to the British, 
have always made free with Egypt's heritage. Egypt, for two thousand years, 
had foreign rulers and in '52 much was made of the fact that Nasser was the 
first Egyptian ruler since the pharaohs, and I guess we've had two more since, 
although with varying results." 
- Ahdaf Soueif an Egyptian Novelist, Cultural and Political Commentator

The British Museum and Colonization

While the Rosetta Stone does represent many positives in terms of scientific discovery and understanding the past, there are also many negative aspects that stem from the displacement of it to the British Museum. The information that the British Museum provides on the Rosetta Stone is severely lacking. According to the online portal, the Rosetta Stone resides in the Egypt and Sudan department, it was aquisitioned in 1802, and was donated by King George III, its condition is fair (as it is incomplete), and it was exhibited “2010-2011, London, BM/BBC, ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’ and ‘2022-2023 13 Oct-19 Feb, London, BM, Hieroglyphs, Unlocking Ancient Egypt’” (The British Museum). The portal even states the dimensions, materials, findspot, excavator, production date, cultures/periods, and object type, yet there is nothing involving its removal from Egypt without Egyptian consent. The most common argument made is that France gave the Rosetta Stone to England both as a gift and as a recognized treaty, so England legally obtained it. There were also Egyptian generals who signed the Treaty of Alexandria so in a sense Egypt did allow for the removal of the Rosetta Stone. But since France was in Egypt as a colonial power, they had no right to give away something that wasn’t truly theirs. Is the “framed “export” of the Rosetta Stone a colonial “theft” that should be assuaged through repatriation to the modern Egyptian state” (Scalf)? According to  Egyptian archaeologist Dr. Zahi Hawass, “The Rosetta Stone was stolen. France took it and sent it as a gift, illegally, to England. This stone is the icon of Egyptian antiquities.” There is also the problem of coercion when arguing that the Egyptians allowed the British to take it. In a time of strife and confusion where one colonial power has been defeated and another is racing to take its place, there are both active and passive powers of coercion at work. The British Museum’s steadfast decision to keep the Rosetta Stone is a way of upholding colonialism.

For hundreds of years, Britain was one of the strongest colonial powers in the world. At its strongest, the British Empire had 57 colonies, territories, or protectorates. In the last few decades, Britain has lost much of its power, with many colonized nations claiming independence. This dramatic loss of power has led them to hoard everything that they have obtained during their time as a powerful nation. The Rosetta stone’s “current residence in the British Museum is a legacy of the imperial ambitions of France and England in their struggle to establish, maintain and extend colonial empires in the late 18th and early 19th centuries” (Scalf). We’ve seen the marks of this struggle still on the Rosetta Stone, where there is writing claiming it as property of the British. The arguments in the paragraph above that argue the legality of their obtaining of the Rosetta Stone are colonial arguments, made from a colonial state of mind. The idea of ownership and the power that comes from it is a colonial ideology that the British Museum is playing into. They refuse to acknowledge the conflict of their ownership of the Rosetta Stone and according to Dr. Zahi Hawass have had some problematic responses when talking about loaning artifacts back to their original country. Some museums have expressed concern over the guarantee that the artifacts would be returned back to them after their loan. Dr. Zahi Hawass responded by saying, “We are not pirates of the Caribbean. We are a civilized country. If I sign something I will do it.” The irony involving museums who obtained artifacts dubiously being worried about their return is equal parts funny and horrifying. All it does is strengthen racist ideals where Egypt is not a civilized enough country to follow the laws.

Artifacts: Owned or Honored

While Museums and the way they obtain artifacts can be problematic, the private market can be much worse. They will often use the same tricks of actively destroying historical evidence to make it harder to prove it was looted, but instead of doing it for “the greater good”, as museums say they do, they do it for the elevation of status. The items will often be hidden away in a room for only the buyer and their friends to see. There is the worry that when taking artifacts away from “prestigious museums” they will be lost to the private market, and their historical significance will disappear. This leads to the question of whether artifacts should be allowed to be owned. This is a difficult question to answer because of the quantities of artifacts, and the differing circumstances of the artifacts. Take many indigenous objects for example. When it is possible for them to be dated and their tribe to be found, I believe they should be taken from museums and returned home. Yes, we may lose them to the “private market” but we also have no right to keep them away from their home. Many indigenous objects actually have DNA and parts of the tribes embedded in them, such as with baskets. When they weave, the parts will pass through their mouths, so that a part of them is in the basket and they deserve to return home. With the Rosetta Stone and other classical artifacts, we either do not know the creator or do not have a direct line to the descendants of the creator. Because of this, I believe that the country of creation deserves total control of the objects. If they want to allow other museums to keep artifacts then that is okay, but if they are rallying for their return then they should be returned. Artifacts of this historical significance should not be able to be owned by a single person. Ownership of artifacts, both by museums and people has become more about prestige than about history. The British Museum is seen as a powerful institution because it “owns” all of these historically important artifacts. But if history is what museums supposedly find important, then why does it matter where the artifacts are?

Solution and ideas 🙂

It seems obvious to me, that the right thing to do is to send the Rosetta Stone back to Egypt. But that doesn’t mean that the British Museum and other museums cant still interact with the stone. Clicking on the lightbulb image below will bring you to a sketch I have made for a solution. I am not much of an artist so I will explain my reasoning to do. I believe that doing a complete and comprehensive 3D scan of the Rosetta Stone will be the first step. Using this scan I believe that we could make a hologram of the Rosetta Stone, which is the biggest drawing on the screen. There are 3 smaller boxes in the corner of the image. Since I’m not entirely sure how holograms work, I am assuming that they would need to be controlled by an iPad. The third box on the image is just the control screen. It would allow you to move the hologram around. Being able to fully rotate it and zoom in and out as you please. The first box would be a real-time camera of the Rosetta Stone in its new home in Egypt. In this, I am assuming that the Stone will go to a museum in Egypt and this image would allow you to see both the stone and the people coming to see it. The second box uses technology from “The Rosetta Stone Online Project” which is “the outcome of a hands-on university seminar on the digital online presentation of the Rosetta Stone. It is a cooperation of the German Excellence Cluster Topoi and the Department of Archaeology of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. For this project, the project leaders and the seminar participants combined their expertise in Egyptology, Ancient Greek Linguistics, General Linguistics, and Computer Sciences. A kernel part of the homepage is a full linguistic analysis of the trilingual text” (the Rosetta Stone Online Project). This website allows you to click on a section of the Rosetta Stone and it will translate each of the correlating sentences, complete with original spelling, glossing transliteration (with links to a dictionary), word-by-word translating, and a complete translation at the end. I think that all of these aspects together make a fair solution to sending the Rosetta Stone back to Egypt, and these holographic and interactive components could make it more fun for young people to learn about the Rosetta Stone and different languages. 

click here to go to The Rosetta Stone Online Project!

https://sk fb.ly/6stSI

Interactive Questions

1. Do you think that artifacts should be owned privately? Why or Why Not?
2. How can we stop Museums from upholding colonization?
3. Where do you think the Rosetta Stone Should be?
4. How has the legality of obtaining and owning artifacts changed over time?

Sources

Farrant, Theo. “The Rosetta Stone: 200 Years on and Calls for Repatriation Continue.” Euronews, 30 Nov. 2022, https://www.euronews.com/culture/2022/09/28/the-rosetta-stone-200-years-on-and-calls-for-repatriation-continue.

“A History of the World – about: Transcripts – Episode 33 – Rosetta Stone.” BBC, BBC, https://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/about/transcripts/episode33/.

Scalf, Foy. Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. “The Rosetta Stone: Unlocking the Ancient Egyptian Language.” ARCE, https://www.arce.org/resource/rosetta-stone-unlocking-ancient-egyptian-language.

“Rosetta Stone Row ‘Would Be Solved by Loan to Egypt’.” BBC News, BBC, 8 Dec. 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8402640.stm.