The Rosetta Stone: Part 4 – The Question of RepatriationSince…

The Rosetta Stone: Part 4 – The Question of Repatriation

Since 2003 Egypt has repeatedly made requests of the British Museum to repatriate (i.e. – return the stone to Egypt for it to remain on display there permanently) the Rosetta Stone with no success. Above (right) is a picture of a monument that uses a replica of the stone. Above (left) is the real stone as it can be seen in The British Museum. 

Egypt has since made similar requests in 2005, 2009 and finally again in 2013 when the Chief of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities proposed to drop his claim on the permanent return of the Rosetta Stone if the British Museum instead lent the stone to Egypt for just 3 months for the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza. The British Museum refused each request.

As it happens, many national museums oppose the repatriation of objects which scholarship – for one reason or another – considers an artifact of international cultural significance. In 2002, in fact, the British Museum, the Louvre, the Pergamon Museum, the MET, and some 30 other national museums released a rare statement in defense of denying repatriation claims, saying “objects acquired in earlier times must be viewed in the light of different sensitivities and values reflective of that earlier era…museums serve not just the citizens of one nation but the people of every nation.”

Interestingly, these sensitivities do not seem to extend to the fact that many of the “artifacts of international cultural importance” located in Western museums are colonial or wartime plunder. 

When it works, repatriation is a complex conversation that considers the cultural value of the object to the world and the nation in question, as well as the context in which that artifact was removed from its home state, and the security of that object in its home state. 

When it doesn’t, you get high-minded statements about museums in Western countries serving as bastions of global cultural sanctity that are perhaps a little tone deaf to the sordid realities of Western influence on global history.