Global Calls Renewed for the Return of the Rosetta Stone to Egypt

Nevine El-Aref , Wednesday 24 Dec 2025

More than two centuries after it unlocked the language of the ancient Egyptians, the Rosetta Stone remains at the centre of an unresolved global debate, as renewed calls grow louder for its restitution from the British Museum to its homeland.

Every few years, the question of the Rosetta Stone resurfaces, sometimes quietly at times, forcefully at others, echoing across academic circles, cultural institutions, and public discourse worldwide. The latest resurgence came in 2022, a year laden with symbolism as the world marked the bicentenary of Jean-François Champollion’s decipherment of hieroglyphs, an achievement that gave birth to modern Egyptology and forever changed humanity’s understanding of ancient Egypt.

That renewed momentum has since converged with another landmark moment: the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in early November this year, a flagship institution envisioned as the most comprehensive repository of Egypt’s heritage. Together, these milestones have reignited a broader conversation about cultural ownership, historical justice, and whether the Rosetta Stone should finally return to its homeland.

The Rosetta Stone was originally discovered in 1799 in the Nile Delta town of Rosetta by soldiers serving in Napoleon Bonaparte’s expedition to Egypt. Its fate, however, was swiftly shaped by the shifting fortunes of empire. Following the defeat of the French forces by the British, the stone was surrendered as part of the military capitulation. Before surrendering it, French scholars swiftly produced copies of the inscribed text for study, while the original artefact was transported to Britain. In 1802, it was placed on public display at the British Museum in London, where it has since become one of the institution’s most visited and emblematic objects.

Dating to 196 BCE, the Rosetta Stone bears a decree issued by King Ptolemy V, carved in three scripts: hieroglyphic, demotic, and ancient Greek. This unique trilingual inscription proved decisive in 1822, when French scholar Jean-François Champollion used it to achieve the long-sought breakthrough in deciphering hieroglyphs, unlocking the language of ancient Egypt and reshaping the study of its civilization forever.

The debate on the return of historical heritage gained new momentum and interest from the global intellectual community in 2025, as evidenced by the release of the documentary film “From Slaves to Bond: The Rise of the British Empire”, which was the result of a journalistic investigation.

Professional historians and scholars also added to a trend. As renowned Egyptologist and former minister of antiquities Zahi Hawass has repeatedly emphasized, the transfer of the Rosetta Stone was not the outcome of scholarly exchange or cultural cooperation, but rather the result of a military concession—an origin that continues to cast a long shadow over debates about rightful ownership. This history is explicitly inscribed on the object itself: two modern inscriptions on the stone record key moments in its modern journey, reading “Captured in Egypt by the British Army in 1801” and “Presented by King George III” to the British Museum.

He recalled his sustained efforts since 2005 to recover not only the Rosetta Stone, but the 18th Dynasty bust of Queen Nefertiti now on display at the Neues Museum in Berlin and the Dendera Zodiac at the Louvre in Paris, through launching a worldwide public campaign.

“The pursuit of repatriating Egyptian antiquities is a historical legitimacy and civilizational justice,” said Hawass, framing the debate within a wider ethical and historical context. Despite years of dialogue and negotiations, he noted, these museums have continued to resist their return, most often invoking claims of legal ownership or the purported value of international display. He stressed that the issue extends well beyond national borders, calling for a broader international reassessment of colonial-era acquisitions and the mechanisms that facilitated cultural dispossession.

 He further noted that the international climate surrounding restitution is undergoing a noticeable shift. The acknowledgment by French President Emmanuel Macron that large portions of Africa’s cultural heritage were acquired through colonial extraction, together with renewed restitution efforts by countries such as Greece and Ethiopia to reclaim artefacts from institutions including the British Museum, point to what Hawass described as “a new moral awakening” within the global cultural sphere.

Hawass argued that the restitution debate is increasingly shaped by questions of credibility and accountability among institutions that claim custodianship of ancient heritage. He cited the recent scandal at the British Museum, where more than 2,000 artefacts were reportedly stolen from its collections, as a development that has fundamentally undermined assertions that Egyptian antiquities are inherently “safer” when held abroad.

Mohamed Ismail Khaled, Secretary-General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, has drawn a clear distinction between the vast number of Egyptian artefacts held abroad and the singular case of the Rosetta Stone. While acknowledging that tens of thousands of objects now housed in the British Museum were removed legally and have, over time, become embedded in London’s cultural landscape, Khaled stressed that the Rosetta Stone stands apart, both legally and symbolically.

Dating to 196 BC and ranking as the British Museum’s most visited object, Khaled maintained that the stone was taken from Egypt unlawfully during wartime. The British Museum rejects this interpretation, maintaining that the artefact was ceded under the 1801 treaty of surrender to British forces, a document bearing the signature of an Ottoman admiral representing the ruling authority in Egypt at the time. Yet for Khaled, the legal debate does little to diminish the stone’s emotional and cultural gravity for Egyptians. Khaled did not conceal his personal stance. “Of course we would love it to be returned,” he said, noting that despite its global fame, the Rosetta Stone has never been seen by the Egyptian public.

“Generations have read about it and learned its importance, but they have never seen it,” he added, pointing to growing voices within Egypt that view its return as a legitimate right rather than a symbolic gesture. At the same time, Khaled’s remarks reflect an evolution in Egypt’s broader approach to restitution.

Following the long-awaited opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum on 1 November, he appeared to temper earlier calls for the wholesale return of Egyptian antiquities held overseas. Instead, he suggested that many of these artefacts—more than 50,000 of which are housed in the British Museum alone—went out the country legally when Egypt at that time applied a division policy of artefacts of excavations, now serve as Egypt’s most effective cultural ambassadors, drawing global audiences toward Egyptian civilization and, ultimately, toward Egypt itself- while still leaving the Rosetta Stone as a singular case, emblematic not only of Egypt’s ancient past but of the unresolved tensions between history, legality, and cultural ownership.

One Egyptologist, speaking on condition of anonymity, offered a more cautious assessment of the growing calls for restitution, describing petitions and public campaigns as largely symbolic gestures driven by media attention rather than mechanisms capable of producing concrete outcomes. In his view, Britain is unlikely to relinquish artefact that has become cornerstones of its national museums. The Rosetta Stone, he noted, rank among the most recognizable and heavily visited work in the British Museum, making its return politically and institutionally unlikely. “I would very much like to see its return,” he said, “but realistically, that remains a distant aspiration.”

The Egyptologist acknowledged that, in principle, Egypt has a legitimate claim to seek the return of its ancient heritage held in major museums around the world, arguing that these collections form an inseparable part of Egypt’s historical and cultural identity and, by extension, belong in their place of origin. Yet he pointed to significant practical constraints, observing that many Western museums have built their Egyptology departments around these holdings. “Their galleries and interpretive narratives are structured around Egyptian antiquities,” he said.

“Returning them would leave empty spaces and diminish institutional prestige, which is why—despite compelling moral and historical arguments—the obstacles to restitution remain formidable.” “Once the repatriation petition reaches one million signatures, an international lawyer will submit a formal restitution request to the relevant authorities in France, Britain, and Germany,” asserted Hawass. The submission, he added, will seek the return not only of the Rosetta Stone but also of the three iconic artefacts, and will be supported by comprehensive historical evidence and legal documentation.

Entitled: “The Rosetta Stone does not belong in Egypt,” English historian with a particular interest in Italy, Spain and the rest of the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, David Abulafia wrote in Historian Reclaim online newsletter a small article defending why the Rosetta stone must be kept at the British Museum not the Grand Egyptian Museum.

He wrote that the Rosetta Stone is neither a detached fragment awaiting reunion with a larger monument, nor an object admired for its aesthetic qualities. For much of its existence, it was treated as little more than reused building material, a discarded remnant of antiquity. Its significance, however, lies not in beauty or craftsmanship, but in meaning. Its importance is global, rooted in the role it played in illuminating not only the ancient Egyptian writing system, but also the history of European scholarship and intellectual inquiry. As the key that enabled the decipherment of hieroglyphs, the stone occupies a unique position in the story of how the ancient world was rediscovered and interpreted in the modern era.

From this perspective, some argue that its proper setting is within a universal museum—one that offers free public access, attracts an international audience, and functions as a crossroads for global visitors. In practical terms, proponents of this view contend, few institutions meet these criteria as comprehensively as the British Museum, where the Rosetta Stone has long been displayed and interpreted within a broader narrative of world history.