Today, Sunday, February 28th, 2010 8am – 2 pm: In recognition of Black History Month, Dr. Joel Freeman will have a comprehensive exhibit of African American artifacts in the main lobby of the

First  Baptist Church of Glendarden, Landover Maryland.

Location:

Worship Center – WC
600 Watkins Park Drive
Upper Marlboro, Maryland 20774

Read Details of this:    Black History Exhibit

The following is a recent letter to the editor (The Independent) by Jonathan Downs, the author of Discovery at Rosetta. Jonathan has granted permission to post this piece and is willing to respond to any questions raised in the comments section below:

RETURN OF THE ROSETTA STONE

The British Museum was originally the storehouse of a vast collection of small curiosities, and the hoard from Alexandria in 1802 which included the Rosetta Stone, was the first of its kind in its halls, providing large, dramatic pieces as never before.

The stone, unlike the Elgin Marbles, is in the BM by dint of an aged treaty, signed by occupying military forces at a time when both Greece and Egypt were not yet modern nation-states as they are today – to claim that ‘Greece’ or ‘Egypt’ in any way agreed to the removal of these treasures is ludicrous as well the BM or any historian knows.

The objects were obtained with the permission of the Ottoman Empire – in the case of the Rosetta Stone, the treaty concerned [Articles of the Capitulation of Alexandria 1801] was signed by a Mameluke warlord, having just witnessed not only the utter destruction of the French by the British army, but also the intimidation of the mighty Ottomans by their apparent British allies, who threatened to march back down to Cairo to rescue surviving Mameluke figures from execution at the hands of Ottoman commanders.

That this Mameluke successor, Osman Bey, would have dared defy such a military machine arrayed before him is most unlikely.

Any competent barrister in The Hague could easily argue that he signed under duress, grateful to be rid of both the French and the Ottomans all at once.

It is time this treaty were put aside, and measures considered for the international ownership of the stone, by the French, Egyptians and British: for the French who deciphered it, for the British who have preserved it, and for the Egyptians who created it.

Such a step would not bring the BM crashing down but indeed raise it to the dizzying heights of approbation, a pleasant change from its current role as target for vilification.

- by Jonathan Downs, author of ‘Discovery at Rosetta’ [London, 2008]

Written by Sean Williams

Secret tunnels, lost queens, mixed-up mummies and ancient dams were just a few of Dr Hawass’ topics, pock-marked with his dry humour. “I had no idea archaeology would be my life. In fact, I hated archaeology.”; “At the tomb of Tutankhamun, when Lord Carnarvon asked Howard Carter, ‘What do you see?’ he said, ‘Wonderful things’. In my excavation, when my assistant asked me, ‘What do you see?’ I smelt the sewage, I said, ‘S**t.’”

We were then treated to around five minutes listing the celebrities Dr Hawass has met recently, including of course President Barak Obama.

Yet I couldn’t help but think that seeing Dr Hawass in a suit addressing a room full of dignitaries isn’t the right place to be seeing him in action. Take a look at some videos of Dr Hawass on Youtube.com in full swing, attired in denim shirt, hat and chinos. After all, he is called the ‘real Indiana Jones’.

What Dr Hawass’d give to get his hands on this. Image by Ann Wuyts

– Sean Williams is an English Literature graduate, who currently works as a writer and journalist in London. He enjoys ancient history, theatre and sport. Check out his blog here

LONDON (AFP) – A top Egyptian official pressed Britain Wednesday to return an ancient stone tablet seen as an icon of his country and denied his countrymen were “pirates of the Caribbean” seeking to steal it back.

Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, said he had changed his mind after requesting a temporary loan of the Rosetta Stone from London’s British Museum due to their allegedly prickly attitude.

He now just wants the stone — a basalt slab seen as key to deciphering hieroglyphics — back for good.

“When I said… I want to have it on a short-term loan, the British Museum wrote a letter to say that (they) need to know the security of (the) museum that will host,” the stone in Egypt, the archaeologist told BBC radio.

He did not like the tone of the museum’s letter, he said, adding: “Even some people in the press began to say: ‘If the British Museum will give the Rosetta Stone to Egypt, maybe Egyptians will not return it back.’

“We are not the pirates of the Caribbean. We are a civilised country. If I… sign a contract with the British Museum, (we) will return it,” Hawass added.

“Therefore we decided not to host the Rosetta Stone, but to ask for the Rosetta Stone to come back for good to Egypt, because it’s a part of the icon of the Egyptian identity.”

The stone, which dates back to 196 BC, was discovered in Egypt by French forces in 1799 and given to the British under a treaty two years later.

Its discovery led to a breakthrough in deciphering hieroglyphics, since it includes the same text in the ancient Egyptian script plus two other languages, including ancient Greek, for comparison.

Roy Clare, head of Britain’s Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, said the stone must stay in London.

“This icon is an icon globally. What happens to an object is it inherits additional culture through its acquisition,” he said, adding that through scholarship it “becomes important in relation to other cultural iconography.”

He reiterated that the British Museum could be willing to loan the Rosetta Stone to Egypt on a temporary basis.

“If Dr. Hawass were to at some point request a loan, the trustees would clearly consider it. But it would be helpful not to have this in the climate of debate about recovery” of the stone on a permanent basis by Egypt, he said.

The British Museum in also home to the Elgin Marbles, removed from Greece at the start of the 18th century, which have long been the subject of dispute between London and Athens.

WHAT  ARE  THE  DISTINCTIVE  FEATURES
OF  THE ROSETTA STONE  REPLICA  PROJECT?

The following is an extract from Discovery at Rosetta (by Jonathan Downs, Constable, 2008, pp.210-215) outlining the current status of the Rosetta Stone, the facts governing its legal ownership and its possible repatriation to Egypt. Jonathan has granted me permission to post this piece and is willing to respond to any questions raised in the comments section below:

THE ROSETTA STONE: A PROUD TROPHY?

Despite the Rosetta Stone’s public profile, historically its status as an exhibit in the British Museum has not been nearly as contested as that of the ‘Elgin’ or Parthenon Marbles. To many it is immediately recognizable and more memorable than the sculptures that were formerly part of the Athenian Acropolis. This is understandable; until the end of the 1990s the Rosetta Stone rested on an angled frame close to the entrance of the museum – unavoidable, it was one of the first objects to be encountered, and crowds of visitors have gathered round it for the past two hundred years. Cleaned by conservators, it now occupies an equally prominent position in the centre of the Egypt collection by the Great Court entrance, upright within a protective case, still one of the most famous objects in the world. Before the arrival of the antiquities from Egypt in 1802, the British Museum contained little grand sculpture, its halls filled chiefly with smaller curiosities. The acquisition of the Rosetta Stone and the cargo from the Alexandria victory was an important step in the development of the institution.

Since 1999 and the bicentenary celebration of its discovery, there has been a reawakening of Egyptian interest in the Rosetta Stone. In July 2003 an article in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper claimed that Egypt was calling for its return. The feature stated that negotiations for the repatriation of the stone were under way with Dr Zahi Hawass, the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo. However, in early 2005 the British Museum confirmed that Britain’s legal title to the Rosetta Stone was indisputable – the Articles of the Capitulation of Alexandria show that Osman Bey and Hassan, the Kapudan Pasha, leaders of the Mameluke and Turkish forces representing the recognized government of Egypt in 1801, had signed the treaty with the British and the French, thereby accepting Article 16, that Britain had the right to the antiquities collected by Bonaparte’s expedition. In the circumstances, Dr Hawass apparently requested a replica of the stone, which was duly sent to Rosetta for display.

It seemed that Egypt had accepted the legality of British ownership of the stele; but at a meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin, Dr Hawass called for the return of key artefacts from around the world including the Rosetta Stone. In autumn 2007, a Bloomberg news report stated that Dr Hawass had made further representation to the British Museum for its return, be it permanent or by temporary loan, for the planned opening of the new Grand Museum at Gizeh, to be completed in 2012.

The restitution or repatriation of ancient artefacts to their native lands is a growing concern for the world’s museums for obvious reasons. According to reports, Dr Hawass has succeeded in reclaiming some 4,000 items since he took up the post of Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. It has been argued that to return the tens of thousands of Egyptian relics dispersed across the world would be virtually impossible; however, with prominent statuary, the political issues intensify through increased public awareness, stimulating powerful emotion – as witnessed by the case of the bust of Nefertiti currently displayed in Berlin, the cause of considerable public resentment in Egypt today. Such relics cease to be ancient artefacts and become instead a nebulous but much more contentious ‘cultural heritage’ – and there is little moral justification for any nation to possess or exploit the heritage of another against its wishes.

Technically the Rosetta Stone and all the relics confiscated by the British from the defeat of Alexandria were legally obtained, their release granted by representatives of the national government which ‘owned’ them. In the case of Egypt in 1801, this is not as clear-cut as that of Italian pieces from individual city-states such as Venice or Rome, whose native governments were displaced by Napoleonic conquest, their treasures looted and later restored upon liberation. The state of Egypt, as it is recognized today, took no hand in the decision to relinquish its historic antiquities because it did not exist.

The Ottoman Kapudan Pasha represented a foreign military dictatorship and Osman Bey exercised direct Mameluke rule ostensibly in the name of the sultan. Although the Mamelukes had become naturalized Egyptians over the centuries it could be argued they were still a foreign people – warrior-slaves and mercenaries from the remote plains of the Ottoman Empire, they had been rulers of the country since the Middle Ages, and contrary to Ottoman wishes exercised a rebellious independence and tyrannical military oppression of the general population. The question arises then whether Osman Bey and Hassan Pasha had the right to relinquish Egyptian antiquities. Perhaps those best qualified to dispose of Egyptian heritage in 1801 were the sheikhs of the Divan or the learned men of the Al-Azhar Mosque. However, there was no resistance to the collection of the ancient relics on cultural or religious grounds – after the tumult of the French defeat in 1801 and the accession of leader Muhammed Ali Bey similar treasures were exported with official sanction.

It would be a mistake to view past incidences of archaeological collection purely as cultural theft. In the eighteenth century the collection of art and architectural fragments from remote rural sites in the Mediterranean was not seen as looting or vandalism, but as rescue and preservation. To the European antiquary, civilized nations cared for their art treasures – to find broken statuary and religious artefacts lying deserted in a state of ruination suggested a lack of civilized understanding – the ruins themselves evidence of a once-great culture since fallen into decay in the hands of a backward or barbarian government. The French savants in Egypt were presented with precisely this situation: the relics of a lost civilization lay neglected in the wastes of sand, ignored, if not feared, by locals. Before the arrival of collectors in the late eighteenth century, artefacts in Egypt were certainly in danger of destruction – as in the case of the Great Sphinx, which had been wilfully defaced, and the Rosetta Stone, buried in foundations, or Louvre stele C122, built into the threshold of a mosque.

The Napoleonic expedition had one other supreme right, internationally recognized since war began: the right of conquest. However, the legality of this right could also be challenged. Bonaparte invaded Egypt under the pretext of aiding the Ottoman sultan and did not officially declare war – far from it, he did his utmost to avoid such an open conflict for as long as possible. Theoretically, Bonaparte could not legally claim any treasure as spoils of war, even though he had defeated his enemies on the battlefield. Because of this neither had the savants [scholars attached to the expedition] been able to secure the legal rights from the ruling Ottomans to remove Egyptian antiquities – although there was no specific opposition to their scientific operations, the pieces had therefore been obtained without permission. In this regard, the artefacts standing in the British Museum from the fall of Alexandria could be considered plunder, just as Colonel Turner described them in 1810. The document that created a legal provenance of their ownership, and prevented Britain from becoming a receiver of stolen goods, was the Articles of the Capitulation of Alexandria. According to Article 16, the antiquities of Egypt – and the Rosetta Stone – had been transformed into spoils of war.

The Rosetta Stone falls into a different category from the other artefacts collected by the French expedition and captured by the British in Egypt. It was not a work of art, or religious icon, taken from a temple or mosque. Unlike the other antiquities, its value upon discovery arose from the potential information it could yield as a code-key in the decipherment of hieroglyphs. Herein lies the overlapping nature of its cultural importance: although a piece of Egyptian heritage, its function was fulfilled only by the Europeans who found it. It is therefore by no means clear to which people it should by rights ‘belong’ – to the British, by right of arms, and the pioneering work of Young; to the French, for its discovery and the success of Champollion – or to the Egyptians, to whose ancient past it owes its origin. For this reason it has been described as an exhibit of world heritage, part of the ‘universal museum’, which to many implies that it makes little difference where it is located so long as it is properly preserved and accessible to the majority of people. One might expect something of universal value to be shown liberally around the world, yet in the 206 years since it was brought to London, it has left only once, in 1972, for a special exhibition in Paris celebrating the 150th anniversary of Champollion’s historic ‘Letter to M. Dacier’ [in which he outlined his solution to the interpretation of hieroglyphs]. The French request for the stone for the occasion was initially refused by the British Museum and granted only after further consideration.

There is a strong case for rejecting the Ottoman right to dispose of Egyptian artefacts, but this is a moral judgement, not legal. However, the relevance of bills, receipts and treaties relating to the acquisition of artefacts by nations that no longer exist, such as Bonaparte’s France and the British and Ottoman Empires, must be questioned in the light of today’s modern world. Few historical or legal arguments address the relevant issue: it is not whether European nations had the right to acquire Egyptian antiquities, but whether today they should have the right to retain them.

Despite the Articles of the Capitulation of Alexandria and the binding nature of nineteenth-century Ottoman signatures, it would be difficult to argue that the Rosetta Stone belonged more in Britain or France than in Egypt. Yet, erected by the priests of the pharaoh, discovered by French savants, and preserved by British scholars, the Rosetta Stone unites two of the elder states of Europe with the most ancient of western civilizations. Two centuries later, still on the threshold of a new millennium, this unique cultural relationship could complete the cycle of discovery and decipherment, and herald a new era for the Rosetta Stone in the land of its creation. This ‘gem of antiquity’ could evolve beyond its original task – where once its message united a diverse culture, its renewed power could bind nations.

Jonathan Downs
‘Discovery at Rosetta’,
London: Constable, 2008

The main purpose of Dr. Joel Freeman, The Freeman Institute Foundation and Rosetta Classic, LLC embarking upon this project is to educate and inspire the masses (especially young people) about the impact the Rosetta Stone has had upon our understanding of Egypt (located in Africa) and the rest of the world.

How many have never even heard of the Rosetta Stone — let alone being aware of the historical and archaeological significance of this artifact? It’s actually funny…some people in on-the-street-interviews believe that Rosetta Stone is a woman. On the other hand, some may have heard the term, “Rosetta Stone,” but have never made the connection between the name/words/concept/brand and the genuine Rosetta Stone.

One of the objectives for the 3-D replicas and 3-D holographic project is to provide a new and different way to reach/teach young people. Educators understand that the engagement of any extra sense (visual, auditory, tactile,  olfactory, etc.) increases the immediate understanding and retention of a topic. We are hoping that these models will be viewed (and touched) by millions around the world — making it a memorable experience for each person.

As visitors to Rosetta Stone replica exhibits become more aware of the Rosetta stone, they just might go home and read about it on the Internet. We also want to create a desire within everyone who actually sees a replica and learns more about it, to travel to London to experience the genuine Rosetta Stone — currently exhibited at the British Museum.