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]
