Egyptians Call on British Museum to Return Rosetta Stone

This undated photo provided by the British Museum, shows the Rosetta Stone, the centerpiece of a new exhibition at London’s largest museum titled, "Hieroglyphs unlocking ancient Egypt," celebrating the 200th anniversary of the stone's decipherment, at the British Museum, in London. (The British Museum via AP)
This undated photo provided by the British Museum, shows the Rosetta Stone, the centerpiece of a new exhibition at London’s largest museum titled, "Hieroglyphs unlocking ancient Egypt," celebrating the 200th anniversary of the stone's decipherment, at the British Museum, in London. (The British Museum via AP)
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Egyptians Call on British Museum to Return Rosetta Stone

This undated photo provided by the British Museum, shows the Rosetta Stone, the centerpiece of a new exhibition at London’s largest museum titled, "Hieroglyphs unlocking ancient Egypt," celebrating the 200th anniversary of the stone's decipherment, at the British Museum, in London. (The British Museum via AP)
This undated photo provided by the British Museum, shows the Rosetta Stone, the centerpiece of a new exhibition at London’s largest museum titled, "Hieroglyphs unlocking ancient Egypt," celebrating the 200th anniversary of the stone's decipherment, at the British Museum, in London. (The British Museum via AP)

The debate over who owns ancient artifacts has been an increasing challenge to museums across Europe and America, and the spotlight has fallen on the most visited piece in the British Museum: The Rosetta Stone.

The inscriptions on the dark grey granite slab became the seminal breakthrough in deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics after it was taken from Egypt by forces of the British empire in 1801.

Now, as Britain's largest museum marks the 200-year anniversary of the decipherment of hieroglyphics, thousands of Egyptians are demanding the stone’s return.

“The British Museum’s holding of the stone is a symbol of Western cultural violence against Egypt,” said Monica Hanna, dean at the Arab Academy for Science, Technology & Maritime Transport, and organizer of one of two petitions calling for the stone's return.

The acquisition of the Rosetta Stone was tied up in the imperial battles between Britain and France. After Napoleon Bonaparte’s military occupation of Egypt, French scientists uncovered the stone in 1799 in the northern town of Rashid, known by the French as Rosetta. When British forces defeated the French in Egypt, the stone and over a dozen other antiquities were handed over to the British under the terms of an 1801 surrender deal between the generals of the two sides.

It has remained in the British Museum since.

Hanna’s petition, with 4,200 signatures, says the stone was seized illegally and constitutes a “spoil of war.” The claim is echoed in a near identical petition by Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s former minister for antiquities affairs, which has more than 100,000 signatures. Hawass argues that Egypt had no say in the 1801 agreement.

The British Museum refutes this. In a statement, the Museum said the 1801 treaty includes the signature of a representative of Egypt. It refers to an Ottoman admiral who fought alongside the British against the French. The Ottoman sultan in Istanbul was nominally the ruler of Egypt at the time of Napoleon’s invasion.

The Museum also said Egypt’s government has not submitted a request for its return. It added that there are 28 known copies of the same engraved decree and 21 of them remain in Egypt.

The contention over the original stone copy stems from its unrivaled significance to Egyptology. Carved in the 2nd century B.C., the slab contains three translations of a decree relating to a settlement between the then-ruling Ptolemies and a sect of Egyptian priests. The first inscription is in classic hieroglyphics, the next is in a simplified hieroglyphic script known as Demotic, and the third is in Ancient Greek.

Through knowledge of the latter, academics were able to decipher the hieroglyphic symbols, with French Egyptologist Jean-Francois Champollion eventually cracking the language in 1822.

“Scholars from the previous 18th century had been longing to find a bilingual text written in a known language,” said Ilona Regulski, the head of Egyptian Written Culture at the British Museum. Regulski is the lead curator of the museum’s winter exhibition, “Hieroglyphs Unlocking Ancient Egypt,” celebrating the 200th anniversary of Champollion’s breakthrough.

The stone is one of more than 100,000 Egyptian and Sudanese relics housed in the British Museum. A large percentage were obtained during Britain’s colonial rule over the region from 1883 to 1953.

It has grown increasingly common for museums and collectors to return artifacts to their country of origin, with new instances reported nearly monthly. Often, it’s the result of a court ruling, while some cases are voluntary, symbolizing an act of atonement for historical wrongs.

New York’s Metropolitan Museum returned 16 antiquities to Egypt in September after a US investigation concluded they had been illegally trafficked. On Monday, London’s Horniman Museum signed over 72 objects, including 12 Benin Bronzes, to Nigeria following a request from its government.

Nicholas Donnell, a Boston-based attorney specializing in cases concerning art and artifacts, said no common international legal framework exists for such disputes. Unless there is clear evidence an artifact was acquired illegally, repatriation is largely at the discretion of the museum.

“Given the treaty and the timeframe, the Rosetta Stone is a hard legal battle to win,” said Donnell.

The British Museum has acknowledged that several repatriation requests have been made to it from various countries for artifacts, but it did not provide The Associated Press with any details on their status or number. It also did not confirm whether it has ever repatriated an artifact from its collection.

For Nigel Hetherington, an archaeologist and CEO of the online academic forum Past Preserves, the museum’s lack of transparency suggests other motives.

“It’s about money, maintaining relevance and a fear that in returning certain items people will stop coming,” he said.

Western museums have long pointed to superior facilities and larger crowd draws to justify their holding of world treasures.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s government has since invested heavily in its antiquities. Egypt has successfully reclaimed thousands of internationally smuggled artifacts and plans to open a newly built, state-of-the-art museum where tens of thousands of objects can be housed. The Grand Egyptian Museum has been under construction for well over a decade and there have been repeated delays to its opening.

Egypt’s plethora of ancient monuments, from the pyramids of Giza to the towering statues of Abu Simbel at the Sudanese border, are the magnet for a tourism industry that drew in $13 billion in 2021.

For Hanna, Egyptians’ right to access their own history should remain the priority. “How many Egyptians can travel to London or New York?” she said.

“The Rosetta Stone is the icon of Egyptian identity,” said Hawass. “I will use the media and the intellectuals to tell the (British) museum they have no right.”



River Seine Reopens to Public Swimming for 1st Time in a Century

A view of one of the three Seine swimming pools, Thursday, July 3, 2025 which will open during the 'Paris Plages' event from July 5 to Aug. 31 in Paris. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
A view of one of the three Seine swimming pools, Thursday, July 3, 2025 which will open during the 'Paris Plages' event from July 5 to Aug. 31 in Paris. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
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River Seine Reopens to Public Swimming for 1st Time in a Century

A view of one of the three Seine swimming pools, Thursday, July 3, 2025 which will open during the 'Paris Plages' event from July 5 to Aug. 31 in Paris. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
A view of one of the three Seine swimming pools, Thursday, July 3, 2025 which will open during the 'Paris Plages' event from July 5 to Aug. 31 in Paris. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)

For the first time in over a century, Parisians and tourists will be able to take a refreshing dip in the River Seine. The long-polluted waterway is finally opening up as a summertime swim spot following a 1.4 billion euro ($1.5 billion) cleanup project that made it suitable for Olympic competitions last year.

Three new swimming sites on the Paris riverbank will open on Saturday — one close to Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral, another near the Eiffel Tower and a third in eastern Paris.

Swimming in the Seine has been illegal since 1923, with a few exceptions, due to pollution and risks posed by river navigation. Taking a dip outside bathing areas is still banned for safety reasons.

The Seine was one of the stars of the Paris Olympics in 2024, whether as the scene of the ambitious opening ceremony or the triathlon and marathon swimming competitions. That didn't go without challenging hurdles such as rainfall increasing levels of bacteria, which postponed some competitions.

This city's authorities have given the green light for the public opening, with water quality results consistently in line with European regulations.

Making splashes in Paris city center “It’s a symbolic moment when we get our river back,” said sports coach and influencer Lucile Woodward, who will participate in the first amateur open water competition in the Seine on Sunday.

Woodward, who enjoyed a dip alongside Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo just before the start of the Olympic Games, is confident things will go well.

“We're going to enjoy swimming in it, being there and setting an example," she said. "Once people will see that in the end there are hundreds of people who have fun and enjoy it, everyone will want to go!”

“For families, going to take a dip with the kids, making little splashes in Paris, it’s extraordinary,” Woodward added.

Olympic athletes competing in the river was a spectacular reward for the cost of the cleanup effort.

In the run-up to the Games, authorities opened new disinfection units and created a huge storage basin meant to prevent as much bacteria-laden wastewater as possible from spilling directly into the Seine when it rains.

Houseboats that previously emptied their sewage directly into the river were required to hook up to municipal sewer systems. Some homes upstream from Paris also saw their wastewater connected to treatment plants instead of the rainwater system flowing directly into the river.

Green flag for swimming Paris Deputy Mayor Pierre Rabadan said water is tested daily to confirm it's safe to swim. As on French beaches, different colored flags will inform visitors whether or not they can go in.

“Green means the water quality is good. Red means that it's not good or that there's too much current,” he said.

Tests have been in line with European regulations since the beginning of June, with only two exceptions due to rain and boat-related pollution, Rabadan said.

“I can’t make a bet on the numbers of days when we’ll have to close this summer, but water quality seems better than last year,” he added. “We’re in a natural environment ... so weather condition variations necessarily have an impact."

Last year, several athletes became ill after competing in the triathlon and open water races during the Olympics, though in most cases it was not clear if the river was to blame for their sickness.

World Aquatics stressed the conditions met the sport’s accepted thresholds.

“The legacy of these efforts is already evident, with the Seine now open for public swimming — a positive example of how sports can drive long-term community benefits,” the organization said in a statement to The Associated Press.

Skepticism remains about water quality Dan Angelescu, founder and CEO of Fluidion, a Paris and Los Angeles-based water monitoring tech company, has routinely and independently tested bacterial levels in the Seine for several years. Despite being in line with current regulations, the official water testing methodology has limitations and undercounts the bacteria, he said.

“What we see is that the water quality in the Seine is highly variable,” Angelescu said. “There are only a few days in a swimming season where I would say water quality is acceptable for swimming.”

“All we can say is that we can raise a hand and say look: the science today does not support the current assessment of water safety used in the rivers around Paris, and we think that there is major risk that is not being captured at all,” he said.

Some Parisians also have shown skepticism toward the idea of swimming in the Seine. The feeling is often reinforced by the water's murky color, floating litter and multiple tourist boats in some places.

Enys Mahdjoub, a real estate agent, said he would not be afraid of swimming, but rather "a bit disgusted. It’s more the worry of getting dirty than anything else at the moment.”

A dream come true Until the end of August, swimming sites will be open for free at scheduled times to anyone with a minimum age of 10 or 14 years, depending on the location. Lifeguards will keep a watchful eye on those first dips.

“It’s an opportunity, a dream come true," said Clea Montanari, a project manager in Paris. "It’d be a dream if the Seine becomes drinkable, that would be the ultimate goal, right? But already swimming in it is really good.”