ROSETTA STONE (BRITISH MUSEUM)

The stone is a broken part of an inscribed slab from ancient Egypt’s Ptolemaic dynasty. The decree proclaims the royal cult of King Ptolemy V, and is written in three scripts: hieroglyphs, demotic and ancient Greek. This writing provided the key scholars needed to be able to decipher ancient Egyptian languages.

It was initially displayed in a temple before being used as building material during late antiquity. It was found in a city in the Nile Delta in 1799 – during the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt – and fell into British hands after Napoleon’s defeat in Alexandria in 1801.

In 2003, Egypt began a campaign for its repatriation. The director of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, claimed that it is “the icon of our Egyptian identity”. In 2022, Hawass repeated his request, but the British Museum maintains that it is the best home for the artefact, where it can be seen “within the broader context of other ancient cultures”.