CAIRO, Sept. 30 -- Egypt is considering seeking the return from Britain of the Rosetta Stone, the basalt stele that was the key to deciphering ancient Egyptian writing, official government sources said Saturday. Egypt's minister of culture, Farouk Hosni, said Egypt may route an appeal to Britain through the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, Cairo's government-run newspaper al- Hayat said Saturday.
And the Foreign Ministry is studying a request presented by the governor of Al-Bahara province, Salah Atia, to seek the archaeological treasure's return from the British Museum to mark the 200th anniversary of the French expedition that discovered it, the sources said. Sources in Cairo said Atia has also contacted Britain's ambassador to Egypt on the issue. 'The return of the Egyptian stone is considered a fair request, and UNESCO agreements give us this right,' said the government's chief in the pyramids region, Zahi Hawas. The stone was found accidently in August 1799 by soldiers in Napoleon Bonaparte's army while they were conducting engineering works at Ft. Julien, about 4 miles south (6.4 km) of Rosetta, now called Rashid, which is about 35 miles (56 km) northeast of Egypt's Mediterranean port of Alexandria. The same inscription -- a decree of the priests assembled at Memphis in favor of Ptolemy V. Epiphanes -- was written on the stele in hieroglyphics, demotic script and Greek. It was ceded in the French capitulation at Alexandria in 1801 to British military officials, who presented it to the British Museum. In 1822, it was deciphered by Jean Francois Champollion, the French founder of Western Egyptology. Before that time, ancient Egyptian writing was a mystery to Western scientists, but the other two languages were known. The slab is 45.2 inches long (113 cm) and up to 13.75 inches wide (0. 5 meter). Its borders are irregular.
