[CPProt.net] Egypt has submitted a request to UNESCO asking that five of its most prominent historic treasures -- including the Rosetta Stone -- be returned

[MSN CPPnet]

Antiquities wish list

July 14, 2005
Egypt has submitted a request to UNESCO asking that five of its most
prominent historic treasures -- including the Rosetta Stone -- be returned.
Nevine El-Aref reports 

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Photos http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/751/eg7.htm 
the exquisite painted limestone bust of Nefertiti; the famous Rosetta Stone
on display at the British Museum 
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The summer heat notwithstanding, temperatures are rising in the
international antiquities world following a call by Egypt for the return of
five Ancient Egyptian pieces on display abroad. 

In a speech at a meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting
the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin held at UNESCO in
Paris, Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities
(SCA), said Egypt had been deprived of five key items of Egypt's cultural
heritage. "They should be handed over to us," Hawass said.

The objects in question are the Rosetta Stone, now in the British Museum in
London, the bust of Nefertiti in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, the statue
of Great Pyramid architect Hemiunnu in the Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum in
Hilesheim, the Dendara Temple Zodiac in the Louvre in Paris, and the bust of
Kephren pyramid builder Ankhaf in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. 

Hawass urged other countries affected by similar issues to prepare a list of
stolen artifacts considered unique and invaluable to their cultural identity
that should be handed over for good, or on loan.

Many observers said Hawass was stirring up the past; some described the
request as "wishy-washy", mere casual talk in the same manner that he
brought the idea up two years ago in a speech at the British Museum to
celebrate its 250th anniversary. At the time, Hawass suggested that the
Rosetta Stone be loaned to Cairo's Egyptian Museum for three months.

Hawass later told reporters: "If the British want to restore their
reputation, they should volunteer to return the Rosetta Stone because it is
the icon of our Egyptian identity."

This time Hawass could not be more serious, nor his wording plainer. On
Monday he delivered an official request to UNESCO, of which Al-Ahram Weekly
has obtained a copy, asking the UN body to act as mediator between Egypt and
the countries concerned in the return of these five items, as well as to
help Egypt recover treasures plundered and smuggled out of the country since
1970. 

"We must build up a strong national campaign to return these unique objects
illegally smuggled out of the country during the 19th century," Hawass told
the Weekly. He stressed that he was not requesting all the objects on
display abroad, but was only asking for the return of items which played an
essential part in Egyptian heritage, and others which were part of a shrine
or tomb.

"I am not asking for the moon," Hawass said, adding that Italy had recently
returned the 1,700-year-old Aksum obelisk to Ethiopia after 68 years since
it had been taken to Italy illegally.

Hawass claimed that the Rosetta Stone -- which was discovered in 1799 in the
Nile Delta town of Rashid (Rosetta) by soldiers belonging to Napoleon's
expedition to Egypt -- was a similar case. In 1801, the French surrendered
to Great Britain, and the stone fell into the hands of British officials who
sent it to London. The following year, it was presented to the British
Museum, where it is still the most visited exhibit. Dating from 196 BC, it
is inscribed with a royal decree of Ptolemy V in three scripts --
hieroglyphic, demotic and ancient Greek -- and in 1822, this enabled French
scholar Jean-François Champollion to make the breakthrough in deciphering
the hieroglyphics. Two modern inscriptions on the stone now record key
moments in its modern history: "Captured in Egypt by the British Army in
1801" and "Presented by King George III." 

Nefertiti's bust in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, perhaps the best-known
work of art from Ancient Egypt, was unearthed in 1912 by the German
excavator Ludwig Borchardt. Hawass says that Borchardt, anxious to preserve
the bust for Germany, took advantage of the practice at the time of
splitting the spoils of any new discovery between the Egyptian antiquities
authority and the foreign mission concerned. Back then, the law required
discoveries to be brought to what was called the "Antiquities Service",
where a special committee supervised the distribution. Nadja Tomoum,
director of the SCA's foreign relations office, said Borchardt, who
discovered the head at Tel Al-Amarna, either did not declare the bust, or
hid it under less important objects. Either that, or the Egyptian
authorities failed to recognise its beauty and importance. According to
Borchardt himself, he did not clean the bust but left it covered in mud when
he took it to the Egyptian Museum for the usual division of spoils. The
service, on that occasion, took the limestone statues of Akhenaten and
Nefertiti, and gave the head of Queen Nefertiti to the expedition because it
was made of gypsum -- or so they thought. 

There were those who said that Borchardt had disguised the head, covering it
with a layer of gypsum to ensure that the committee would not see its
beauty, and realise that it was actually made of beautiful painted
limestone. Whatever happened, Tomoum said, the antiquities authorities did
not know about the bust until it was put on show in Berlin's Egyptian Museum
in 1923, and had certainly never expressly agreed that this piece should be
included in the German share of the Tel Al-Amarna finds.

The principle, since the earliest days of cultural property legislation, has
been that the country of origin must expressly permit every single national
cultural treasure export. With respect to the bust of Nefertiti, the
Egyptian authorities did not give that permission. The Egyptian government
later made an attempt to have the bust returned, but Hitler, who had fallen
in love with it, refused. He announced that she was his beloved possession,
and would remain in Germany forever. 

The exquisite painted limestone bust has been on display in solitary,
stunningly dramatic surroundings at the museum ever since. Two years ago,
however, in a highly curious curatorial decision, two Hungarian artists were
allowed to fuse the ancient bust onto a contemporary bronze-cast body for a
few hours in an attempt to visualise how Nefertiti's body might have looked
like.

As for the Zodiac in the Louvre, this is one of the most famous cases of
looting in Egypt. Its loss is felt not only for its artistic value, but also
because it demonstrates what the science of astrology owed to the Egyptians.
When General Desaix, a member of Napoleon's expedition, set eyes on it he
was so enchanted that he commissioned the artist Denon to draw it for the
Déscription de L'Égypte. When French collector Sebastien Saulnier saw the
Zodiac, he decided that such a remarkable piece should belong to France.
Because he did not want others to hear of his plan, he announced that he was
excavating at Thebes, where he bought some mummies and antiquities to cover
his tracks. At that time some English visitors were sketching at Dendara,
and only after they left did Saulnier return. He and his French agent then
set about removing the ceiling of the temple. The Zodiac arrived in Paris
and was sold to King Louis XVIII for 150,000 francs. 

The statue of Hemiunnu, architect of Cheops' Great Pyramid, in the Roemer-
Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim, Germany, is another example of illicit
trade. Hemiunnu, Cheops' nephew, served his uncle as vizier. His statue was
discovered in 1912 in his tomb in the shadow of the Great Pyramid at Giza,
and was transported to the Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum, which belonged to a
wealthy German citizen, Pelizaeus, a collector who backed scientific
excavations at Giza.

The bust of the Kephren pyramid builder, Ankhaf, now in the Boston Museum of
Fine Arts, is another unique piece of Egyptian heritage. American
Egyptologist George A Reisner found it in Ankhaf's tomb at Giza. Tomoum said
that although Ankhaf's statue was the only one of the five objects named by
Hawass that left Egypt legally, the SCA was still asking for its return
because it is a unique and valuable object. 

As the Weekly went to press, the museums had failed to respond to telephone
calls and e-mails regarding the issue, saying curators were on summer
vacation. The only response was from the Berlin Egyptian Museum's director,
Dietrich Wildung, who in a telephone interview told the Weekly that he had
not received any such request, and had only learnt of it from the Weekly 's
reporter. Wildung said this was not a matter to be discussed on a museum
level. "It is something that needs an intergovernmental dialogue and
discussions," he said.

Mounir Bouchenaki, UNESCO's assistant-director general for culture, was
unavailable for comment, but a UNESCO spokesperson who requested anonymity
told the Weekly that UNESCO had not yet received a request from Egypt.
Hawass might be expressing a personal wish, she said. However, in the event
of receiving such a request, "the matter will be taken into consideration". 

Insisting that an official request was on its way to UNESCO, Hawass said:
"We are the best keeper of these objects because they are part of our
cultural heritage." 
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/751/eg7.htm