An Egyptology researcher has called for the display of another original version of the Rosetta Stone at the entrance of the Egyptian Antiquities Museum, dismissing the official request by Egypt to repatriate the stone from the UK as mere propaganda.
Researcher Bassam El Shammaa, who also works as a tour guide, told Daily News Egypt that there are different versions of the stone, which was discovered in Rashid in 1799. The two similar stelae discovered in Kom El Hesn in the Western Delta are currently exhibited in the Greco-Roman section of the museum.
“They have never been promoted as exact copies of the Rosetta Stone despite the fact that, besides being in better condition than their counterpart, on exhibit at the British Museum since 1802, they display the same royal text,” El Shammaa said.
The diorite bulky dubbed the Rosetta Stone derives its importance from the fact that it helped Thomas Young and Francois Champollion, pioneers of the modern science of Egyptology, to decipher the ancient Egyptian language by comparing the hieroglyphic text to its counterparts in classical Greek and Demotic, another ancient Egyptian script also inscribed on the stone.
See the above page for the full story.
No comments:
Post a Comment