Giza’s new Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), the world’s largest archaeological museum, is packed with some 100,000 artefacts covering some seven millennia of the country’s history – but its opening sharpens attention on three famous “missing” artefacts that Egypt wants returned.
The three objects are the Rosetta Stone, held by the British Museum, the Dendera Zodiac carved in stone, held by the Louvre, and the painted Bust of Nefertiti, held by a museum in Berlin.
According to the BBC, the Grand Egyptian Museum, located near the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza, is colossal, spanning 500,000 square metres – about the size of 70 football pitches. The exterior is covered in hieroglyphs and translucent alabaster cut into triangles with a pyramid shaped entrance.
The main draw of the museum is the entire contents of the intact tomb of the boy king Tutankhamun, displayed together for the first time since it was found by British Egyptologist Howard Carter. They include Tutankhamun’s spectacular gold mask, throne and chariots.
Dr Tarek Tawfik, president of the International Association of Egyptologists and former head of the museum, is quoted as saying of the Tutankhamun exhibit: “I had to think, how can we show him in a different way, because since the discovery of the tomb in 1922, about 1,800 pieces from a total of over 5,500 that were inside the tomb were on display.
“I had the idea of displaying the complete tomb, which means nothing remains in storage, nothing remains in other museums, and you get to have the complete experience, the way Howard Carter had it over a hundred years ago.”
Now, however, attention falls on the three key items not in the museum.
Veteran archaeologist Dr Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s former long-time minister of tourism and antiquities, told the BBC: “It was my dream. I’m really happy to see this museum is finally opened!
“Now I want two things: number one, museums to stop buying stolen artefacts and number two, I need three objects to come back: the Rosetta Stone from the British Museum, the Dendera Zodiac carved in stone, held by the Louvre and the Bust of Nefertiti from Berlin.”
Dr Hawass has set up online petitions – attracting hundreds of thousands of signatures – calling for all three items to be repatriated.
The Rosetta Stone, found in 1799, provided the key to deciphering hieroglyphics. It was discovered by the French army and was seized by the British as war booty. A French
team cut the Dendera Zodiac, an ancient Egyptian celestial map, from the Temple of Hathor in Upper Egypt in 1821. Egypt accuses German archaeologists of smuggling the colourfully painted bust of Nefertiti, wife of Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, out of the country more than a century ago.
Says Hawass: “We need the three objects to come as a good feeling from these three countries, as a gift, as Egypt gave the world many gifts.”
Another leading Egyptologist, Dr Monica Hanna, names the same objects, “taken under a colonialist pretext”, as ones which must be repatriated. She adds: “The GEM gives this message that Egypt has done its homework very well to officially ask for the objects.”
According to the BBC, the British Museum has said it has received “no formal requests for either the return or the loan of the Rosetta Stone from the Egyptian Government”.
[Image: By Richard Mortel – https://www.flickr.com/photos/prof_richard/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=177177283