Rosetta Stone is moved for first time in 18 years
The ancient artefact is being displayed in an exhibition amid calls by academics for the British Museum to return it to Egypt
The Rosetta Stone has been moved for the first time in nearly two decades from its place of honour in the British Museum as academics back its return to Egypt.
It has been relocated ahead of an exhibition celebrating 200 years since hieroglyphs were deciphered.
However, calls from academics at Manchester and Oxford universities to return the artefact now threaten to overshadow the meticulously-planned event.
Curators have relocated the 2,000-year-old stone from its display in the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery, where it was installed 18 years ago, to take pride of place in a new "Unlocking Ancient Egypt" exhibition.
The immersive display will bring together more than 240 objects charting the race to decipherment including a 3,000-year-old papyrus scroll from Queen Nedjmet's Book of the Dead, a funerary text, and a large black granite sarcophagus known as the "enchanted basin".
But the exhibition, which has been planned for three years, will be unveiled on October 18 against the backdrop of calls to give the Rosetta Stone back to Egypt, where it was found in 1799 by French soldiers who turned it over to British troops.
'Time for the British Museum to step up'
Joyce Tyldesley, professor of Egyptology at the University of Manchester and author of the forthcoming book Tutankhamun, told the Sunday Times: "Talks could start now in the 200th anniversary year of the decipherment of the stone to send it back to continue its journey.
"Why is it in London as opposed to Cairo? There are replicas of the stone in the British Museum already."
Echoing his comments, Dan Hicks, professor of contemporary archaeology at the University of Oxford, told the newspaper: "It is about time for the British Museum to step up and offer leadership in this area."
Ilona Regulski, curator of the exhibition, said there was no official request to the British Museum for the Rosetta stone to go back.
She said: "We wouldn't be able to really tell the story of the decipherment of hieroglyphs without the Rosetta Stone, so we decided that it would have a good place in the exhibition.
"Also, it provides us with an opportunity to contextualise the story a bit better and to tell more complete stories about the role of the stone in the decipherment, but also how it came to the British Museum."
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