https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/10/03/rosetta-stone-moved-first-time-18-years/

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

By Max Stephens 3 October 2022 • 6:00am

Stephanie Vasiliou, a senior conservator, prepares the Rosetta Stone before it is moved Credit: Jonathan Brady/PA

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".

The artefact was found in 1799 in Egypt by French soldiers who turned it over to British troops Credit: Jonathan Brady/PA

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."

--   Sent from my Linux system.

Khentiamentiu: Northern California ARCE Upcoming Egyptology Lectures

http://khentiamentiu.blogspot.com/2022/10/northern-california-arce-upcoming.html

CHANGE OF VENUE!! Egyptology Lecture October 9 by Kea Johnston: Painting Coffins in the First Millennium BCE

The American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California Chapter, and the Near Eastern Studies Department, University of California, Berkeley, invite you to attend a lecture by Dr. Kea M. Johnston, UC Berkeley: PLEASE NOTE THAT THE IN-PERSON MEETING, FORMERLY SCHEDULED FOR UC BERKELEY, HAD TO BE CHANGED TO A ZOOM MEETING. REGISTRATION INSTRUCTIONS FOLLOW. Painting Coffins at Akhmim in the First Millennium BCE Sunday, October 9, 2022, 3 PM Pacific Time Zoom Lecture. A registration link will be automatically sent to ARCE-NC members. Non-members may request a registration link by sending email with your name and email address to arcencZoom@gmail.com. Non-members, please send any registration requests no later than noon Saturday, October 8. Registrations are limited to 100, so the sooner you register, the better. Glenn Meyer ARCE-NC ePublicity Director About the Lecture: Cartonnage of Djedhor in the Detroit Institute of Art (Image courtesy of Dr. Kea M. Johnston) After the New Kingdom, wealthy Egyptians were sent to their afterlives in dazzling decorated and inscribed coffins which were nested like Russian dolls. Our understanding of these vessels for rebirth centers on the city of Thebes, and focuses on dating the coffins through changes in their layout. Local traditions have long been neglected and assumed to be derivative of the Theban tradition; the work of artists and scribes outside of Thebes is often dismissed as "naive" or "provincial"--though, in reality, we know very little about the workshops that produced coffins, or the training of the artists and scribes who worked in them. A large number of coffins are thought to come from the city of Akhmim, two hundred kilometers north of Thebes, and these present an excellent opportunity to characterize and evaluate a regional tradition. Unfortunately, the cemeteries of Akhmim were thoroughly plundered in the late 19th century, flooding the art market with coffins that had no find context and which can only be stylistically dated relative to similar Theban pieces. A careful study and comparison of the artistic and scribal hands that produced these coffins opens the door to a more detailed understanding of the development of a vibrant regional style over a period of nearly seven-hundred years between the end of the New Kingdom and the beginning of the Ptolemaic period. Driving this development were artists working in multi-generational workshops. Their work expresses not only the desires of their clientele, the Akhmim elite, but the methods, training, creativity, and skill of the scribes and painters who decorated coffins at Akhmim. About the Speaker: Dr. Kea M. Johnston graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a PhD in Egyptology in 2022. Her PhD thesis deals with workshops that produced coffins at the Egyptian site of Akhmim in the period between 1100 and 330 BCE. She is interested in both the content and materiality of textual inscription on coffins, and Egyptian funerary art generally. She is also interested in using her skills as a software engineer to build tools that can be used for answering questions in the study of the Humanities. Kea is both a researcher and a technological lead on "The Book of the Dead in 3D" project (https://3dcoffins.berkeley.edu/) and has done fieldwork at the site of el-Hibeh with the UC Berkeley Expedition. She has taught multiple courses, including most recently an intensive summer course at Berkeley called "Digital Humanities and Archival Design" in which students learned how to build online archives while exploring the ethical issues and technical challenges surrounding digital cultural heritage. About ARCE-NC: For more information, please visit https://facebook.com/NorthernCaliforniaARCE/, http://www.arce-nc.org/lectures.htm,  https://twitter.com/ARCENCPostings, or https://khentiamentiu.org. To join the chapter or renew your membership, please go to https://www.arce.org/general-membership and select "Berkeley, CA" as your chapter when you sign up.

Northern California ARCE Upcoming Egyptology Lectures

American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) Northern California Chapter Upcoming 2022 Lectures ARCE's Northern California Chapter is pleased to present the following Egyptology lectures for the remainder of 2022. Unless otherwise noted, all lectures are at 3 p.m. Pacific time,  in-person, Room 126 of the Social Sciences Building (formerly Barrows Hall) at UC Berkeley. Painting Coffins at Akhmim in the First Millennium BCE October 9, 2022 Dr. Kea M. Johnston, UC Berkeley THE ABOVE LECTURE HAS BEEN CHANGED FROM IN-PERSON TO VIRUTAL. TO REQUEST REGISTRATION INFORMATION, PLEASE SEND EMAIL TO ARCENCZOOM@GMAIL.COM. Iron in the Sky: Words and Conceptions of Iron and Meteorites in Ancient Egypt November 6, 2022 (1 week earlier than previously scheduled) Dr. Victoria Almansa-Villatoro, Brown University Topic TBD December 11, 2022 Dr. Aleksandra Ksiezak, University of Toronto, CSU San Bernardino   Parking is available in UC lots all day on weekends, for a fee. Ticket dispensing machines accept debit or credit cards. Parking is available in lots around the Social Sciences Building, and in lots along Bancroft. A map of the campus is available online at http://www.berkeley.edu/map/ For more information, please visit https://facebook.com/NorthernCaliforniaARCE/, https://arce-nc.org/lectures.htm, https://twitter.com/ARCENCPostings, or https://khentiamentiu.org. To join the chapter or renew your membership, please go to https://www.arce.org/general-membership and select "Berkeley, CA" as your chapter when you sign up.