Egypt asks UNESCO for help securing return of Rosetta Stone

CAIRO, Egypt -- Egypt announced Wednesday it was launching a campaign for the return of five of its most precious artifacts from museums abroad, including the Rosetta Stone in London and the graceful bust of Nefertiti in Berlin.

Zahi Hawass, the country's chief archaeologist, said UNESCO had agreed to mediate in its claims for artifacts currently at the British Museum, the Louvre in Paris, two German museums and Boston's Museum of Fine Arts.

Several countries have waged uphill battles to get back pieces they contend were looted by Western museums. Most notably, Greece has been seeking for decades the return of the Parthenon's Elgin Marbles from the British Museum.

The pieces Hawass said Egypt wants returned are among the prized icons of European museums.

The Rosetta Stone, a 1,680-pound slab of black basalt with a triple inscription, was the key to deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. It has been a major draw for London's British Museum, which attracts 5 million visitors a year.

The same holds true at Berlin's Egyptian Museum and its bust of Nefertiti. The 3,000-year-old bust has become a symbol of ancient beauty with its depiction of the queen's delicate neck, elegantly arched brows and towering blue headdress.

The British Museum has long refused attempts by Greece to regain the Elgin Marbles. A museum spokeswoman, Hannah Boulton, said Wednesday it had not received any request from Egypt for the Rosetta Stone and the museum would only comment when it got one.

But Boulton suggested Egypt would get the same response as Greece.

"The museum considers everything in its World Collection should stay as part of the collection to give people the opportunity to see masterpieces from around the world," she said.

In 2003, the British Museum turned down a request to lend the stone to Egypt for a visit, saying "to loan such pieces would result in our disappointing the 5 million or so visitors who come to the museum every year."

Officials at Berlin's Egyptian Museum could not be reached for comment.

UNESCO officials could not immediately confirm the U.N. agency had agreed to mediate with museums over Egypt's claims.

Hawass told journalists in Cairo he proposed two weeks ago that UNESCO lead negotiations with the museums and the agency agreed.

He showed a letter he sent to UNESCO's assistant director-general for culture, Mounir Bouchenaki, listing the five pieces Egypt seeks. Egypt's Culture Ministry is backing the request, he said.

"This time we are very serious because we asked UNESCO" to intervene, Hawass said.

Egypt considers the artifacts stolen, he said. "We believe that Rosetta Stone didn't leave Egypt legally. It was taken through imperialism," he said.

He said Egypt is also seeking the elaborate Zodiac ceiling painting from the Dendera Temple, now housed in the Louvre; the statute of Hemiunu -- the nephew and vizier of Pharaoh Khufu, builder of the Great pyramid -- in Germany's Roemer-Pelizaeu museum; and the bust of Anchhaf, builder of the Chephren Pyramid, now at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Hawass said the Anchhaf bust was the only piece of the five that left Egypt legally, and Egypt is offering compensation for it.

In a rare restoration of an artifact, Italy this year returned to Ethiopia the 180-ton, 1,700-year-old Axum Obelisk, which had been taken in 1937 on the orders of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

The Rosetta Stone, with parallel texts in ancient hieroglyphics, Demotic language and Greek, was first discovered by French troops in August 1799 in the Nile Delta of Rashid -- known in English as Rosetta-- then taken over by Britain in 1801 after the French surrendered in Egypt. In has been in the British Museum since 1802.

French archaeologist Jean Champolion used the triple inscription to unlock the previously untranslatable hieroglyphics in 1822.

The Nefertiti bust was found by a German excavator in 1912 who took it for exhibition in Berlin in 1923 without permission from the Egyptian authorities, according to Hawass.

The Dendera Zodiac was taken by the French collector Sebastien Saulnier in the late 18th century. He sold it to King Louis XVIII. In his letter to UNESCO, Hawass called its removal "one of the most famous cases of looting in Egypt."

The statue of Hemiunu was discovered in 1912 and transferred to the German museum the same year.