During Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, Napoleon, who loved archaeology and ancient culture, led a large number of French archaeologists to follow the French army to Egypt, and these French archaeological teams carried out large-scale archaeological excavations in Egypt at the behest of Napoleon and found many ancient artifacts. Most of these artifacts were later shipped to Europe, and the Rosetta Stone, made in 196 BC, was discovered by the French and studied by French archaeologists.
Napoleon's expedition to Egypt
On July 15, 1799, a lieutenant in the French army named Pierre was ordered to build a fortification in the Egyptian city of Rosetta, and as the soldiers were digging hard to dig the foundation, they found a black stone in the dirt, and when the stones were all dug out, Lieutenant Pierre found that the stone was engraved with unintelligible words. Lieutenant Pierre, who had archaeological knowledge, judged that this stele must have been of great value, because in this part of Egypt, valuable artifacts were often found.
So Lieutenant Pierre gave the stone to his superiors, who sent it to the research center established by France in Cairo, and when the stone stele was transported to the research center, the French archaeologists were very interested in the stone stele. These archaeologists then studied the stele, and they found that the writing on the stele was ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and ancient Greek, which alone could determine the long history of this stele.
Rosetta Stone
However, in 1801, Napoleon and the British army lost the war for Egypt, the French army was forced to withdraw from Egypt, and by June of that year, the British army entered Cairo. When the French archaeologists learned that the British army had entered Cairo, they knew that the British, who were also obsessed with archaeology, would come to ask for the Rosetta Stone, and while they were discussing countermeasures, the British archaeologists brought several British soldiers to the Cairo Research Center.
British archaeologists told French scholars that the French army had been defeated and that the Rosetta Stone should be returned to England, that the Rosetta Stone was now confiscated, and that the stone was now the property of King George III.
However, the French scholars decisively rejected the British, and as a result, the two sides fought because of discord, and some people on both sides were injured, and later the British returned to the barracks when they saw that the French were unwilling to return.
Portrait of George III
Immediately after the conflict, the French scholar Archienner wrote a letter to the British ambassador, William Richard, claiming that if the British sent soldiers to rob the Rosetta Stone, they would smash it. Two months later, the British signed an agreement with the French that all the French evacuate Egypt, and that the Rosetta Stone must be handed over to the British for safekeeping.
The French scholars in Cairo saw that the situation was not good, so they put the stele on a small boat to prepare for transport to France, only to be captured on the coast by British soldiers, who defied the french scholars' obstruction and transported the stele back to the British Embassy in Cairo. Later, this stone stele was transported to Britain by the British army, and then donated to the British Museum in the name of King George III, the Rosetta Stone is still preserved in the British Museum, and the text on the stone stele is mostly deciphered by British scholars in the British Museum, it is said that this stone stele was ordered by the Greek king Ptolemy V of Egypt after Alexander's conquest of Egypt, and the deeds of this king are recorded on it.
The British Museum exhibits the Rosetta Stone
By the middle of the twentieth century, Egypt was freed from British colonial rule, and in the following decades, Egypt continued to recover the artifacts that had been shipped to Europe by Britain and France, and about 20,000 artifacts were successfully recovered. However, the Rosetta Stone is still preserved in the British Museum, and in 2003, Egypt's Antiquities Administration asked the British Museum to return the Rosetta Stone, which was rejected by the British.
When the news of Britain's refusal to return rosetta's stone reached Egypt, it immediately caused an uproar in the Egyptian archaeological community, and Egyptian archaeologists accused this time, including an archaeologist from the Egyptian Museum who publicly accused Britain and France:
"In order to decipher the secret of rosetta's inscription, two well-known tomb robbers fought for the stele, but this stele was found in the land of Egypt, and it belongs to the Egyptian people."