No Return Policy: Battle for the World’s History in Cairo and Beyond
Image credit: William Simpson via Wikimedia Commons
I’ll be the first to admit that the ancient Egyptian history module back in year four really left its mark on me. Maybe that’s why I’m unreasonably excited that the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) has fully opened to the public this month in Cairo. It is the largest museum in the world dedicated to a single civilisation. Honestly, we studied the ancient Egyptians in history, English, DT… and Maths? (Was my first term purely dedicated to ancient Egypt?)
The GEM has been in the works since 1992 and has been disrupted by wars, revolutions and a plague. In total $1.2bn has been put into 12 exhibition spaces, an open ended central hall and a system of conservation laboratories. The Egyptian government hopes the GEM will draw millions of visitors and massively boost the Egyptian economy. People want to see Egyptian artefacts in Egypt.
The GEM has a laundry list of objects around the world that deserve to be reunited with the collection. At the top of the list is the Rosetta Stone, housed at the end of Malet Street, at the British Museum.
The Rosetta Stone, a stela that cracked hieroglyphs, has been on display in the British Museum since 1802. Napoleon invaded Egypt, took it and promptly lost it in a battle to Britain. Egypt, obviously, wants it back.
The turn of the 19th century was a rewarding time to be in the colonial plunder business. The British Museum’s most famously-contentious set of artefacts, the Elgin Marbles, have been at the centre of a long and bitter legal battle. Though PM Sir Keir Starmer has promised to loan the marbles back to Greece, British law forbids their permanent return.
At the heart of it, the British Museum wrestles with an existential crisis. They want to face up to their colonial past and return objects in the collection that are colonial spoils, but in doing so Britain will lose most of the collection. We worry that the returned objects will be kept from the public or outright destroyed… or we just really like having them on our doorstep.
We should also worry that the institutions holding onto them don’t exactly have the cleanest track record either. In 2023, the British Museum admitted a large quantity of small artefacts had gone missing, were damaged or stolen. Problem is, the archive is so big and so analogue that they have no idea what exactly was taken.
If losing history is the issue (cue: impending sense of tragedy over the Library of Alexandria), in this age of advanced technology, can’t we be content with a very accurate copy? An Oxford scholar has started robot-carving and hand-finishing (marble) copies of the Elgin Marbles.
The idea of copies may make you balk but consider how it’ll change museum visits. You could actually touch the Elgin Marbles or the Rosetta Stone. How often have you visited a museum and thought, ‘don’t touch it, don’t touch it’? It will also allow visitors with vision impairments to be able to feel ‘the real thing’, instead of a miniature bronze relief stuck on a descriptive board, or an audio guide.
We, the British public, as owners of the British Museum, need to take a long hard look at ourselves and decide why we think it is copacetic that we get to keep the bloodied plunder. I recommend going to visit the Elgin Marbles and reflecting. And on your way, pay your tributes to the caryatid in the proceeding room. She has five sisters waiting for her in Athens that she hasn’t stood next to since 1805.