In London last month, my first stop was to visit the British Museum. Going there seemed an urgent priority. My thinking was that in such turbulent contemporary times, it is reassuring to see the classics of antiquity, those fundaments of Western Civilization that remain. At the same time, given our shifting ethical rationales concerning antiquities, I wanted to see again those British Museum treasures which may, sooner or later, be returned to their countries of origin and explore my feelings about that.

Arriving at the Museum, I made a beeline for the Rosetta Stone. To read more click here

Right of the main entryway and the Norman Foster-designed enclosure for the reading room sits the Rosetta Stone. It is a very dark slab of granodiorite whose top left corner has been sheared off, and whose front is covered in ancient script. More to the point, it is covered in three ancient scripts, Greek, Demotic (script of an Egyptian spoken language) and Egyptian hieroglyphic text.