The Rosetta Stone was taken from Egypt. This artist took it back

Chidi Nwaubani also operates under the name Looty, using art and design to reclaim artefacts lost to colonialism. (Supplied: ABC TV) Link copiedShareShare articleWhen Chidi Nwaubani started dreaming up a new art project during downtime in COVID lockdowns, his first step was to consult a lawyer. "I was like, 'Wait, is this actually legal? Can someone do this?'" explains the Nigerian-British artist and designer. Nwaubani wanted to know if he could create a digital form of the Rosetta Stone, which is now housed in the British Museum after being taken from Egypt in 1799 by Napoleon's troops. It was then taken from the French by the British as a "spoil of war". "And the idea was just, how can we steal back something that was already stolen? Is that even possible?" The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum (© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.) Nwaubani says the lawyer informed him that taking and reusing an image of the stone would be illegal, as the British Museum owns the image. But it specifies in their terms and conditions that you are permitted to take 3D scans. "It's funny, it was a legal investigation that led to the actual final concept." Under the collective name Looty, Nwaubani and fellow artist Ahmed Abokor entered the British Museum and took a LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) scan of the stone on an iPad Pro. They used some 3D tools to clean it up, and then they had a digital canvas of the Rosetta Stone. Soon after, they flew to Egypt and used geo-located augmented reality — similar to the tech behind Pokémon Go — to put it back. Anybody who visits can now use their phone to see the digital recreation in the exact place the Rosetta Stone originally stood. But this story isn't just about the stone for Nwaubani. It's about changing the way we think about our history and how it's shared. It's about reclaiming these lost stories and then preserving them in a way that can't be stolen again. "You have the physical realm, but there's also this digital realm. Really that's where the story lives. I'm trying to steal back the aura, the soul of this artefact," he says. "Now and forevermore, it will be there in its position." The Rosetta Stone is a remarkable piece of history that tells a tale of language, culture, war and colonialism. Originally found in the Egyptian town of Rashid (known by the French as Rosetta), it's actually a broken piece of a bigger stone slab, known as a stela. Inscribed in 196 BC with an official decree from Egyptian king Ptolemy V, it was one of many that would have been distributed around temples in the country more than 2000 years ago. Example of the Demotic script on the Rosetta Stone. (© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.) While the inscribed message isn't of particular significance, what made the discovery of this surviving stone so important is that the decree is written in three different languages: hieroglyphs (sacred symbols); Demotic (the language of the people) and Ancient Greek. At the time of its discovery by the French, nobody knew how to read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. But because scholars did know how to read Ancient Greek, the Rosetta Stone became a key to deciphering the script and unlocking much of what we know about Ancient Egypt. Award-winning journalist Marc Fennell takes audiences on a globe-trotting investigation spanning the Caribbean, Asia and Egypt, following the trail of remarkable objects and the communities still fighting for their return. Nwaubani had long been interested in the Rosetta Stone — known by some as the Hajar Rashid— labelling it "the darling of the British Museum". It's the single most visited piece in their collection. "It's almost like the Mona Lisa, it's something that's so important in terms of global history, and what it means." Then he connected with Dr Monica Hanna in Egypt, a specialist in archaeology and Egyptology, who was thrilled to help with the project. "The Rosetta Stone is the symbol of cultural imperialism and cultural violence," Dr Hanna says on ABC iview's Stuff The British Stole. But it was only once he was on the ground in Rashid that the true significance of the stone hit Nwaubani. Residents gathered around in celebration; someone called the local news; a group of schoolkids who happened to be on excursion flocked around them. "Even though it's not the real Rosetta Stone, just the act of doing it, the act of someone going in physically and then returning to Egypt, that energy that it brings to people and that joy it brings to people … It means something, right?" Local schoolkids celebrate the return of the Rosetta Stone with Chidi Nwaubani and Dr Hanna. (Supplied: Chidi Nwaubani) Nwaubani is the first to admit this is not an exact replica of every bump and scrat

The Rosetta Stone was taken from Egypt. This artist took it back

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