By Jace Hoppel 

Introduction 

The world of nationalism and nationalistic thinking is quite the mixed bag. An ideology that can inspire revolution to incite democracy, but can also promote highly racial ideologies. Regardless of how you look at it, one thing that all can agree is quintessential to nationalism is history. The prospect of knowing what either your ancestors or forerunners of your country did is bound to rally up nationalistic pride. 

So what does it look like if that sense of nationalism is threatened? One particular example is the exploitation of a nation’s artifacts, a clear sign of its history, in order to be displayed in museums (usually in Western museums). Nations like Greece, India, and various African, Meso, and South American nations have been large victims of artifact exploitation, but one country especially has been hit hard by this—Egypt. 

Like many of the countries just listed, they too want their artifacts back, specifically those that have been removed either legally or illegally. Objects such as the Rosetta Stone, which was discovered by the French during Napoleon’s invasion of France by accident, was confiscated by the British and is currently on display in the British Museum. Or the limestone bust of Nefertiti, which is on display in the Neues Museum in Berlin—objects that Egypt gains a lot of identity from and desires to have back. 

It may seem like a straightforward proposal, until you look into the details behind what repatriation is. Repatriation is the act of returning exploited objects to a specific group of people—but in the case of Egypt, which group of people? 

While Egypt has a majority of people with North African descent, there is also a decent percentage of people of Arabic descent, as well as smaller percentages of Turks, East Africans, Jews, Southern Europeans, and Syrians. Would repatriation then apply to every one of these groups? That is what will be explored. To fully understand Egypt’s right to repatriation, one must first understand its ethnic identity. 

A Complicated Ethnic Past 

Egypt as a political entity first came into existence sometime around 3200 BC, with the Nile Valley being unified under Narmer, and this Pharaonic era of Egyptian history would come to an end in 30 BC with its annexation under Octavian following the Battle of Actium. Egypt is clearly one of the oldest civilizations in the world, and with that comes a lot of messiness in what exactly it meant to be Egyptian. 

The Rosetta Stone in particular can be a brain exercise when figuring out who has the right to repatriation. After it was accidentally discovered during Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt, it was confiscated by the British and has since remained in the British Museum. The Rosetta Stone, having the inscriptions of Hieroglyphic and Demotic, as well as Greek, creates problems. It was created during the Ptolemaic Dynasty, and thus, would’ve been during the time of Macedonian Egypt. So do Egyptians have the best claim to the stone, or does Greece? 

This is where it gets complicated. Egypt, being nuzzled between Libya, the Near East, and Nubia, had a lot of intermingling with other peoples, and they were constantly exchanging ideas, customs, clothing, cuisine, and gods and goddesses. Nubia in particular had a heavy presence in Egypt, the relationship of the two being akin to France and England. Nubians assimilated well into Egyptian society, as evidenced by figures like Hekanefer, Maiherperi, and Khnumose, all of Nubian descent and were of high rank. 

It’s important to recognize that Egypt by the time of the First Intermediate Period would’ve had a heavily mixed population between natives and Nubians. Despite this, they all would’ve considered themselves Egyptians, despite their origins. 

What Makes an Egyptian? 

Stuart Tyson Smith states in his case study Ethnicity: Constructions of Self and Other in Ancient Egypt, for Journal of Egyptian History 11, that the definition of ethnicity according to Herodotus (often considered the father of history), was that it consisted of traits and traditions handed down through time. By this logic, the Nubians, Persians, and Macedonians, because they still lived by Egyptian customs, could be considered Egyptian. Meanwhile the Romans wouldn’t because they didn’t live by the pharaonic style of Egyptian life. 

So Ptolemaic Egyptians, despite their Greek and Macedonian ancestry, would’ve seen themselves as Egyptian. However, he then goes on to state that ethnic identity can change depending on the circumstances of a group of people (Smith, 2018, 113, 116). So Romans living in the province of Aegyptus would’ve seen themselves as Roman, even though they lived in Egypt, although there very well were probably a lot of people who still saw themselves as Egyptians. 

Or during the days of sultanates and caliphates in Egypt during the Medieval Era, all of these various peoples—whether it be the Fatimids, Ayyubids, or Mamluks—would’ve seen themselves as Egyptians. 

Juan Carlos Moreno Garcia argues in his paper Ethnicity in Ancient Egypt: An Introduction to Key Issues the same idea—that the identity of ethnicity changes and adapts to different ideas and customs based on the situation (Garcia, 2018, 2). 

This means that ethnic identity can change heavily. The idea that Egyptians in the First Intermediate Period would’ve had of what it meant to be Egyptian would’ve been completely different from someone living in Mamluk Egypt or British Egypt. 

With this in mind, who has the right to repatriate Egyptian artifacts? 

The answer to that really is everyone. Egypt for much of its history was heavily mixed ethnically, despite what far right radicalists and Afrocentrists want to make you think. Due to this, modern Egypt is no exception to that rule. With that in mind, the problem isn’t so much who has the right to repatriation of artifacts, but whether or not they can get them back in the first place. 

The Stakes for Modern Egypt 

While exploitation of artifacts—and history with it—is bad in any regard, Egypt is an especially dire case, as tourism of its antique history has become the lifeblood of the country’s economy. Without its historic tourist industry, it would likely not be doing well. 

Western museums have resisted giving artifacts like the Rosetta Stone and the Nefertiti bust back for various reasons—reasons that are stated by Salima Ikram in her book Contested Cultural Heritage: Religion, Nationalism, Erasure, and Exclusion in a Global World. 

In her chapter on Egyptian repatriation, she talks about how Western Museums have urged that the threat of war, religious fundamentalism, and poor museum conditions in Egypt are among the reasons for the refusal to give back Egypt’s antiquities. 

While these all seem like understandable explanations, they all have their own faults. Ikram states that war is no excuse to deprive a country of its history, seeing as it can happen anywhere. This is ironic when you consider that during WWII, the Rosetta Stone was removed for the first and only time so far during its time at the British Museum, due to the threat of it being destroyed during the London Blitz. 

Religious fundamentalism in the case of Egypt also has some cracks. Now Egypt is a largely Muslim country, and a law was placed in Egypt known as the Fatwa, which stated that people could not have statues in a domestic setting, which goes along with Islamic teachings, which forbade human depictions. 

Archaeologists and historians, seeing that there would be an artifact genocide if they didn’t do something, urged that the Fatwa only applied to statues in homes, and ones in public settings and museums were exempt from this. 

Lastly, poor museum conditions were very much a concern in Egypt; however, museums have been modernizing and improving the conditions for exhibits. Not to mention that Western museums don’t always have the best conditions either (Ikram, 2010, 149-150). 

Conclusion 

With all of this in mind, there is no reason Egypt should not be receiving its history back—especially since the country’s people gain much of their national pride from Egypt’s pharaonic past. It serves as a way to unite people in the country, and thus, it’s only right that Egyptians, regardless of their ancestral origins, get to see the objects that made Western colonists gush over the country that they call home.