Rosetta Stone of Champollion was smaller than one of Young on an adjacent information panel; English visitors complained that the opposite was true. The portraits were in fact the same size. Egypt first requested the return of the Rosetta Stone in July 2003, on the British Museum's 250th anniversary. Zahi Hawass, the chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, asked that the stele be repatriated to Egypt, commenting that it was the "icon of our Egyptian identity". He repeated the proposal two years later in Paris, listing the stone as one of several key items belonging to Egypt's cultural heritage, a list
Rosetta Stone it was incorporated in the foundations of a fortress constructed by the Mameluke Sultan Qaitbay (c. 1416/18–1496) to defend the Bolbitine branch of the Nile at Rashid. There it lay for at least another three centuries until its rediscovery. Two other inscriptions containing the same Memphis decree have been found since the discovery of the Rosetta Stone: the Nubayrah Stele, and an inscription found at the Temple of Philae (on the Philae obelisk). Unlike the Rosetta Stone, the hieroglyphic texts of these other copies of the decree were relatively intact. The Rosetta Stone had been deciphered long before they were