Rosetta Stone a permanent return. In December 2009, he proposed to drop his claim for the permanent return of the Rosetta Stone if the British Museum lent the stone to Egypt for three months for the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza in 2013. These requests were refused. As John Ray has observed, "the day may come when the stone has spent longer in the British Museum than it ever did in Rosetta." There is strong opposition among national museums to the repatriation of objects of international cultural significance such as the Rosetta Stone. In response to repeated Greek requests
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