November 18, 2024 to February 16, 2025

A project by Pedro Barbáchano

“[T]he Arabian manuscripts, the statues, and other collections which have been made for the French Republic, shall be considered as public property, and subject to the disposal of the generals of the combined army,” declares Article 16 of the Capitulation of Alexandria.[1] This surrender agreement, signed in 1801, marked the defeat of the French expedition in Egypt, forcing General Jacques Menou to submit to the demands of British and Ottoman generals.

A subsequent inventory from 1802 lists the ancient sculptures “taken”[2] by British forces from the French Army. Among them, the eighth entry lists “a stone of black granite with 3 inscriptions, hieroglyphic, coptic and greek found at Rosetta”—this artifact is now known as the Rosetta Stone. Originally one of many copies created to disseminate a royal decree from circa 196 BC, it bears witness to the power negotiations between Ptolemaic rulers and Egyptian priestly associations. Rediscovered by the French expedition in 1799, the Rosetta Stone is now held at the British Museum, where it accumulates touristic and cultural capital due to its pivotal role in the decipherment of hieroglyphs. Today, it has become a symbolic locus for ongoing conversations about the repatriation of artifacts from museums of the Global North.

The inventory of ancient sculptures also notes General Menou as the stone’s previous owner. When the French were compelled to surrender their collections, we learn that Menou resisted, claiming the Rosetta Stone as his personal property.[3] Despite his defiance, a French officer eventually handed over the stone, hidden among Menou’s belongings. Tasked with its transport to England, British Colonel Tomkyns Hilgrove Turner celebrated the stone as a “proud trophy of the arms of Britain—not plundered from defenceless inhabitants, but honourably acquired by the fortune of war.”[4] Later, large inscriptions were added to the stone’s sides, indicating it was “captured in Egypt by the British Army [in] 1801” and “presented by King George III.”

In other words, the last recorded transfer of ownership—and the legal basis for its acquisition by the British Museum—appears in Article 16 of the Capitulation of Alexandria. The clause triggers two movements of legal order: it explicitly transfers all artifacts collected by the French in Egypt to the public property of the British and Ottoman armies, while retroactively validating the French claim of prior ownership, formally recognizing them as rightful possessors before the British. The contract conceals a colonial fallacy: two rival empires frame ownership as a dispute between themselves, legitimizing each other and eclipsing the colony’s stakes in the matter. None of the capitulation’s signatories was Egyptian.

Inside the SIGHTINGS cube, shipping labels affixed to a wooden crate identify the British Museum as the consignor and declare a black granite stone weighing approximately 760 kilograms as its cargo. The crate entirely veils its content; the language inscribed on its exterior—descriptors of weight, material, and itinerary—is the only point of access. Like the inventory of the British expeditions, these labels offer only traces, reducing the content to archetypes. The ambiguity protects the object by diluting its value, erasing any possible symbolic and historical significance, and collapsing the distinction between original and replica. The institutional economy implied by the crate’s transit remains equally shrouded; it is left unclear whether the object is being loaned, sold, repatriated, seized or plundered.

Beyond the stone, the crate, and the contract, the large windows of the Hall Building—where the cube is installed—are also inscribed. The twenty-sixth article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, advocating for free education in multiple languages, forms a calligram spelling out the university’s name. The text is currently interrupted by plywood boards erected after demonstrators shattered the reinforced glass. This new opacity removes the cube from street view, turning the boarded windows into a projection surface and anchoring the language marked on the cube’s glass panes. Through this interplay of material and medium, the installation reframes these fragmented texts as voices of authority.

The installation approximately 760 kg of public property invites viewers to observe language found in public spaces, historical records or transport labels as acts of speech. Probing their authorship and semantic ambiguities reveals uncertainty, illegitimacy and attempts to enact dominance. The cube becomes a transparent crate, generating tension between its concealed contents and the documents inscribed on its surface. Its see-through structure allows language to materialize and ricochet within the contested public space it inhabits. By foregrounding the often-overlooked legal foundations of heritage circulation, the installation offers a new framework for collective dialogue on the fraught role of cultural institutions.

[1] Robert Thomas Wilson, History of the British Expedition to Egypt (London: T. Egerton, 1802), 346-353.

[2] Sir Tomkyns Hilgrove Turner, “Rosetta Stone, An account of pieces of ancient sculpture taken by the British forces…from the French,” manuscript letter, 1802, AES Ar. 312, Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, The British Museum Images, www.bmimages.com/preview.asp?image=01613798704.

[3] Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge, The Rosetta Stone (London: The British Museum, 1913), 2.

[4] Richard Parkinson, Cracking Codes: The Rosetta Stone and Decipherment (Oakland: University of California Press, 1999), 21-23.