Thank you for downloading this episode of A History of the World in 100 Objects
from BBC Radio 4.
Every day, I walk through the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery at the British Museum,
and every day, there are tour guides speaking every imaginable language,
addressing groups of visitors who are craning to see the object
that I'll be talking about in this program.
It's on every visitor's itinerary, and with the mummies, it's the most popular object in the British Museum.
Why?
To look at, it is decidedly dull.
It is a grey stone, about the size of one of those large suitcases
you see people trundling around on wheels at airports.
And the rough edges show that it's been broken from a larger stone,
with the fractures cutting across the text that covers one side.
And when you read that text, it's pretty dull, too.
It's mostly bureaucratic jargon about tax concessions.
But, as so often in the museum, appearances are deceiving,
because this dreary bit of broken granite has played a starring role in three fascinating and different stories:
the story of the Greek kings who ruled in Alexandria after Alexander the Great conquered Egypt;
the story of the French and British imperial competition across the Middle East after Napoleon invaded Egypt;
and the extraordinary but peaceful scholarly contest