“Dr Tarek Tawfik, director general of the Grand Egyptian Museum, risked sparking a new row over the prized artefact … The stone fragment, which dates to 196BC, is one of the British Museum’s most popular exhibits. Before it was found by accident by Napoleon’s army in 1799 nobody knew how to read hieroglyphs. Scholars were able to use the Greek inscription on it as the key to decipher them.”