At a time when young Britons are questioning their colonial past more than ever, the Unfiltered History Tour is a secret tour of the British Museum’s stolen colonial artefacts, that makes use of a tool the young generation are familiar with Instagram filters.

We can’t change the past. But we can change how we choose to engage with it in the present.

So we decided to educate these young Britons about their cultural history, using a tool they were intimately familiar with - Instagram filters.

When visitors use their smartphones to scan the museum’s stolen artefacts, they hear native experts narrate the true histories of how they were stolen, with native soundscapes from each country, built into the Augmented Reality experience.

This helped bridge the gap between those whom these artefacts belonged to, and a generation of Britons best placed to unlearn and relearn their country’s cultural history with perspective.

Heba Abd el Gawad: Given where Egypt is situated geographically, overlooking two major seas – the Mediterranean and the Red Sea – as well as the Nile; and having a long history of agriculture and prosperity, everyone was interested in having a piece of Egypt or in having Egypt under the rule.

From the year 30 BC – before Christ – up till 1956 AD, Egypt was under foreign rulers. From 1800 until 1954, Egypt was under the French occupation as well as the British occupation – the British colonialism lasted the longest from 1882 up till the expulsion of the last British presence in Egypt in 1954, roughly. Egypt became only under totally native rulership from 1956 officially, up till today. Being a country that has been taken over or that has been thought of as interesting in terms of, not only economic exploitation, but equally culturally, meant that Egypt became very multi-layered in terms of multiculturalism. There are a lot of layers of other cultures and other ethnicities within Egypt. So for example our dialect today, what we call Egyptian Arabic, it has ancient Egyptian words, it has Coptic words, obviously Arabic words, but it equally has French words, English words, Italian words. So our dialect itself, it sums all of the cultures that make up what is Egypt.

Soundbite: Stolen lives, get it back; stolen culture, give it back. VICE World News presents The Unfiltered History Tour – colonialism, as told through ten objects.

Gawad: I'm Heba Abd el Gawad, an Egyptian Egyptologist who specialises in the history and archaeology of Egyptian heritage. How the Rosetta Stone came into being is, I think, it's far more exciting than the Rosetta Stone story that we know today. After Alexander the Great, his empire was divided between his army generals. One of his army generals, Ptolemy, he won Egypt and became the ruler of Egypt. And so he started a family line, we call them the Ptolemaic dynasty.

The king for whom the stone was written was actually a teenager as well. He became king at a very young age, from 12 onwards, some say 15. He came at a time where Egypt was in a very difficult situation. Egypt was part of a lot of external wars. The other army generals from Alexander the Great onwards, or the rivals of the Ptolemaic dynasty, had an interest in taking parts of the possessions of the Ptolemaic Empire. So Egypt was in the middle of wars in the Mediterranean, but as well as [this], Egypt was in the middle of an internal revolution. When you are a foreign ruler, you have to be in good terms with the local priests or the local administration at the time. The king was located in the north of Egypt in Alexandria; the native priests in the south being as far from the court as possible meant that you can easily rebel, specifically if the country is weak if the king is weak, being very young and being in the middle of a lot of external and internal troubles.

So there was a revolution in the middle. One way to ease the revolution or to calm it down was to sign a decree. Every now and then, the priests would write a decree, the king would give them a lot of benefits, economic benefits, and in return they would give the king all the support he needs to stay as the stable ruler of Egypt, as much as the dynasty needs. It's a friends with benefits type of relationship.

Every year, all the priests from all over Egypt would come and have a big meeting in Alexandria, and they would agree on certain terms, economic terms. And after the meeting, the high priests of Memphis would write up this decree. By the order of the king, the decree would have to be written on stone. Being written on stone means that it's verified. That was their type of like, sealing. Sealing any agreement is having it written in stone, and there will be a copy of this decree distributed all over Egypt, so every single temple within Egypt would have a copy of this decree. The Rosetta Stone is one of those decrees that priests made a meeting during the time of the revolution in the south, and they've written down some of the economic benefits that would be given to the temples and this means that they would call down the revolution and Egypt can settle once again. And the copy of this decree was distributed all over the temples of Egypt. Every single temple had a copy.

The one that we see in the British Museum is the copy that existed in the temple of Sais, or what we call in Arabic, Sa el-Hagar. The Rosetta Stone was initially a huge stone, written in three scripts: hieroglyphs, the official language in the temple; and then the morphic, and this is the informal dialect; then the Greek. The temple where the stone was in Sa el-Hagar or in Sais, it got totally demolished, more or less. We have very, very few visible remains of it above the ground, the stone have got broken. It was even broken before the time of the Arab conquest.

And then this piece, the one that we see in the British Museum, got used during the medieval time in building a fort around what we know today as the city of Rosetta, that they were building to protect Egypt against any naval invasion or any invasion that would occur to Egypt coming from the sea, from the Mediterranean. So the block became – or what we know today as the Rosetta Stone – became part of this big fort. That's the story of how the stone came into being, and how it ended from Sais, from Sa el-Hagar, to the city of Rosetta, from where it takes its name today.

Then by the time the French occupation came, they have a big project – documenting all of the archaeological remains that exist within Egypt. In one of these inspections, one of the French soldiers noticed the stone. He understood that it was distinctive because of the Greek text on it. Having Greek text as well as the hieroglyphs meant that if we were able to match the Greek text with the Egyptian text, it can be a way of revealing the secrets of the hieroglyphic language, then we would be able to understand ancient Egyptian writings on the temple. So when this block was discovered, they immediately recognised that this was extremely important and it was added to the other properties or the other monuments that the French owned as part of its big scientific study.

Then the British occupation came into Egypt. And what happens is that there was a huge war between them, huge battles; the British won. For the British forces at the time, the stone was seen as a symbolism of their victory over the French. They've written in English on both sides of the stone, something that you can still see at the British Museum, you will see from the left hand and right hand side, the sides of the stone, the English engravings of how it was submitted to King Edward at the time by the British colonial forces. This is the perfect symbolism of colonialism and the Empire, having the English engravings because it's still an artefact. If it was, let's say, inscribed by Egyptian Arabic at the time, it would have been perceived as a destruction of the artefact, but when the same engraving is done by the British colonial forces, this is legal, this is fine. This is not a destruction of the artefacts. And I think up till today, this is the symbolism of who owns the Rosetta Stone today. It's the British Museum. And the Rosetta Stone is not only the property of the British Museum, but it's part of British history, not just Egyptian history or not just the ancient Egyptian heritage. The superiority of the understanding of ancient Egypt became British property.

It's not only that this engraving is the symbolism of the theft, but it's equally of how they stole the effort of all the previous Egyptian priests and the Arabic mediaeval scientists who are trying to decipher the hieroglyphs and who've made extremely important contributions in attempting to decipher the hieroglyphs. This got totally whitewashed. This is not the story that we narrate anymore. All what we narrate is how the British or the French, they gave Ancient Egypt to the world. They discovered Ancient Egypt.

The Rosetta Stone was not the discovery, neither of the French, neither of the British. It was already discovered and reused in Egypt multiple times. Even the hieroglyphs itself was not neither a French Champollion discovery nor a Thomas Young, British discovery, nor is it the gift of the Rosetta Stone. There has been various attempts in trying to read and decipher the hieroglyphs by the Arab medieval writers and the Egyptian Coptic priests. All of this traditional knowledge is totally dismissed, not part of the story whatsoever.

What is also problematic is that we tell the story from the British Museum perspective, the European colonialism perspective. There is that the stone became part of the national branding in Britain, people who travel to London just to see the Rosetta Stone, so it became part of the British national branding. It's part of the British brand. Colonialism has never gone away. Maybe there aren't British troops in Egypt, but there is still this influence, this knowledge; occupation. There is this colonialism of knowledge, we are not perceived as the successors of the ancient Egyptians. And we are not perceived as the ones who have the right of decision making of where our heritage should be, even how it should be interpreted, and how we can make use of it today in even understanding our present.

The Rosetta Stone as it stands today, in the British Museum, it's a war spoil. That’s what it is in reality. It has never left Egypt legally. There were two foreign powers in rivalry over Egypt. One of them won over the other and they took the war spoil of the other. It's a war spoil. It's a trophy of empire. But one has to say that Egypt hasn't equally submitted any official requests of returning the stone. There has not been any official requests submitted to the British Museum, so we need to reflect on that as well.

I would prefer that if it gets returned, it gets returned because the majority of the Egyptian community, the diversity of Egyptian communities, were involved in the discussions and in the decision making. No one even asks the diverse Egyptian communities here what do they think about the Rosetta Stone and if it gets returned, where we should put it. I'm more keen on changing the way that requests are made and finding a way that the voices from the countries that have been previously colonised, all of them can get included in such discussions.

Credits: This podcast was produced by Jesse Lawson, with research from Marthe Van Der Wolf. Voice acting was from Antoine Morcos, Clement Geiger & Serena Salvadori, and sounds from Benboncan and BP or not BP. The Unfiltered History Tour is a VICE UK production.

The British Museum’s artefacts might be objects for its visitors, however, they hold deep cultural and religious significance for the communities they belong to.

While the Hoa Hakananai’a is popularly known as the ‘Easter Island head’, He holds deep religious signifiance to the people of Rapa Nui who worship Him as a living God. Similarly, while the Amaravati Marbles are admired for their marble craftsmanship, they originally formed the Amaravati Stupa (dismantled and torn down by the British), Asia’s second largest at the time

Each audio uncovers the cultural significance and manner of looting of each artefact; the Chinese Summer Palace Jades faced a similar fate as the Benin Bronzes, cultural treasures that were looted by British soldiers after massacres by the British Army. These facts are unknown to most young Britons, as the British Museum never reveals how these artefacts were acquired in the first place.

When visitors use their smartphones to scan the museum’s stolen artefacts, the relevant filter is activated via geolocation. Listeners are transported back in time, as native experts narrate the true histories of how they were stolen, with first-ever visual depictions of scenes of crime forming a contextual overlay over the artefact in real-time using Augmented Reality.

While the British Museum’s narrative portrayed the colonies as helpless in the face of British aggression; AR in smartphones were used to tell history from the perspective of the colonies, as formidable foes who fought to save their cultural treasures.