The French culture ministry has decided to return the 3,200-year-old frescoes, which disappeared in the 1980s, Egypt said, and were acquired by the Louvre in Paris in 2000 and 2003.

Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt’s supreme council of antiquities, had threatened to sever relations with the Louvre unless it handed back the relics. That would have forced the French museum to suspend excavation work in the Pharaonic necropolis of Saqarra.

Mr Hawass told The Daily Telegraph that the return of the painted fragments would “warn every museum not to buy stolen artefacts”.

He now wants the British Museum to lend the Rosetta Stone to Cairo. The artefact, dating from 196BC, carries inscriptions in Greek and Egyptian that first enabled hieroglyphics to be deciphered.

“I am not asking for all the objects in the British Museum to come back, only for the unique objects to come back to Egypt,” he said.

The basalt stone was discovered by French soldiers in 1799, but was ceded to Britain by the Treaty of Alexandria in 1801 and moved to the British Museum the following year.

Mr Hawass acknowledged that seeking the return of the Rosetta Stone was a different proposition from the painted fragments in the Louvre.

However, he said: “Its original place should be in Egypt. We can give the British Museum an artefact in its place.” He promised to return the relic after Egypt’s Grand Museum opens in 2013.

A spokesman said the British Museum “enjoys good relations” with Egypt and promised to consider Mr Hawass’s request.

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