Egyptian Artifacts > Rosetta Stone

Rosetta Stone

Background

The Rosetta Stone is one of the most important artifacts ever recovered in history. Its translation allowed researchers for over two hundred years to crack the secrets of ancient Egyptian culture by understanding one of the biggest early mysteries surrounding the civilization, its language.

With the loss of people who knew how to read hieroglyphs the real history of Egypt was lost for nearly two thousand years. Yet upon the discovery of the Rosetta Stone we finally had a trilingual document that led to the first translations of hieroglyphs. From there the discoveries cascaded and more and more we are beginning to understand the language, culture and history of ancient Egypt.

Rosetta Stone Photograph - European Space Agency (ESA)

Originally discovered during the French conquest of Egypt under Napoleon, the tablet itself dates back to the rule of the Ptolemies and while once was a mysterious artifact is no longer. It has been on public display in the British Museum since 1802 and has become one of the most viewed artifacts of all time. In fact, the translation of this artifact has even spawned a popular language learning computer software of the same name.

Origins

The Rosetta Stone is a massive stone tablet that was created in 196 BCE on behalf of Ptolemy V and displayed in the city of Memphis. The kings decree was written in the three pre-dominant languages of Hellenistic Egypt; Hieroglyphs, Demotic, and Greek. Since each piece of the stone is the same it allowed for a translation from Greek to the unknown Egyptian language at the time.

The Rosetta Stone was thought to have been on display at an Egyptian temple possibly at Sais which was nearby. The Rosetta Stone was moved during the Christian and medieval eras. The only reason it was found was someone was using it as a piece of building material in the construction of Fort Julien near the town of Rashid, also known as Rosetta in the Nile Delta region.

During this time Napoleon was conquering through Egypt and in 1799 one of the soldiers in his expedition came across the stone. The soldiers name was Pierre-François Bouchard and he had just discovered the key to understanding nearly all of Egyptian culture, used as a freaking mortar stone.

The Rosetta Stone when it was first found was the Victorian version of a mysterious artifact. The trilingual text was unreadable by most people and the prospect of deciphering an ancient and unknown language excited the culturally sophisticated French. Soon, much like today copies of the text began circulating all around France and amateurs and professionals alike tried to crack the code of the ancient Egyptians.

Plaster casts of the stone and lithographies began eventually going to all of the European museums for study and analysis. The stone would transfer hands to the British in 1801 when the French were defeated in Egypt. The stone officially transferred ownership under the Capitulation of Alexandria agreement and was then transported to London where it has been on display ever since.

Successful Translation

The first translations of the Greek text into English and French occurred around 1803. However, it would not be for twenty years that someone would come along that would be able to crack the code of the ancient Egyptians. Even after the supposed language was cracked on the tablet it would be years and decades before anyone could read the language successfully.

Even today in the modern era we are still making huge discoveries into the ancient Egyptian language and its hidden mysteries. The more we learn about the Egyptians the more questions we have and by understanding their language we get a great insight into their lives and beliefs.

Ironically, while the British would hold possession of the Rosetta Stone it would be their archenemies the French that would successfully crack the code. In 1822 the Rosetta Stone would be translated by Jean-François Champollion in Paris. In fact this competition between the French and the British over the Rosetta Stone would influence most of its history, even into the present with each side competing over influence and rights. Ever since 2003 Egypt got into the mix and said it wants it back as well.

The major advances made in cracking the Rosetta Stone did not just occur in France. The English scholar named Thomas Young also made great progress towards solving the Rosetta Stone. Scholars in both France and Britain both argue over the relative influence of either Young or Champollion in cracking the Rosetta Stone.

Major advances in the decoding were recognition that the stone offered three versions of the same text (1799); that the demotic text used phonetic characters to spell foreign names (1802); that the hieroglyphic text did so as well, and had pervasive similarities to the demotic (Thomas Young, 1814); and that, in addition to being used for foreign names, phonetic characters were also used to spell native Egyptian words (Champollion, 1822–1824).

Two other fragmentary copies of the same decree were discovered later, and several similar Egyptian bilingual or trilingual inscriptions are now known, including two slightly earlier Ptolemaic decrees (the Decree of Canopus in 238 BC, and the Memphis decree of Ptolemy IV, ca. 218 BC). The Rosetta Stone is, therefore, no longer unique, but it was the essential key to modern understanding of Ancient Egyptian literature and civilization. The term Rosetta Stone is now used in other contexts as the name for the essential clue to a new field of knowledge.

Rosetta Stone Languages - Boat Life In Egypt And Nubia (1874)

Experts Inspecting Stone at the International Congress of Orientalists Illustrated London News (1874)

Rosetta Stone Missing Greek Text - Archaeologia vol. 16 (1812)

Johan Akerbald Translation Table - Lettre sur l'inscription Égyptienne de Rosette (1802)

Champollion's Translation Table - Lettre à Monsieur Dacier (1882)

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