The French soldiers occupied a run-down fort in Rosetta, Egypt, and had just days to shore up their defenses for a battle with Ottoman Empire troops. As the men tore down a wall that had been built using the detritus of nearby ancient Egyptian sites, they discovered a large stone fragment covered in three types of writing, including ancient Greek. Intrigued, Bouchard wondered if the stone might say the same thing in three different languages.
He shared his find with French scholars who had come to plumb Egypt for archaeological treasures. They got more than they bargained for. The slab was the Rosetta Stone, and the letters and symbols carefully chiseled into its dark face would shed light on the glory of ancient Egyptian civilization. But first, scholars would have to crack its code.
Standing at about four feet high and 2. But though its text is incomplete, it is invaluable. It consists of a decree affirming the royal cult of Ptolemy V Epiphanes, an Egyptian king who took the throne in B. At the time, the Ptolemaic kingdom was at war and dealing with an internal revolt. The decree was passed by a council of priests who used it to honor the pharaoh and declare their loyalty to him.
It was recorded on the stele in Ptolemaic hieroglyphics, Demotic Egyptian script, and ancient Greek script. Identical stelae were to be placed in every temple in Egypt. Fast-forward to , when Napoleon led French forces to take over Egypt, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. Scientists and historians were part of the conquering force, and streamed into the country to document what they found there.
The Egyptologists gathered a large number of ancient artifacts they wanted to take back to France, including the Rosetta Stone. But the British wanted Egypt, too, and in they prevailed over French forces. The French were allowed to evacuate, but the British demanded they hand over the antiquities collection before leaving.
So in the Rosetta Stone made its way to London, where it was put on display at the British Museum almost immediately upon arriving. Here's why Napoleon's military defeat in Egypt yielded a victory for history.
But the stone had more than aesthetic value. Scholars had long puzzled over the meaning of the picture-like markings, known as hieroglyphs, made on ancient Egyptian slabs.
Since it contained identical content in three languages, scholars thought the Rosetta Stone might be able to help crack the historic mystery.
Scholars raced to translate the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone is 44 inches centimeters high, 30 inches 76 cm wide, weighs about 1, lbs. The stone itself "is a granodiorite, similar in composition to the so-called 'black granite' from Aswan but somewhat finer-grained than most examples of that rock," wrote geologists Andrew Middleton and Dietrich Klemm in a paper published in in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology.
The text on the stone says that a group of Egyptian priests agreed to crown Ptolemy V pharaoh of Egypt, and declare him a god, in exchange for tax breaks for temples and clergy.
This "decree should be written on a stela of hard stone, in sacred writing, document writing, and Greek writing," the stone reads translation by R. Simpson , and it should be set up "next to the statue of the king" in temples all over Egypt. The phrase "sacred writing" meant hieroglyphic writing, and by B. Demotic was an Egyptian script that was more commonly used by the Egyptians by B. Alexander conquered Egypt in B.
After Alexander died in B. The Rosetta Stone was not originally located at Rashid ancient Rosetta and is actually a fragment of a much larger stela that was originally displayed at a temple, possibly at the ancient Egyptian city of Sais. These are long gone," wrote Ray. Parkinson estimates that when the Rosetta Stone was first created, it was about 59 inches cm in height. The town of Rashid ancient Rosetta is located by the sea, and the Rosetta Stone would not have originally been placed there, wrote Parkinson.
The temple that once held the stone may have been quarried centuries after the Rosetta Stone was created, and the stone may have been brought to Rashid as quarried rock. The use of Egyptian hieroglyphs and Demotic died out during the fifth century. The last known inscriptions were written on Philae, an island near the southern border of Egypt that has a temple complex.
Scholars have noted that the use of the two ancient texts declined as Christianity and Greco-Roman culture spread in Egypt. Greek and Coptic an Egyptian language that uses the Greek alphabet supplanted Egyptian hieroglyphs and Demotic. The Rosetta Stone came into the possession of the British after they defeated the French in Egypt in Young surmised that the cartouches—hieroglyphs enclosed in ovals—contained the phonetic spellings of royal names, including Ptolemy, who was referenced in the Greek inscription.
Ultimately, it was French linguist Jean-Francois Champollion who deciphered the Rosetta Stone and cracked the hieroglyphic code.
For his discoveries, Champollion is heralded as the founding father of Egyptology. There have been repeated calls for it to be repatriated to Egypt. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you.
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