Egypt Outline

the British Museum in London

The Rosetta Stone led to the modern understanding of hieroglyphs. Made in Egypt around 200BC, it is a stone tablet engraved with writing which celebrates the crowning of King Ptolemy V. It is a solid piece of black Basalt and is 1m high by 70cm wide by 30cm deep. Quite heavy.

The interesting thing about the Rosetta Stone is that the writing is repeated three times in different alphabets:

• Hieroglyphic (top of stone)- used by ancient Egyptians
• Demotic (centre of stone)- used by Arabs including modern Egyptians
• Greek (base of stone)- used by, erm, Greeks, and other eastern Europeans

        Map of Ancient Egypt   --  Egyptian Collection at the Louvre

        The British Museum
               History uncovered in conserving the Rosetta Stone
               Egyptian collection

However, the Rosetta Stone changed all that. Because people of the 19th century could understand the Demotic and Greek parts of the engraving, a chap called Jean-Francois Champollion worked out which words were represented by which hieroglyphs in 1821AD. Champollion

The Rosetta Stone now rests in the British Museum in London.

Here is an extract from the writing on the Rosetta Stone:

...whereas king PTOLEMY THE EVER-LIVING, THE BELOVED OF PTAH, THE GOD EPIPHANES EUCHARISTO, the son of King Ptolemy and Queen Arsinoe, the Gods Philopatores, has been a benefactor both to the temples and to those who dwell in them, as well as those who are his subjects, being a god sprung from a god and goddess (like Horus the son of lsis and Osiris, who avenged his father Osiris) and being benevolently disposed towards the gods, has dedicated to the temples revenues in money and corn and has undertaken much outlay to bring Egypt into prosperity, and to establish the temples, and has been generous with all his own means; and of the revenues and taxes levied in Egypt some he has wholly remitted and others has lightened, in order that the people and the others might be in prosperity during his reign: and whereas he has remitted the debts to the crown being many in number which they in Egypt and in the rest of the kingdom owed: and whereas those who were in prison and those who were under accusation for a long time, he has freed of the charges against them; and whereas he has directed that the gods shall continue to enjoy the revenues of the temples and the yearly allowances given to them, both of corn and money, likewise also the revenues assigned to the gods from vine land and from gardens and other properties which belonged to the gods in his father's time...

There is now a museum dedicated to the translator Jean-Francois Champollion, located in Champollion's home town of Figeac near Cahors in southern France.

An Egyptian tablet in the Louvre Museum, Paris, France (26k)
 

  Hieroglyphic name ring for King Ptolemy V
 
 

The Rosetta stone has three bands of writing on it. The top band is hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphs were used for official texts (tombs, temples, commemorative steles and other official or religious dedications). This portion of the stone was only partially damaged. The hieroglyphs correspond to the last 28 lines of the Greek script. The middle band is an Egyptian script, otherwise known as the Demotic script. There are 32 lines of this script. In the beginning of the first 14 lines it was damaged. The Demotic script was used for everyday communication (stone monuments, funerary or commemorative steles or on royal edicts like the Rosetta stone). The bottom is ancient Greek. There are 54 lines of Greek. The last 26 lines were damaged at the ends of the lines. These languages were used in Egypt in that time.

French scholar Silvestre deStacy was the first person to make any sense of the Demotic script on the Rosetta stone. He was able to identify a few of the phonetic letters and sent copies of the inscription to linguistic experts in Europe. Jean-Francois Champollion and Thomas Young made the final breakthrough. Jean Francois Champollion published his results in 1822.

Thomas Young (1773-1829) was the first to successfully and systematically begin decipherment of the stone. He decided to try finding a Greek word that occurred repeatedly on the stone, like the Greek equivalent for
"and" and "king", and match it with words that occurred in the demotic. Jean François Champollion (1790-1832), a French Egyptologist, employed the same process with the Greek and hieroglyphics, matching the Greek and Egyptian spellings of Ptolemy. Much of Champollion's work was based on that of Thomas Young who had already deciphered names of people and places. Words like these, called Proper Nouns, are bordered by hieroglyphic name rings, similar in shape to modern army name tags.

Champollion was born in December 1790 and could speak Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldean and Syrian by the age of 14. By 19, Champollion was a History lecturer at Grenoble University. He had to make his translations from a copy of the Rosetta Stone, since the stone itself had been stolen/seized by the English during the Napoleonic war.Champollion visited Egypt only once- to put his new understanding of hieroglyphs to the test. He returned to France to found the Egyptology Museum at the Louvre in Paris (where you can still see many tablets and statues today). Champollion died in 1832 aged only 42.