How The Rosetta Stone Revealed The Secrets Of Ancient Civilizations

How the Rosetta Stone Revealed the Secrets of Ancient Civilizations

When Pierre-François Bouchard’s men discovered the ancient stone slab that was to change the world on July 19, 1799, they were not at an archaeological dig; they were doing a last-minute construction job. The French soldiers occupied a derelict fortress in Rosetta, Egypt, and had only a few days to fortify their defenses for battle with troops from the Ottoman Empire.

When the men tore down a wall built from the rubble of nearby ancient Egyptian sites, they discovered a large fragment of stone covered with three types of script, including ancient Greek. Fascinated, Bouchard wondered if the stone might say the same thing in three different languages. He shared his find with French scholars who searched Egypt for archaeological treasures.

They got more than they expected. The slab was the Rosetta Stone, and the letters and symbols carefully carved into his dark face would illuminate the glory of ancient Egyptian civilization. But first, the scholars would have to crack his code.

Scholars traced the origins of the Rosetta stone until 196 BC. In the era of the Ptolemies in Egypt. His carvings contain a decree of loyalty to the then pharaoh, Ptolemy V Epiphanes.

A loyalty decree

The granite-like rock is about 1.2 meters high and 2.5 meters wide and only a fragment of a larger now lost stele. But even though his text is incomplete, it is priceless. It consists of a decree establishing the royal cult of Ptolemy V Epiphanes, an Egyptian king who died in 204 BC.

At the time, the Ptolemaic Kingdom was at war and facing an internal revolt. The decree was passed by a council of priests who honored the Pharaoh and declared his loyalty to him. It was recorded on the stele in Ptolemaic hieroglyphics, demotic Egyptian script, and ancient Greek script. Identical steles should be set up in every temple in Egypt.

Conquer scholars

Fast forward to 1798 when Napoleon led French forces to conquer Egypt, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. Scientists and historians were part of the conquerors and flocked to the country to document what they found there. The Egyptologists collected a large number of ancient artifacts that they wanted to take back to France, including the Rosetta Stone.

But the British also wanted Egypt and in 1801 they defeated the French troops. The French were allowed to evacuate, but the British demanded that the collection of antiquities be returned before departure. The Rosetta Stone came to London in 1802, where it was exhibited in the British Museum almost immediately after its arrival. (Because of this, Napoleon’s military defeat in Egypt brought victory for history.)

The French linguist and archaeologist Jean-François Champollion began studying ancient languages ​​as a teenager in the early 19th century. His fascination with ancient Egypt led to discoveries, from deciphering the Rosetta Stone to deepening our understanding of mummification.

The code of the Rosetta stone

But the stone had more than aesthetic value. Scholars have long puzzled over the meaning of the picture-like markings known as hieroglyphics on ancient Egyptian plates. Since it contained identical content in three languages, the scholars thought the Rosetta Stone could help crack the historical mystery.

Scholars ran to translate the Rosetta Stone. Although a wide variety of scholars from across Europe would contribute to the work, the two main contributions came from England and France.

Thomas Young, a British polymath best known for his scientific contributions, treated the puzzle as a mathematical problem. After translating ancient Greek, he made extensive notes on the hieroglyphs and systematically tried to match each one of their translations. He also compared the glyphs with those of other statues. Young was able to identify the phonetic sounds that some glyphs represented, figure out some of the characters, and summarize how words were pluralized.

After Jean-François Champollion cracked the code of the Rosetta stone, he published a compilation of the mythological figures that were prominently represented in the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. These included the sun god Ra and his daughter, the goddess Saté.

But it was Jean-François Champollion, a French known as the founder of Egyptology, who would eventually crack the code in 1822. While Young had no experience of the Egyptian language, Champollion was fluent in Coptic and had extensive knowledge of Egypt. He found that the demotic script – the third writing system on the stele – conveyed syllables and that the hieroglyphics represented Coptic sounds.

It was a breakthrough. As is well known, an ecstatic Champollion stormed into his brother’s office and shouted: “Je tiens mon affair!” (“I have it!”). Then he passed out and did not recover for five days.

The legacy of the Rosetta Stone

Champollion used the stone to create an alphabet from phonetic hieroglyphic characters, then other scholars piggybacked his research to fully translate the stone. The work of the French Egyptologist was finally confirmed by the discovery and translation of the Decree of Canopus, another stele written in hieroglyphics, demotic script, and ancient Greek.

The translation of the Rosetta Stone became the backbone of Egyptology, and the iconic stele is considered one of the most important objects in history. But the stone itself is controversial as spoils of war and colonial expansion. Was the Rosetta Stone brought to England or stolen by the British? It depends on who you ask. Over the years there have been repeated calls to return the stone to Egypt, but it remains in the British Museum, where it has over six million visitors annually.

Why does the plain-looking Rosetta Stone still retain such a shine today, two centuries after its code was cracked? Egyptologist John Ray told Smithsonian Magazine’s Beth Py-Lieberman in 2007 that the stone “really is the key, not just to ancient Egypt; it is the key to deciphering itself. We knew there were great civilizations like Egypt, but they were silent. As the Rosetta Stone broke, they could speak in their own voice and suddenly whole areas of history were revealed. “

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Originally posted on my blog: https://maguspymander.com/

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