The Rosetta Stone

Basic FactsWhat is the Rosetta Stone?

The Rosetta Stone is a stone with writing on it in two languages (Egyptian and Greek), using three scripts (hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek).

Why is it in three different scripts?

The Rosetta Stone is written in three scripts because when it was written, there were three scripts being used in Egypt.

The first was hieroglyphic which was the script used for important or religious documents. The second was demotic which was the common script of Egypt.

The third was Greek which was the language of the rulers of Egypt at that time.

The Rosetta Stone was written in all three scripts so that the priests, government officials and rulers of Egypt could read what it said.

The 3 Languages of the Rosetta Stone

Greek

Coptic

Hieroglyphics

When was the Rosetta Stone made?

The Rosetta Stone was carved in 196 B.C..

When was the Rosetta Stone found?

The Rosetta Stone was found in 1799.

Who found the Rosetta Stone?

The Rosetta Stone was found by French soldiers who were rebuilding a fort in Egypt.

Where was the Rosetta Stone found?

The Rosetta Stone was found in a small village in the Delta called Rosetta (Rashid).

Why is it called the Rosetta Stone?

It is called the Rosetta Stone because it was discovered in a town called Rosetta (Rashid).

What does the Rosetta Stone say?

The Rosetta Stone is a text written by a group of priests in Egypt to honour the Egyptian pharaoh. It lists all of the things that the pharaoh has done that are good for the priests and the people of Egypt.

Who deciphered hieroglyphs?

Many people worked on deciphering hieroglyphs over several hundred years. However, the structure of the script was very difficult to work out.

After many years of studying the Rosetta Stone and other examples of ancient Egyptian writing, Jean-François Champollion deciphered hieroglyphs in 1822.

How did Champollion decipher hieroglyphs?

Champollion could read both Greek and Coptic.

He was able to figure out what the seven demotic signs in coptic were. By looking at how these signs were used in coptic he was able to work out what they stood for. Then he began tracing these demotic signs back to hieroglyphic signs.

By working out what some hieroglyphs stood for, he could make educated guesses about what the other hieroglyphs stood for.

They disappeared around 400 AD, as a direct consequence of the rise of ChristianityHieroglyphs were seen as part of the pagan past of Egypt and outlawed

How did the Egyptians forget hieroglyphics?

They were replaced with coptic which was based on the Greek alphabet but still using the ancient Egyptian language

Both written and spoken coptic was destroyed by the spread of Arabic (via Islam) in the 11th century AD

“but they were hindered by a false hypothesis. They assumed that hieroglyphs were nothing more than primitive picture writing, and that their decipherment relied on a literal translation of the images they saw.” (www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians)

Present mindedness got in the way

Because of this nobody tried to read the hieroglyphs like a modern day language.

The pictures are actually linked to sounds just like the letters in our alphabet.

Although Champollion is credited with reading hieroglyphs for the first time, Thomas Young was the first to crack a part of the language.He started with the premise that a certain group of glyphs were the name of the Pharaoh Ptolemy.

Thomas Young

Young’s deduction

Young called his achievements 'the amusement of a few leisure hours.' So the complete deciphering was left to someone elseUsing what Young had done Champollion tried to decipher another pharaohʼs name

Jean-François Champollion

The first 2 glyphs were unknown but the last 2 were known to be S-S.

So he had: ?-?-S-S

Because he was an expert in languages Champollion spoke Coptic.

No one had connected Coptic to hieroglyphs at this point.

He thought that the first symbol might be the sun and made the leap...

the coptic word for sun is “ra”

now he had ra-?-s-sallowing for no vowels and the missing sound what pharaoh could it be?

Ramses

R M S S

Hieroglyphs were phonetic and the underlying language was Egyptian. Champollion dashed into his brother's office where he proclaimed 'Je tiens l'affaire!' ('I've got it!') and promptly collapsed. He was bedridden for the next five days.

A riddle solved