Last Christmas at a party I saw a replica of the Rosetta Stone displayed on the wall of a friend's house. I have been fascinated with the original stone and its story ever since.
Made in Egypt around 200BC, it is a stone tablet engraved with writing that celebrates the crowning of King Ptolemy V. It is a solid piece of black basalt. Quite heavy. Its measurements are 3ft. 9in. long and 2ft. 4 1/2in. wide. It is presently in the British Museum in London.
It was unearthed in July 1799 by Napoleon's army in Rosetta (Rashid), Egypt. The stone's lines of writing are repeated three times in different alphabets:
Hieroglyphic used by ancient Egyptians;
Demotic used by Arabs including modern Egyptians;
and Greek used by, er, Greeks, and other eastern Europeans.
The Rosetta Stone led to modern understanding of hieroglyphs - it was an ancient code book as it were - because all three languages contained the same message. The Greek could be translated immediately, providing clues to the others. The deciphering of the hieroglyphs contained on the stone laid the foundations for Egyptian archaeology.
Inscription
The carving on the Rosetta Stone contains three distinct bands of writing. The most incomplete is the top band containing hieroglyphs, the middle band is the modern (at the time of the Rosetta Stone) Egyptian script called Demotic (evolved from the Heiratic), and the bottom is ancient Greek.
The actual inscription, according to the account in "Ancient Peoples: A Hypertext View," begins with praise of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes, king of Egypt from 203 to 181 B.C. It includes an account of the siege of the city of Lycopolis, and the good deeds done by the king for the temples.
The final part of the text describes the decree's overriding purpose, the establishment of the cult of the king. For example, it stipulates how the priests shall maintain the cult of the king ("...the priests shall pay homage three times a day..."); how the king's shrine is to be set up ("...there shall be set upon the shrine the ten gold crowns of the king..."); and days when certain festivals, such as the king's birthday, shall be celebrated. It ends by saying that all the men of Egypt should honor Ptolemy V, and that the text should be set up in hard stone in the three scripts which it bears today.
Hieroglyphs and Coptic
The Egyptians had used hieroglyphic script for nearly 3,500 years, from 3100 B.C. until the end of the fourth century A.D. At about the turn of the third century A.D., the Egyptians began to write in a script composed of the Greek alphabet which came to be known as Coptic. Coptic is written with the Greek alphabet but uses seven additional symbols from the Demotic (modern) script. It was the last stage of the Egyptian language. Knowledge of how to read and write hieroglyphs was probably lost soon after it had been superseded, and no key to its meaning was found until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone.
Made in Egypt around 200BC, it is a stone tablet engraved with writing that celebrates the crowning of King Ptolemy V. It is a solid piece of black basalt. Quite heavy. Its measurements are 3ft. 9in. long and 2ft. 4 1/2in. wide. It is presently in the British Museum in London.
It was unearthed in July 1799 by Napoleon's army in Rosetta (Rashid), Egypt. The stone's lines of writing are repeated three times in different alphabets:
Hieroglyphic used by ancient Egyptians;
Demotic used by Arabs including modern Egyptians;
and Greek used by, er, Greeks, and other eastern Europeans.
The Rosetta Stone led to modern understanding of hieroglyphs - it was an ancient code book as it were - because all three languages contained the same message. The Greek could be translated immediately, providing clues to the others. The deciphering of the hieroglyphs contained on the stone laid the foundations for Egyptian archaeology.
Inscription
The carving on the Rosetta Stone contains three distinct bands of writing. The most incomplete is the top band containing hieroglyphs, the middle band is the modern (at the time of the Rosetta Stone) Egyptian script called Demotic (evolved from the Heiratic), and the bottom is ancient Greek.
The actual inscription, according to the account in "Ancient Peoples: A Hypertext View," begins with praise of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes, king of Egypt from 203 to 181 B.C. It includes an account of the siege of the city of Lycopolis, and the good deeds done by the king for the temples.
The final part of the text describes the decree's overriding purpose, the establishment of the cult of the king. For example, it stipulates how the priests shall maintain the cult of the king ("...the priests shall pay homage three times a day..."); how the king's shrine is to be set up ("...there shall be set upon the shrine the ten gold crowns of the king..."); and days when certain festivals, such as the king's birthday, shall be celebrated. It ends by saying that all the men of Egypt should honor Ptolemy V, and that the text should be set up in hard stone in the three scripts which it bears today.
Hieroglyphs and Coptic
The Egyptians had used hieroglyphic script for nearly 3,500 years, from 3100 B.C. until the end of the fourth century A.D. At about the turn of the third century A.D., the Egyptians began to write in a script composed of the Greek alphabet which came to be known as Coptic. Coptic is written with the Greek alphabet but uses seven additional symbols from the Demotic (modern) script. It was the last stage of the Egyptian language. Knowledge of how to read and write hieroglyphs was probably lost soon after it had been superseded, and no key to its meaning was found until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone.
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