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Egyptian hieroglyphics in the top section, demotic characters next, and Greek at the bottom |
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$528 - (freight $42) |
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The Rosetta Stone
An ancient Egyptian stone bearing inscriptions the decipherment
of which led to the understanding of hieroglyphic writing. It
is an irregularly shaped stone of black basalt 114 cm long and
72 cm wide, and was broken in antiquity. It was found near the
town of Rosetta (Rashid) about 35 miles northeast of Alexandria.
It was discovered by a Frenchman named Bouchard or Boussard in
August 1799. After the French surrender of Egypt in 1801, it
passed into British hands and is now in the British Museum. The inscriptions, apparently written by the priests of Memphis, summarize benefactions conferred by Ptolemy V. Epiphanes (205--180 B.C.) and were written in the ninth year of his reign to commemorate his accession to the throne. Inscribed in two languages, Egyptian and Greek, and three writing systems, hieroglyphics, demotic scrip (a cursive form of Egyptian). The decipherment was largely the work of Thomas Young of England and Jean-Francois Champollion of France. The hieroglyphic text on the Rosetta Stone contains six identical cartouches (oval figures enclosing hieroglyyphs). Young deciphered the cartouche as the name of Ptolemy and proved a long-held assumption that the cartouches found in other inscriptions were the names of royalty. By examining the direction in which the bird and animal characters faced, Young also discovered the way in which hieroglyphic signs were to be read. In 1821--22 Champollion, starting where Young left off, began to publish papers on the decipherment of hieratic and hieroglyphic writing based on study of the Rosetta Stone and eventually established an entire list of signs with their Greek equivalents. He was the first Egyptologist to realize that some of the signs were alphabetic, some syllabic, and some determinative, standing for the whole idea or object previously expressed. He also established that the hieroglyphic text of the Rosetta Stone was a translation from the Greek, not, as had been thought, the reverse. The work of these two men established the basis for the translation of all future Egyptian hieroglyphic texts. |
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