The rosetta stone
![Picture](/uploads/2/9/7/5/29757189/8408882.jpg)
Ancient Egyptians placed importance on recording information on religion and politics. They invented written scripts that were used to record and communicate information (ancientegypt, 2014)
When Europeans explored Egypt in the 1700’s, no-one, including Egyptians of that time, could translate the writing and carvings.
In 1799, while the French general Napoleon was fighting the British in Egypt, his soldiers, discovered a black granite/stone slab with three versions of the same message written on it incorporated into a wall, by a French officer inspecting the building of Fort Julien, near Rosetta in the Delta (British Museum, 2014).
The slab was called the “Rosetta Stone” due to its location. According to the British Museum website its height is 112.3 cm, its width 75.7 cm and thickness 28.4 cm’s. The Stone is a tablet of black rock called granodiorite. It is part of a larger inscribed stone that would have stood 2 metres high. The section that remained is roughly rectangular.
The front face of the slab is smooth with text in three different scripts or bands of writing. The top band consists of fourteen lines of hieroglyphics: symbols such as an eye, a seated man, a reed and a basket. The middle band is made up of 32 lines of the everyday language used in ancient Egypt called demotic. At the bottom are over 50 lines of Greek writing (British Museum, 2014).
When Europeans explored Egypt in the 1700’s, no-one, including Egyptians of that time, could translate the writing and carvings.
In 1799, while the French general Napoleon was fighting the British in Egypt, his soldiers, discovered a black granite/stone slab with three versions of the same message written on it incorporated into a wall, by a French officer inspecting the building of Fort Julien, near Rosetta in the Delta (British Museum, 2014).
The slab was called the “Rosetta Stone” due to its location. According to the British Museum website its height is 112.3 cm, its width 75.7 cm and thickness 28.4 cm’s. The Stone is a tablet of black rock called granodiorite. It is part of a larger inscribed stone that would have stood 2 metres high. The section that remained is roughly rectangular.
The front face of the slab is smooth with text in three different scripts or bands of writing. The top band consists of fourteen lines of hieroglyphics: symbols such as an eye, a seated man, a reed and a basket. The middle band is made up of 32 lines of the everyday language used in ancient Egypt called demotic. At the bottom are over 50 lines of Greek writing (British Museum, 2014).
![Picture](/uploads/2/9/7/5/29757189/1665249.jpg)
The discovery of the Rosetta Stone and its subsequent decoding was to become one of the keys to unlocking ancient Egyptian writing.
However, the decoding was to take place until 1822, when a French scholar, Jean –Francois Champollion managed to decipher the hieroglyphs on the stone. Champollion could read Coptic and Greek. He found out several demotic signs were in Coptic. By looking at what those signs are in Coptic he worked out what they meant. He then translated them to hieroglyphics and with some he took an educated guess (ancientegypt, 2014).
The text in the Rosetta Stone contained a decree of the young King Ptolemy V and is dated 196B.C.It was said to be written by a group of priests in Egypt to honour and affirm the reign of the Egyptian pharaoh, King Ptolemy V on the first anniversary of his coronation. It provides a list of the achievements of the Pharaoh that benefitted the priests and the people of Egypt (ancientegypt, 2014).
After the French general Napoleon was defeated by the British, the Rosetta stone was taken to the British Museum in London and remains there today.
However, the decoding was to take place until 1822, when a French scholar, Jean –Francois Champollion managed to decipher the hieroglyphs on the stone. Champollion could read Coptic and Greek. He found out several demotic signs were in Coptic. By looking at what those signs are in Coptic he worked out what they meant. He then translated them to hieroglyphics and with some he took an educated guess (ancientegypt, 2014).
The text in the Rosetta Stone contained a decree of the young King Ptolemy V and is dated 196B.C.It was said to be written by a group of priests in Egypt to honour and affirm the reign of the Egyptian pharaoh, King Ptolemy V on the first anniversary of his coronation. It provides a list of the achievements of the Pharaoh that benefitted the priests and the people of Egypt (ancientegypt, 2014).
After the French general Napoleon was defeated by the British, the Rosetta stone was taken to the British Museum in London and remains there today.
By Olivia Robinson 7.2