Today we celebrate an important anniversary, 200 years ago in fact the world has learned that the French philologist Jean-Francois Champollion had decoded the Rosetta stonean achievement that would allow the world to read the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt.
In 1799, during the demolition of a fort by one of Napoleon’s lieutenants in Rosetta (today’s Rashid) in Egypt, a giant slab covered with ancient scriptures was found under the debris, a stele that was then sent for the first time at the Institut d’Égypte in Cairo – as many ancient artifacts that are not British seem to do – before reaching the British Museum at the king’s request.
What the Rosetta stone is about
The slab contains an official message about the king, Ptolemy V, who essentially tells the people of Egypt to greet Ptolemy V, “the manifesting god whose deeds are beautiful.”
As important as it is to worship the god who manifests, the main value of broken and incomplete stone lies in the fact that it was written in three languages: 53 verses of ancient Greek, 32 verses in Demotic (a script used in everyday life, which translates into “language of the people”), and 14 precious verses of Hieroglyphs.
Up until that time, the hieroglyphs were essentially illegible, however by using these three (albeit incomplete) versions of the same message, as well as other hieroglyphic texts and by referring to previous attempts to decipher hieroglyphics written in Arabic, Champollion was able to decipher this writing until then unknown, and all this after “only” 23 years from the discovery of the stone.
Shortly after, he presented his discoveries to the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres in Paris on Friday 27 September 1822, explaining to an audience – including his rival – that he had deciphered the language of ancient Egypt, allowing us to learn a lot more about the ancient world.
The stone has not yet been returned to Egypt by the British Museum, despite pressure from the Egyptian government and archaeologists, however you can read the complete translation of the Rosetta Stone here.
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