How Did We Really Crack The Rosetta Stone?

2022 marks 200 years since Jean Francois Champagne

crack

ed the famous code, deciphered the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Now, to mark this great anniversary, the British Museum has opened a new exhibition that tells you the story of this important breakthrough and today I received special access to come and have Earlier this year I visited Egypt to see some of its ancient sites up close. most impressive, looking at the individual hieroglyphs and the amazing information they have revealed about this land's distant past since I have been interested in learning more about how these symbols were deciphered. It's an incredible story the British Museum tells in its latest exhibition, from ancient papyri to medieval Arabic manuscripts.

The exhibition is full of wonderful objects, each of which has its own story to tell and, in the background, is one of the most famous in the world. artifacts the Rosetta Stone, the great corner

stone

of everything, curator Dr. Elona Rogowski will tell me more Elona, ​​first of all, it is absolutely wonderful to be here and see such an incredible object so close up in your new exhibition, but first Well, we've all heard the name Rosetta Stone, but what exactly is it? The Rosetta Stone is a stylus that was probably installed in the temple. The text described in it is a priestly decree that was issued on the set on March 27, 196 BC. by a council. of priests meeting in the city of Memphis and the King following me the fifth comes to Memphis to join the priests on this occasion Ptolemy V was a Greco-Macedonian king who ruled Egypt between 204 and 180 BC.

Although his reign would be plagued by conflict both inside and outside of Egypt, his subjects honored him as the benefactor basically tells us in three different scriptures and two languages ​​that the king should be treated like a God because he did so many good works for the country and at the end of each text of each of the word of each version tells us that it had to be carved in Hearth

stone

, which apparently happened and it had to be installed in all the important temples of Egypt and for Alona we have these three different texts here, what languages ​​are these?

Below we have Ancient Greek, which is a language that was known at the time of discovery in 1799 and so the hope immediately arose that perhaps this could be used to decipher the two Egyptian scripts, in the middle we have Domotics, which was the language and writing of the time, the daily language, and at the top we have hieroglyphs that basically reflect the same language as the motif. At the beginning of the 2nd century BC. C. was an extraordinary time in the long and fascinating ancient history of Egypt, it was when Egypt was ruled by the so-called Greco-Macedonian rulers of the Ptolemaic dynasty who reigned over this land following the death of Alexander the Great, ruling from the rich and vibrant city of Alexandria, the Ptolemies ruled over a land where both Greek and Egyptian were spoken along the Nile River during the second century BC.

Egypt was very much a multicultural and bilingual country, so those who could read and write would probably have been able to do so in Egyptian and Greek and, especially, officials working in the centralized administration would probably have done so. I worked in Greek, but I could have been speaking Egyptian at home, so we have this very interesting interaction between these languages. We believe that the text is probably originally a Greek text because honoring Pharaoh as a God is not a very Egyptian thing for us to do. We do not find this type of decree in earlier periods, so we believe that the type of text was imported from Greece and then translated into two Egyptian languages ​​to give it a local veneer, if you like, this is a good example of accounts of Hellenistic rule who arrived in Ptolemaic Egypt.

It is not like this? Yes, yes, the writing of the Rosetta Stone gives us invaluable insight into how the Ptolemies ruled Egypt, but another big part of the story of this object is how it was found, how was this stone discovered? The stone was discovered in the foundations of a fort building in present-day Rashid, a city that the French called Little Rose Rosette, and was reused as a building block in a way that we do not know when this happens so the original place where it would have been placed the stone We do not know, we can make suggestions, but it was actually Rashid, the current Rashid, where the stone was found and immediately after the discovery he realized that this could be the key to the settlement, so it was assumed Immediate that the stone was An important object, the stone was initially discovered by the French, but following the defeat of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt it was handed over to the British as part of the capitulation of Alexandria and transported to Britain by sea.

The stone was placed in the fledgling British museum in 1802. Crowds quickly flocked to see if this could be the object that would finally allow people to decipher the mysterious hieroglyphs. The challenge ahead was huge, but so were the potential rewards and many would pick up the gauntlet, so it immediately became a very exciting item. Then, as I mentioned, it was realized that it might be the key to the decipherments, so immediately the French took copies of the Rosetta Stone and sent them across Europe to many countries around the world. In fact, scholars began to work simultaneously on the Rosetta Stone and gradually we have Jean Francois Jean Pollo and Thomas Young of England leading that race Thomas Young was a British scholar, a master of many academic trades and the last man who knew everything according to his biographer based across the English Channel in France was an expert linguist. two figures would be the titans of the great race to decipher the hieroglyphs a race that began with the Rosetta Stone we begin with the real names the names of the pharaoh who is written in this horrible elongated caricature yes, that is the name of king Ptolemy the fifth and the ancient Egyptians wrote the foreign names phonetically, meaning that a sound is a letter alphabetically so that scholars could start with those letters and create a sort of alphabet of about 20 to 26 letters that could then be used to read others. parts of the text and so on throughout the race to decipher hieroglyphs how significant is this particular object is the Rosetta Stone well it is extremely significant because it accelerated the race um it finally gave scholars the bilingual text they needed already towards the end of In the 17th century, many scholars sat down, if only we had a longer bilingual text in a known language, then we could understand at least the content of the hieroglyphics, so since we have Greek we can understand at least the content of the text, the difficulty was that Greek is an alphabetic language and ancient Egyptian is not, it has alphabetical letters but it also has many more signs, many more hieroglyphs that cannot be read alphabetically and it is a mixed hybrid system and it took scholars 22 years to

really

understand it, of course.

Scholars used many other objects that are not on display, some of them are displayed in the exhibition, but the Rosetta Stone

really

was the starting point for everything once the Rosetta Stone was discovered and copies of its bilingual inscription were shared throughout Europe. The great race to decipher the hieroglyphs was on, so Elona, ​​the Rosetta Stone, is the starting gun and the race towards decipherment has begun and we have this incredible object right in front of us here, what exactly is this ? It is part of a long papyrus, it is the book of breathing. As we now know, it is one of the guides to the afterlife.

Champagne, of course, did not know that at the time she studies this Papyrus because she wants to look at other objects besides the Rosetta Stone, she finds the Rosetta Stone very difficult, she says. for your brother I can't understand any of this, so I'm going to try to look at other objects and this papyrus was brought to Paris by vivandanol, who is one of the scholars who joined Napoleon's army and what you can see is also Among some colorful vignettes is the text which of course was of utmost importance for champagne and is written in hierarchical, which is also a handwritten version of hieroglyphs, but it is not demotic, so he made the mistake of comparing this text with the middle part of the Rosetta.

Stone, which of course didn't work either because they are basically two different scripts used for two very different purposes. At this point, heretic was used for religious men's manuscripts, while multi was used for day-to-day speech, so it couldn't. really matches the two for champoglio, the lack of progress he made with this object was heartbreaking, unable to make sense of either this Papyrus or the Rosetta Stone, the great scholar quickly began to lose hope, how does this affect champagne ? He was devastated in such a way that he writes to his brother that he wants to give up, that he will no longer bother with hieroglyphs or demotics, he wants to learn Coptic, which is the later phase of the Egyptian language, but written in an alphabetic script and at that time Coptic was still spoken and it was still used in the Coptic church and he befriends the Coptic monks in Paris and he says that here we have the language still alive, so if I learn Coptic at least I will have the vocabulary to understand maybe the words that are behind the hieroglyphs, so that's the next step, so to speak, is yes and this will allow you to understand the oldest manuscripts that were written in Coptic Arabic because he was already fluent in Arabic, so he had access to certain manuscripts that most scholars before him did not have.

Champollion's decision to learn Coptic would ultimately give him the advantage in the great race of discipleship against the likes of Thomas Young. One object to which he had very limited access was the Rosetta Stone, with the Napoleonic Wars raging in the early 1810s. Relations between Britain and France were difficult. at a depressingly low level but, nevertheless, cross-channel communication between people like Young and Champollion continued to be evidenced through an extraordinary letter. Now Elona, ​​this is absolutely incredible. Here you have correspondence between these two titans of the discipleship race. Yeah, so Champoyo actually never saw the We think it's a real Rosetta Stone and he's working from copies that were circulating in Paris and he complains quite a bit about the quality of those copies and at some point in 1814 he writes to the Royal Society and asks a new copy of the Rosetta Stone, the letter is passed to Thomas Young, who is the secretary of the Royal Society.

Shampooyo did not know it at the time, but Thomas Young receives the letter and tries to respond as best as possible and writes this response in the same letter. that champagne sent him how interesting it is that he is young so that is the original letter from champollignon there I can see words like

rosetta

Elona and also uh kiaf laplude a difficulty I suppose is to emphasize that he is having difficulties at the moment with his copies of the Rosetta Stone yeah so again, he's not sure if his copies are accurate enough, if they're good enough, and he's reading the text right, so he says he has two copies, one is a facsimile that was part of an engraving and the other actually the engraving um that appears later in the description, so that engraving of the Rosetta Stone was already circulating before the description of Egypt was published and he specifically asked in this letter to revise some words because they may not be there very clear in the copy you are working with and so how does Young respond to this letter?

This is a draft of a letter that eventually made sense and we no longer have it. That's why this eraser is so valuable to have and you can also see that Thomas Young writes some of the words he calls for champagne in the multic of the eraser, so he's going over the words he calls for champagne and yeah, this is kind of a friendly correspondence between both because we very often associate champagne and youth. They are great rivals in this difficult race, but here they are helping each other with the Rosetta Stone, yes, it will be a few years before Champion actually gets a new copy of the Rosetta Stone, but at least try to help in this.

In 1814 we were still in the early stages of the race, then they come into contact more frequently and there is a bit of tension between them later on, but at this early point still not and to learn what is also so interesting is that that letter It is dated. until 1814. This is before Waterloo, it is still the time of the Napoleonic Wars and you still have this correspondence between the British and the French in academic circles. Yes, this was the case from the beginning, when the Rosetta Stone was discovered when France and Britain were not on the best terms, but on an academic level, um, yes, academics communicated with each other and regardless of events politicians, that's also why this is really beautiful because there are always so many different parts to the story that it's fascinating to see friendly correspondence firsthand. written by Young andchampoglio more than 200 years ago, while the Napoleonic Wars raged, bringing him much closer to the Geniuses themselves.

Over the next eight years, both young and shampolio would strive to decipher the hieroglyphic code slowly but surely, as more information came to light. More inscriptions were shared, articles were published, progress was made on the Rosetta Stone. Thomas Young correctly surmised that each symbol within the King Ptolemy Cartridge had a phonetic value - basically, that each symbol had a different sound - but Young did not quite translate the correct sound value. For each of the symbols, the spotlight turned to a revitalized Champoglio who, taking advantage of his newly acquired understanding of Coptic, worked tirelessly to put together the final pieces of this great linguistic puzzle.

Finally, on September 14, 1822, Champagne deciphered the hieroglyphic code. He got up from his desk, ran down the hallway, according to the story, and burst into his brother's office, shouting, "Jitian Lafair, look, I got it," and then fainted when he came to. Some time later he published this letter that he had made A Monsieur Dakier Si had finally deciphered the ancient Egyptian language, controversially choosing not to acknowledge Thomas Young and his work in the letter. Sean Paulion took the glory, he had achieved the definitive breakthrough, he would be remembered as the man who deciphered the hieroglyphs and this great quest to decipher the entire code had begun just over 20 years earlier with the discovery of the Rosetta Stone or he had Now Elona, ​​it's important to highlight, isn't it?

Although the Rosetta Stone is incredibly significant, it is not year zero in the history of discipleship, are there people who are fascinating in deciphering this ancient language for centuries before the stone, as it begins in Egypt itself, first of all, by Of course, because the Egyptians and other Arab travelers in the medieval periods who went to Egypt were intrigued and inspired by the hieroglyphs they saw in the temple. walls and on the walls of tombs and on objects that were there and tried to give their own interpretations to the hieroglyphs, they began to decipher them themselves, they began to identify individual signs, as can be seen in some of the manuscripts, so in Elona was actually watching. all these objects the history of deciphering hieroglyphs does not last just 20 years, it lasts more than a thousand years yes, in a way, this is true, it already began, of course, in Egypt itself and, um, the medieval Arab scholars and the monks Copts also made great contributions. on which later scholars will build and one of the very important contributions is that they recognize that Coptic contained the remains of the ancient Egyptians and as Arabic becomes widespread in Egypt, these Coptic monks are afraid of losing their language and They begin to copy manuscripts from Arabic to Coptic and thus preserve some of the knowledge of these texts and we can see a papyrus here that is one of the few examples that we still have, it is borrowed from the bootlein library and it is one of those magical translated Arabic manuscripts. to Coptic one of the very important contributions of Arab scholars is that they made that connection between ancient Egyptian and Coptic.

It was medieval Arab scholars who were the first to recognize that and say that September 14, 1822 was the day Champollion made the definitive breakthrough, but this was only part of a much larger story that spanned centuries, a story that It dated back to before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone with the work of these Arab scholars and continued after Champollyon deciphered the code as he and his contemporaries reacted to the breakthrough and began to unravel the enigmatic world of ancient Egypt 200 years after jitian lafair the british museum's new exhibition sheds more light on the people and objects behind this seismic breakthrough how decoding these little oh symbols opened up the wonderful world of ancient egypt to us all thanks for watching this video on the history channel on YouTube, you can subscribe right here to make sure you don't miss any of our great upcoming movies, or if you're a real history fan, check out Discover our dedicated special History Channel History hit dot TV, you'll love it