Previous topic

Discoveries in Egyptology!

Next topic

The Discovery of Tutankhamun’s Tomb

This Page

The Rosetta Stone

_images/Rosetta_stone_med.jpg

The Rosetta Stone is a fragment of granite that became the key to decyphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. The stone contained a decree that was issued by King Ptolemy V, and the decree was recorded in three languages. The top of the stone is written in ancient Egpytian heiroglyphs, the midddle was written in Egyptian demotic script, and the lower portion was written in ancient Greek. The Rosetta Stone had ended up being used as building material in a fort at the town of Rashid which is located in the Nile Delta and was discovered there in 1799 by a French soldier.

The importance of the Rosetta Stone is the fact that it was one of the first multilingual texts discovered and the fact that it made it possible to translate ancient Egyptian heiroglyphics which to that point had been remained untranslated. Because of this there were many copies and casts circulated around various museums and scholars. The stone was moved the the British Museum after the British defeated the French in Egypt in 1801. It has been on display there since 1802 and is one of the most visited items in the museums.

The Rosetta Stone would lose it uniqueness because more fragments were found that contained the same decree and some different decrees that were also bilingual or trilingual, but even though it is no longer unique it is still important because it was the key to understanding the ancient Egyptians literature and their civilivation.

Image is copyright Hans Hillewaert under the CC-BY-SA-3.0 license.