2.9 The mystery of the Rosetta Stone, c.196 BC

Hieroglyphics was the writing system used on all the known to educated people at that time. The other major monuments, tombs and temples that displayed two scripts were both Egyptian: one was demotic (an the rich culture of the ancient Egyptian world. Only everyday) script and the other was hieroglyphics. priests, scribes and craftsmen working on stone The discovery of the Rosetta Stone, as it came to monuments had been taught to understand it. be known, meant that there was a possibility that, In AD 324, Egypt offi cially became a Christian through comparisons with ancient Greek and country. By the late fourth century AD, there was demotic, hieroglyphics could be translated for the not much use for hieroglyphics, and only the priests fi rst time. would have known what the different symbols in the A French scholar, Jean-François Champollion picture writing actually meant. When the priests died, (1790–1832), was passionate in his desire to learn people thought that this knowledge had died too. about ancient Egypt. He was nine when the Rosetta Stone was discovered and 11 when he announced to The hieroglyphic his family that he would be the one to work out the meaning of hieroglyphics. breakthrough Champollion spent 14 years of his life trying to In 1798, the famous French general Napoleon solve this mystery. He worked by forming, testing, Bonaparte invaded Egypt to try to win control of rejecting and re-forming possible solutions until it from the British. In 1799, at the Egyptian coastal he came up with one that fi tted the hieroglyphics town of Rosetta (or el-Rashid), a French soldier on the Rosetta Stone and other ancient Egyptian found a slab of black granite-like rock with the sources. He was able to confi rm that foreign names same message carved on it in three different scripts. in ancient Egypt had to be written phonetically One of these was ancient Greek, a language well — that is, in symbols that correspond to sounds. Source 1 Photograph of Egyptian hieroglyphics in a tomb at Deir el-Medina, Luxor, Egypt

48 Retroactive 1 The name of the Greek pharaoh Ptolemy was in Source 4 Tables showing examples of hieroglyphs and the Greek section of the Rosetta Stone. In 1822, equivalent letters/sounds from our alphabet Champollion isolated this name in the demotic section and, using his alphabet of 300 signs, deciphered and confi rmed the same name in a cartouche in the hieroglyphic section.

Sourcee 2 The Rosettaetta StoneStone,, created c.196.196 BCBC.. It showsws a decree praisingaising Ptolemyy V, in the threehree languagess used in Egyptgypt at that time.ime.

Champollion proved his theory by decoding the name ‘Cleopatra’ on the Philae obelisk, a stone ACTIVITIES column with inscriptions in ancient Greek and hieroglyphics. The real breakthrough was in 1824 CHECK YOUR UNDERSTANDING when Champollion realised that hieroglyphs 1 Write a short paragraph to explain why the sometimes stood for alphabetic sounds, sometimes for discovery of the Rosetta Stone was so important. In your answer, mention what was on the Rosetta syllables and sometimes for whole ideas or objects. Stone and how people could use this information. Source 3 Drawing showing the hieroglyphs for ‘Ptolemy’ USE THE SOURCES and ‘Cleopatra’ from the Rosetta Stone and the Philae obelisk 2 What difference would knowing hieroglyphics make to understanding source 1? 3 Add another sentence to the caption of source 3 to more fully explain what it is about. Ancient Greek = Ptolemaios 4 Using the information in source 4 and the hints P T O L M I S below, write your name and a secret message in hieroglyphics. Some hints: • Egyptians often included the symbol after

Hieroglyphics = Ptolemy a boy’s name and after a girl’s name. • Hieroglyphs can be written from top to bottom and also across the page. The direction a bird or animal is facing usually indicates the direction K L E O P A T R A from which they should be read (that is, right to left or left to right).

There are 700 hieroglyphs compared with only 26 letters in our alphabet. Champollion’s work helped his own and future generations to gain a hieroglyphics: ancient Egyptian written language much fuller understanding of ancient Egyptian composed of hieroglyphs (picture-like symbols) society and its culture.

CHAPTER 2 | Ancient Egypt 49