HOW DO WE KNOW? How do we know? THE MEANING OF EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS BY ANDREW ROBINSON The ancient Egyptians’ pictograms had archaeologists baffled, until some pioneering early 19th Century linguists deciphered them HE DISCOVERY OF he did not know who was buried in Alexander the Great in 332 BC. For Tutankhamun’s tomb the tomb, or when, because no-one three centuries Egypt was ruled by the wouldn’t happen for another could read hieroglyphs. Greek-speaking Ptolemaic dynasty, century but in 1821 in Ancient Egypt was as celebrated in named after Alexander’s general, Piccadilly, London, an ancient Athens and Rome as it was Ptolemy I – one of whom created the exhibition about ancient in 19th-Century Paris and London. Rosetta Stone in 196 BC. Egypt opened. Encouraged by In fact, it has exerted a powerful This ended with the death of Napoleon’s dramatic invasion influence on the world of learning for Cleopatra VII and the Roman of Egypt two decades earlier, well over two millennia, beginning occupation in 30 BC, which lasted until T‘Egyptomania’ was catching on in with the Greek historian Herodotus, AD 395. Thereafter, Egypt was ruled Britain as it had in Paris. The venue, who travelled in Egypt around 450 BC. first by Coptic Christians, then by the Egyptian Hall, was decorated with In his Histories, Herodotus identified Muslims, until the time of Napoleon. Egyptian motifs, two statues of Isis and the pyramids at Giza as places of Spoken Coptic was descended from Osiris, and hieroglyphs. royal burial, and provided important the language of ancient Egypt, but On display to the public was a information about the process of written Coptic was not hieroglyphic; magnificently carved and painted mummification. Yet his works were it was entirely alphabetic, like Greek one-sixth scale model of an ancient of little or no help to 19th-Century and Latin. Nevertheless, the Coptic Egyptian tomb, which had been scholars in understanding ancient language would prove invaluable in discovered four years earlier in the Egyptian writing, for in classical reading the hieroglyphs by providing area of ancient Thebes (modern antiquity, hieroglyphic writing fell approximate pronunciations for > IN A NUTSHELL Luxor), later to be known as into disuse. No Greek or Roman writer ancient Egyptian words. the Valley of the Kings. At the could read hieroglyphs, either. inauguration ceremony, the tomb’s The reason was that the ancient Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign in Italian discoverer, Giovanni Belzoni civilisation described in the SACRED WRITINGS 1798 sparked a wave of interest in ancient Egypt during the early 19th – a former circus strongman turned hieroglyphs, founded before 3000 BC, Greek and Roman authors generally flamboyant excavator of Egypt went into eclipse in the second half of credited Egypt with the invention of Century – and his troops’ discovery of the Rosetta Stone eventually STOCK – appeared wrapped in mummy the first millennium BC, when Egypt writing, as a gift from the gods. They enabled linguists to decipher the PER bandages before a huge crowd. was conquered – first by Persians, and thought that hieroglyphs – the Ancient hieroglyphs have hieroglyphics whose meaning had However, he was obliged to admit that then by Macedonian Greeks under word means ‘sacred writings’ – been well preserved in the spectacular Luxor Temple been hidden for over a millennium. PHOTO: SU PHOTO: 88 / FOCUS / SUMMER 2013 How do we know? How do we know? were impenetrable symbols of English clergyman. In 1740, William some hieroglyphs might be, at least in officer in charge quickly recognised ancient Egyptian wisdom, which Warburton, the future bishop of some measure, what he called notae the importance of its three parallel had nothing to do with alphabets. They Gloucester, suggested that the origin of phoneticae, Latin for ‘phonetic signs’, inscriptions and sent the Stone to the CAST OF The scholars who, step-by-step over several dismissed any phonetic component all writing might have been pictorial, representing sounds rather than savants in Cairo. CHARACTERS decades, rediscovered a long-lost language in the hieroglyphs, and claimed that rather than divine. A French admirer concepts in the Egyptian language. That October, Napoleon himself, they were conceptual or symbolic of Warburton, Abbé Barthélemy, then And now we reach a turning point: recently returned from Egypt, told signs. Thus, a hieroglyphic pictogram made a sensible guess in 1762 that the arrival of Napoleon Bonaparte’s the National Institute in Paris: “There Silvestre de Sacy of a hawk was said to represent the hieroglyphic cartouches (see ‘Need To invasion force in Egypt in 1798. appears no doubt that the column (1758-1838) was a concept of swiftness, a pictogram of a Know’, p93) might contain the names Fortunately for science, this force was which bears the hieroglyphs contains professor at the Special crocodile to symbolise all that was evil. of kings or gods – ironically, on the almost as interested in knowledge as in the same inscription as the other two. School of Oriental This misguided, non-phonetic view of basis of two false observations, one conquest. A large party of scholars and Thus, here is a means of acquiring Languages in Paris, hieroglyphs as ‘picture writing’ cast being that the hieroglyphs enclosed scientists known as ‘savants’, including certain information of this, until now, where he became the a spell over European thinking right in cartouches differed from all other the mathematician Joseph Fourier, unintelligible language.” most influential teacher up to the Renaissance and the rise of hieroglyphs. Finally, near the end accompanied the army. When military From the moment of discovery, it of Champollion. He modern science in the 17th Century. of the 18th Century, Danish scholar engineers discovered the Rosetta was clear that the bottom inscription attempted to decipher The first ‘scientific’ step in Georg Zoëga hazarded another useful, Stone in July 1799 while rebuilding on the Rosetta Stone was written in the Rosetta Stone deciphering hieroglyphs came from an though unproven, conjecture: that an old fort in the Nile Delta, the the Greek alphabet and the top one – without success, but his proposal that the unfortunately the most damaged – was Johann Åkerblad Stone’s hieroglyphic in Egyptian hieroglyphs with visible (1763-1819) was a cartouches might be cartouches. Sandwiched between Swedish diplomat and written in an alphabet them was a script about which little student of de Sacy. He THE KEY The discovery in 1822 of a ‘new’ obelisk that featured both hieroglyphic and Greek proved important. was known. It plainly did not resemble compared the Egyptian DISCOVERY inscriptions was key to confirming Champollion’s revolutionary ‘mixed script’ theory the Greek script, nor did it appear demotic and the Greek to resemble the hieroglyphic script inscriptions on the above it, not least because it lacked Rosetta Stone, and THE TRIGGER FOR Jean-François inscription was in Greek, the column inscription royal title. Following Young, he then cartouches. Today we know this script concluded that demotic Champollion’s discovery of phoneticism in hieroglyphic. In the Greek, the names of proceeded to guess the phonetic values of as ‘demotic’, a cursive form of ancient appeared to be an Joseph Fourier in the hieroglyphs probably came from Ptolemy and Cleopatra were mentioned; the hieroglyphs in the second, unknown Egyptian writing, as opposed to the alphabet like Greek. (1768-1830) was a Thomas Young’s article on ancient Egypt in in the hieroglyphs, only two cartouches cartouche on the Philae obelisk (D). separate signs of hieroglyphic. Although this was French mathematician the Encyclopaedia Britannica. This included occurred – presumably representing the There were four signs in common, those The first step was to translate the not so, he correctly famous for his Young’s sign-for-sign comparison of the same two names. One of the cartouches was with the values ‘l, e, o, p’, but the phonetic Greek inscription. This turned out to identified certain analysis of heat. He Rosetta Stone’s hieroglyphic cartouche (A) almost identical to one form of the cartouche value ‘t’ was represented di!erently. be a legal decree issued at Memphis, names and words in accompanied Napoleon thought to spell the name of the Egyptian of Ptolemy on the Rosetta Stone (B). Champollion deduced correctly that the two the principal city of ancient Egypt, demotic as alphabetic. Bonaparte on his king Ptolemy with the corresponding name There was also a shorter version of the signs for ‘t’ were homophones, that is, by a council of priests assembled on invasion of Egypt and written in the Greek alphabet as ‘p, t, o, l, m, Ptolemy cartouche on the Rosetta Stone di!erent signs with the same phonetic value the anniversary of the coronation of returned to France e, s’. The key to further progress was a copy (C). Champollion decided that the shorter (compare in English, Gill and Jill, recognize and Ptolemy V Epiphanes, on 27 March with a collection of of a bilingual obelisk inscription from Philae cartouche spelt only Ptolemy, while the longer recognise). He now had the basis for an 196 BC. The Greek names Ptolemy, antiquities that inspired sent to Paris in early 1822. The base block (Rosetta) cartouche must have an additional essentially correct hieroglyphic ‘alphabet’. Alexander and Alexandria, among others, occurred in the inscription. the young Champollion to investigate Egyptian scripts. Thomas Young A) Rosetta Stone c p THE BOTTOM LINE The eye of would-be decipherers was (1773-1829) was an Y X2 R English polymath A caught by the very last sentence of R l t the Greek. It read: ‘This decree shall who practised as a T LIB physician in London R be inscribed on a stela of hard stone in sacred and native [ie, hieroglyphic and is known for his AN A e o and demotic] and Greek characters interference of light Jean-François EM experiment as well as IDG and set up in each of the first, second Champollion R B) Philae obelisk and third [-rank] temples beside the for his linguistics.