At the time, the Ptolemaic kingdom was at war and dealing with an internal revolt. The decree was passed by a council of priests who used it to honor the pharaoh and declare their loyalty to him. It was recorded on the stele in Ptolemaic hieroglyphics, Demotic Egyptian script, and ancient Greek script. Identical stelae were to be placed in every temple in Egypt. Fast-forward to , when Napoleon led French forces to take over Egypt, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire.
Scientists and historians were part of the conquering force, and streamed into the country to document what they found there. The Egyptologists gathered a large number of ancient artifacts they wanted to take back to France, including the Rosetta Stone. But the British wanted Egypt, too, and in they prevailed over French forces. The French were allowed to evacuate, but the British demanded they hand over the antiquities collection before leaving.
So in the Rosetta Stone made its way to London, where it was put on display at the British Museum almost immediately upon arriving. Here's why Napoleon's military defeat in Egypt yielded a victory for history.
But the stone had more than aesthetic value. Scholars had long puzzled over the meaning of the picture-like markings, known as hieroglyphs, made on ancient Egyptian slabs. Since it contained identical content in three languages, scholars thought the Rosetta Stone might be able to help crack the historic mystery.
Scholars raced to translate the Rosetta Stone. Though a variety of scholars across Europe would contribute to the work, the two most important contributions came from England and France. Thomas Young, a British polymath best known for his scientific contributions, treated the mystery as a mathematical problem. After translating the ancient Greek, he took extensive notes on the hieroglyphs and systematically attempted to match each one to its translation.
He also compared the glyphs to those on other statues. Young was able to identify the phonetic sounds some glyphs represented, figure out some of the characters, and piece together how words were pluralized. Read more about hieroglyphics with your kids. Where Young had no experience with the Egyptian language, Champollion was fluent in Coptic and had extensive knowledge about Egypt.
He figured out that the demotic script—the third writing system on the stele—conveyed syllables and that the hieroglyphs represented Coptic sounds. It was a breakthrough. Then he fainted and did not recover for five days. Champollion used the stone to create an alphabet of phonetic hieroglyphic characters, then other scholars piggybacked on his research to fully translate the stone. The Rosetta Stone is written in three scripts because when it was written, there were three scripts being used in Egypt.
The first was hieroglyphic which was the script used for important or religious documents. Detail of hieroglyphic and demotic script on the Rosetta Stone The second was demotic which was the common script of Egypt. The third was Greek which was the language of the rulers of Egypt at that time.
The Rosetta Stone was written in all three scripts so that the priests, government officials and rulers of Egypt could read what it said. When was the Rosetta Stone made? The Rosetta Stone was carved in B. When was the Rosetta Stone found? The Rosetta Stone was found in Alexander conquered Egypt in B. After Alexander died in B. The Rosetta Stone was not originally located at Rashid ancient Rosetta and is actually a fragment of a much larger stela that was originally displayed at a temple, possibly at the ancient Egyptian city of Sais.
These are long gone," wrote Ray. Parkinson estimates that when the Rosetta Stone was first created, it was about 59 inches cm in height. The town of Rashid ancient Rosetta is located by the sea, and the Rosetta Stone would not have originally been placed there, wrote Parkinson.
The temple that once held the stone may have been quarried centuries after the Rosetta Stone was created, and the stone may have been brought to Rashid as quarried rock. The use of Egyptian hieroglyphs and Demotic died out during the fifth century. The last known inscriptions were written on Philae, an island near the southern border of Egypt that has a temple complex.
Scholars have noted that the use of the two ancient texts declined as Christianity and Greco-Roman culture spread in Egypt. Greek and Coptic an Egyptian language that uses the Greek alphabet supplanted Egyptian hieroglyphs and Demotic.
A year-old French engineering officer named Pierre Francois Xavier Bouchard apparently made the discovery. The exact date of discovery is uncertain, scholars have found. The French force that Napoleon led to Egypt included a group of scientists, scholars and artists who studied and documented the country's human and natural history. He noted that word spread quickly of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, and copies of the inscriptions were sent to Paris.
By , the French force was on the defensive, and the Rosetta Stone had been taken to Alexandria, one of the last remaining Egyptian cities under French control.
By Aug. Parkinson noted that Col.
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