The Rosetta Stone was one of the very first things that got me interested in archaeology. Or in dead, old things as I often say. It was a seventh grade teacher who made history so interesting I never stopped reading about it. This teacher talked about the importance of the Rosetta Stone in discovering how to interpret hieroglyphics. From the Rosetta Stone, I went on to exploring all kinds of strange artifacts from the past. This blog has talked about many of them but I’m really intrigued by this stone.
For almost 1500 years, no human beings could decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphics. We had many scrolls, tablets, and carvings written in the Egyptian language but no way to understand what they were saying. If that seems moderately unimportant, just imagine someone in the distant future discovering a library of books but being unable to read the language they were written in. That situation would give me an anxiety attack.
The Rosetta Stone solved the hieroglyph problem. It’s just a large chunk of black granite, but it contains the written decree of Ptolemy V. This decree was important enough that it was carved into stone. Furthermore, it was carved in three different texts, each one on top of the other. The picture I’ve included shows the stone and insets of each of the texts. The top is Egyptian hieroglyphs. The middle is another Egyptian text. The bottom is in ancient Greek. Since scholars understood how to read ancient Greek, they were able to compare that to the hieroglyphic text. It took a lot of people a long time, but by learning from the Rosetta Stone the key to interpreting the symbols was discovered. Today, you can buy a heiroglyphic dictionary and teach yourself to write in Egyptian pictures
𓄀𓅱𓈖𓏏𓂋𓏭𓏤𓀀
