The Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian stone that is inscribed with a
decree that was issued on behalf of an ancient Greek king. The Rosetta
Stone was the key to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphics. Since the
decree was written in three different languages -- ancient Egyptian
hieroglyphics, Demotic script, and ancient Greek -- scholars were able to
compare them and translate the hieroglyphics based on their knowledge of
ancient Greek.
The Rosetta Stone in
the British Museum
Hieroglyphics
Thomas Young, an English physicist, was the first to show that some of the
hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone wrote out the sounds of an Egyptian
King. The French scholar Jean-François Champollion then realized that
hieroglyphics recorded the sound of the
Egyptian language and set up the
foundations of our knowledge of ancient
Egyptian language.
Hieroglyphics were sacred characters reserved for religious or
governmental mandates. The language was used to inscribe
tombs, temples and other monuments. Because hieroglyphics
were such an intricate and sacred language, the Egyptians
developed hierativ, which was an abbreviated version of
hieroglyphics. Hieratic was used to record some governmental
decrees and business transactions, but it wasn't used for sacred
purposes. By the Ptolemaic period, when the Rosetta Stone was
inscribed, Egyptians had turned to Demotic -- an even more
simplified version of hieroglyphics.
© Trustees of the British Museum
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Use this code to decipher the phrases below, just like scholars used Ancient Greek to translate the hieroglyphics.
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