The Rosetta Stone was the most important pillar that finally led to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. A huge plate of more than a meter high and almost a ton of weight, it became an enigma for archaeologists and all lovers of Egyptian culture, even to this day it hides a certain mysticism.
When archaeologists in Egypt came across a type of writing completely different from what they had previously observed, they were stunned by its complexity and, of course, the mystery it concealed. Since then, experts embarked on a journey to decipher the so-called Egyptian hieroglyphs; however, they did not succeed until the Rosetta Stone led them on the path to a deeper understanding of Egyptian culture.
The Discovery
In 1799, during the French occupation of Egypt, the French officer Bouchard Pierre, who was part of Napoleon Bonaparte’s engineering division, was conducting a routine inspection when he suddenly noticed a strange plaque after collapsing a wall.
The stone was blackish and very large for an inscription. At approximately 1.14 meters high, 72 centimeters wide, 28 centimeters thick, and weighing 760 kilograms, the plaque did not go unnoticed. It was also the first ancient multilingual text found and rekindled hopes of finally deciphering the hieroglyphs. The French knew the importance of the text and sent it to Alexandria for exhaustive analysis. It was discovered that it was divided into three areas inscribed in three different ancient scripts, hieroglyphics, Egyptian demotic, and ancient Greek.
However, the conflict between the British and the French in Egyptian territory ended with the former triumphant. After the British were victorious, they took care of the Rosetta stone that bears their name thanks to the site where it was found, very close to Rashid. They moved it to English territory, but not before allowing the French to create a plaster copy that they took back to France.
The original plaque was moved to the British Museum where it still rests and is the most visited piece in the entire enclosure. But the French copy, in turn, led to more copies being made, and thus, more people had access to the text inscribed on it.
A key piece in deciphering hieroglyphs
This is how it came to the attention of Jean François Champollion, an audacious French linguist, and Egyptologist who mastered the ancient Coptic language, which is derived from demotic. It was this advantage that allowed him to study the texts inscribed on the Rosetta Stone in greater depth and finally decipher the hieroglyphs that linguists had been trying to understand for many years.
He realized that the hieroglyphs were not ideograms as previously speculated, but phonograms. Thanks to this, he reconstructed the alphabet of phonetic hieroglyphic characters that appear in his famous letter to the Academy of Ancient Inscriptions and Languages, which marked a turning point in the understanding of Egyptian culture.
Champollion was able to decipher that the stone had been engraved for a special reason; the coronation of King Ptolemy V. In it is inscribed the decree of Memphis, which established the divine cult to the new ruler and where it also stated that Ptolemy V gave silver and grain to the temples, which ensured the favor of the priestly caste. Finally, it was decreed that a copy of this inscription be erected in each temple in the language of the gods (hieroglyphs), the language of the documents (demotic), and the language of the Greeks.
This last order of Ptolemy V was the one that allowed that millennia after the creation of the Rosetta Stone, finally the hieroglyphs were deciphered.
Story originally published in Spanish in Ecoosfera
