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Rosetta Stone

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Archaeology

   The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum.
   Enlarge
   The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum.

   The Rosetta Stone is an ancient stele inscribed with the same passage
   of writing in two Egyptian language scripts and in classical Greek. It
   was created in 196 BC, discovered by the French in 1799, and translated
   in 1822 by Frenchman Jean-François Champollion. Comparative translation
   of the stone assisted in understanding many previously undecipherable
   examples of hieroglyphic writing.

   The Stone is 114.4 centimeters high at its tallest point,
   72.3 centimeters wide, and 27.9 centimeters thick. (45.04 in. high,
   28.5 in. wide, 10.9 in. thick). Weighing approximately 1,676 pounds, it
   was originally thought to be granite or basalt but is currently
   described as granodiorite and is dark grey-pinkish in colour. The Stone
   has been kept at the British Museum in London, England since 1802.

History

Creation of the Stone

   Ptolemy V was the 5th ruler of the Hellenistic Ptolemaic Dynasty, which
   governed Egypt from 305 BC to 30 BC. He came to power when he was five
   years old, and thus Egypt was de facto ruled by Regents and royal
   priests. Following precedents set by Ptolemy III, the priests issued
   decrees to the population, in order to maintain support for the
   dynasty. (A decree of Ptolemy III appears on the Stone of Canopus.)
   Decrees were inscribed on stone and erected throughout Egypt. The
   Rosetta Stone is a copy of the decree issued in the city of Memphis.

   The Greeks historically supported bilingual practices in territories
   they occupied. The Rosetta Stone was inscribed with three scripts so
   that it could be read not only by the local people, but also by
   visiting priests and government officials. The first script was
   Hieroglyphic, the script used for religious documents and other
   important communications. The second was Demotic Egyptian, which was
   the common script of Egypt. The third was Greek, which was the language
   of the post-Alexander rulers of Egypt at that time.
   Detail of the demotic script from a replica on display in Magdeburg.
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   Detail of the demotic script from a replica on display in Magdeburg.

   The stone displays the same Ptolemaic decree of 196 BC in the three
   scripts. The Greek part of the Rosetta Stone begins: Basileuontos tou
   neou kai paralabontos tēn basileian para tou patros... (Greek:
   Βασιλεύοντος του νέου και παραλαβόντος την βασιλείαν παρά του
   πατρός...) (The new king, having received the kingship from his
   father...) It is a decree from Ptolemy V, describing various taxes he
   repealed (one measured in ardebs (Greek artabai) per aroura), and
   instructing that statues be erected in temples and that the decree be
   published in the writing of the words of gods (hieroglyphs), the
   writing of the people (demotic), and the Wynen (Greek; the word is
   cognate with Ionian) language.

   The Rosetta Stone was included in the third part of a series of three
   decrees, the first from Ptolemy III (the Decree of Canopus), the second
   from Ptolemy IV ( The Memphis Stele), and the third from Ptolemy V.

   There are approximately two copies of the Stone of Canopus, two of the
   Memphis Stele (one imperfect) and two and a half copies of the text of
   the Rosetta Stone, including the Nubayrah Stele and a pyramid wall
   inscription with "edits", or scene replacements, completed by
   subsequent scribes.
   Rosetta Stone detail
   Enlarge
   Rosetta Stone detail

Three-stone series

   Multiple copies of the Ptolemaic Decrees were erected in multiple
   temple courtyards, as specified in the text of the decrees. The Stele
   of Nubayrah, found early 1880's, and the text engraved in the Temple of
   Philae contain the same message as the Rosetta Stone. The Stele of
   Nubayrah was used to complete missing Rosetta Stone lines.

Modern-era discovery

   The Rosetta Stone solved a particularly difficult linguistic problem
   Enlarge
   The Rosetta Stone solved a particularly difficult linguistic problem

   After Napoleon's 1798 Campaign in Egypt, the French founded an Institut
   de l'Egypte in Cairo, bringing many scientists and archaeologists to
   the region.

   French Army engineer Captain Pierre-François Bouchard discovered the
   stone on July 15, 1799, while he was guiding construction works at Fort
   Julien near the Egyptian port city of Rosetta (present-day Rashid). He
   understood its importance and showed it to General Jacques de Menou.
   They decided to send the artifact to the Institut de l'Égypte, where it
   arrived in August 1799. The French language newspaper Courrier de
   l'Egypte announced the find in September 1799.

   After Napoleon returned to France in 1799, 167 scholars remained behind
   along with a defensive force of French troops. French commanders held
   off British and Ottoman attacks until March 1801, when the British
   landed on Aboukir Bay. Scholars carried the Stone from Cairo to
   Alexandria alongside the troops of de Menou. French troops in Cairo
   capitulated on June 22 and in Alexandria on August 30.

   After the French surrender, a dispute arose over the fate of French
   archaeological and scientific discoveries in Egypt. French commander de
   Menou refused to hand over the collections, claiming that they belonged
   to the Institute. British General John Hely-Hutchinson refused to
   relieve the city until de Menou would give in. Newly arrived scholars
   Edward Daniel Clarke and William Richard Hamilton agreed to check the
   collections in Alexandria and found numerous artifacts French had not
   revealed.

   When Hutchinson claimed all materials as a property of the British
   Crown, a French scholar Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, said to Clarke
   and Hamilton that they'd rather burn all their discoveries, ominously
   referring to the burned Library of Alexandria. Hutchinson finally
   agreed that items like the biology specimens would be scholars' private
   property. Menou regarded the stone as his private property and hid it.

   How exactly the Stone came to British hands is disputed. Colonel
   Tomkyns Hilgrove Turner, who escorted the stone to Britain, claimed
   later that he had personally seized the stone from de Menou and carried
   it away on a gun carriage. Clarke stated in his memoirs that a French
   scholar and an officer had quietly given up the stone to him and his
   companions in a Cairo back street. French scholars departed later with
   only imprints and plaster casts of the stone.
   Experts inspecting the Rosetta Stone during the International Congress
   of Orientalists of 1874
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   Experts inspecting the Rosetta Stone during the International Congress
   of Orientalists of 1874

   Turner brought the stone to Britain aboard a captured French frigate
   L'Egyptienne on February 1802. On March 11 it was presented to the
   Society of Antiquaries. Later it was taken to the British Museum, where
   it has been since. White painted inscriptions on the artifact state
   "Captured in Egypt by the British Army in 1801" on the left side and
   "Presented by King George III" on the right.

Translation

   In 1814 British Thomas Young finished translating the enchorial (
   demotic) text, and went on to work on the hieroglyphic alphabet. During
   the years of 1822–1824, Jean-François Champollion greatly expanded on
   his work, and he is known as the translator of the Rosetta Stone.
   Champollion could read both Greek and Coptic language. He was able to
   figure out what the seven Demotic signs in Coptic were. By looking at
   how these signs were used in Coptic he was able to work out what they
   stood for. Then he began tracing these Demotic signs back to
   hieroglyphic signs. By working out what some hieroglyphs stood for, he
   could make educated guesses about what the other hieroglyphs stood for.

   In 1858, the Philomathean Society of the University of Pennsylvania
   published the first complete English translation of the Rosetta Stone.
   Three undergraduate members, Charles R Hale, S Huntington Jones and
   Henry Morton, made the translation. The translation quickly sold out
   two editions and was internationally hailed as a monumental work of
   scholarship. In 1988, the British Museum bestowed the honour of
   including the Philomathean Rosetta Stone Report in its select
   bibliography of the most important works ever published on the Rosetta
   Stone. The Philomathean Society maintains a full-scale cast of the
   stone in its meeting room at the University of Pennsylvania.

Today

   The Rosetta Stone has been exhibited in the British Museum since 1802,
   with only one break, from 1917–1919. Toward the end of the First World
   War, in 1917, when the Museum was concerned about heavy bombing in
   London, they moved it to safety along with other portable objects of
   value. The Rosetta Stone spent the next two years in a station on the
   Postal Tube Railway fifty feet below the ground at Holborn.

   In July 2003, the Egyptians demanded the return of the Rosetta Stone.
   Dr. Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of
   Antiquities in Cairo, told the press: "If the British want to be
   remembered, if they want to restore their reputation, they should
   volunteer to return the Rosetta Stone because it is the icon of our
   Egyptian identity." In 2005, Hawass was negotiating for a three-month
   loan, with the eventual goal of a permanent return. In November 2005,
   the British Museum sent him a replica of the stone.

Idiomatic use

   The term Rosetta Stone has become idiomatic as something that is a
   critical key to a process of decryption or translation of a difficult
   problem. For example, "the Rosetta stone of immunology" and "
   Arabidopsis, the Rosetta stone of flowering time (fossils)". Rosetta
   Stone is also the title of a computer-based language learning program.

   In 2006, Apple Computer bundled a software module called Rosetta with
   their new Intel-based Macintosh computers; this module is responsible
   for transparently translating software written and compiled for their
   older PowerPC-based systems into the object code that the Intel-based
   hardware can understand.

English translation of the text

     In the reign of the new king, who was Lord of the diadems, great in
     glory, the stabilizer of Egypt, and also pious in matters relating
     to the gods, Superior to his adversaries, rectifier of the life of
     men, Lord of the thirty-year periods like Hephaestus the Great, King
     like the Sun, the Great King of the Upper and Lower Lands, offspring
     of the Parent-loving Gods, whom Hephaestus has approved, to whom the
     Sun has given victory, living image of Zeus, Son of the Sun, Ptolemy
     the ever-living, beloved by Ptah;
     In the ninth year, when Aëtus, son of Aëtus, was priest of Alexander
     and of the Savior Gods and the Brother Gods and the Benefactor Gods
     and the Parent-loving Gods and the God Manifest and Gracious;
     Pyrrha, the daughter of Philinius, being athlophorus for Bernice
     Euergetis; Areia, the daughter of Diogenes, being canephorus for
     Arsinoë Philadelphus; Irene, the daughter of Ptolemy, being
     priestess of Arsinoë Philopator: on the fourth of the month Xanicus,
     or according to the Egyptians the eighteenth of Mecheir.
     THE DECREE: The high priests and prophets, and those who enter the
     inner shrine in order to robe the gods, and those who wear the hawks
     wing, and the sacred scribes, and all the other priests who have
     assembled at Memphis before the king, from the various temples
     throughout the country, for the feast of his receiving the kingdom,
     even that of Ptolemy the ever-living, beloved by Ptah, the God
     Manifest and Gracious, which he received from his Father, being
     assembled in the temple in Memphis this day, declared:
     Since King Ptolemy, the ever-living, beloved by Ptah, the God
     Manifest and Gracious, the son of King Ptolemy and Queen Arsinoë,
     the Parent-loving Gods, has done many benefactions to the temples
     and to those who dwell in them and also to all those subjects to his
     rule, being from the beginning a god born of a god and a
     goddess—like Horus, the son of Isis and Osirus, who came to the help
     of his Father Osirus—being benevolently disposed toward the gods,
     has concentrated to the temples revenues both of silver and of
     grain, and has generously undergone many expenses in order to lead
     Egypt to prosperity and to establish the temples... the gods have
     rewarded him with health, victory, power, and all other good things,
     his sovereignty to continue to him and his children forever.

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