The Rosetta Stone - Ancient Interpreter

Unassuming Grandeur

An uninitiated visitor to the British Museum’s Egyptian wing might wonder why such crowds throng about the modest lump of granite encased by the entrance. Standing three foot nine tall and unadorned save for a face of close-knit script the Rosetta Stone is an inconspicuous artefact. Surrounded by imposing Pharaonic statues and overshadowed by twin, winged Assyrian bulls the stone is still the centrepiece. This unobtrusive rock was, perhaps, the single most important discovery of 18th/19th century archaeology.

Proper Financial Records

The Rosetta Stone was carved in 196BC to commemorate the creation of a new cult to honour Ptolemy V, part of the enduring Greek descended Ptolemaic dynasty. The same passage is engraved in three different languages on the stone’s planed face. In essence the passage is a record of the tax amnesties restored by Ptolemy to the Egyptian priesthood. It also serves as an affirmation of Ptolemy’s authority on the first anniversary of his coronation, and an expression of thanks by the Egyptian hierarchy.

Similar testaments to authority and regal benefaction are found in other ‘Rosetta Stones.’ The Canopus decree and the decree of Memphis are earlier examples created for Ptolemy’s forebears.  Since the fragmentation of Alexander the Great’s Empire the Ptolemies had maintained a fragile and much disputed control of Egypt. Monuments to reaffirm their tenuous authority were commonplace. The Rosetta Stone’s creation followed a period of particularly acute unrest, with civil war raging between Upper and Lower Egypt.

Discovery And Exchange

30 miles from Alexandria on the Western Bank of one of the Nile’s tributaries lays the port of Rashid. It was here in July 1799 that a French Army Engineer, Captain Bounchard, unearthed the surviving section of the Rosetta Stone and named it after Rashid. Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition had landed in Alexandria earlier in the same year and begun to construct outposts. The Stone’s significance was immediately recognized and it was transported to Cairo where the scientific side of Napoleon’s expedition had already been established.

When the main British force landed on Egyptian shores in 1801 the stone was immediately moved to Alexandria in a French military convoy headed by a Jacques-Francois Menou. Mirroring the skirmishes being fought by French and British troops, the two empires' respective scholars battled over recently excavated artefacts. Once the French had surrendered, their principal scholar in Alexandria, Etienne Saint-Hilaire, threatened to destroy many of his fellows' findings rather than hand them to the British. Eventually the Treaty of Alexandria decreed any major findings should pass to English hands. But the French were unwilling to part with the precious relic, and hid the Rosetta Stone.

Various accounts of the artefact’s eventual capture exist. One record suggests it was seized from Menou by Colonel Turner, who escorted it to England. Others imply that a peaceful exchange took place in Cairo. Whatever the truth, by the end of 1802 the stone was ensconced in the British Museum. Despite protestations that the Stone should be returned to Egypt, it has resided there ever since. 

Deciphering The Stone

The Rosetta Stone’s lasting significance is as an invaluable translation tool. Because the same message was written on the Stone in three different languages - classical Greek, Demotic and hieroglyphics - it effectively offered a code to decipher the hieroglyphs and Demotic text.
Two men were principally involved in the process, Thomas Young and Jean-Francois Champollion.  Young began translating the Demotic in 1814 but he failed to progress to the hieroglyphics. It was Champollion, several years later, who made the crucial breakthrough. Fluent in Christian Coptic, the descendant of Ancient Egyptian Demotic, Champollion managed to grasp the phonetic value of the individual hieroglyphs.

A Significant Achievement

Champollion proved that the hieroglyphics were not purely symbolic but constituted an entire spoken tongue. One small stone and two years of scholarly endeavour resurrected an ancient dialect and unlocked the countless mysteries of Ancient Egypt. The significance of his work is succinctly summarised in The British Museum’s plaque: “His decipherment unlocked 4000 years of an ancient written culture… the Rosetta Stone has become an icon of all our attempts to understand the past in its own words.”

Image of the Rosetta Stone (top) by ubby05. Image of hieroglyphics (bottom) by Harry Breugom. All rights reserved.

Written by Jack Cooke

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