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The Decipherment of Egyptian Hieroglyphs

The Rosetta Stone, discovered by French soldiers in Egypt in 1799, became the essential key to understanding ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. This stone slab is inscribed with the same decree in three different scripts: hieroglyphic, used for important religious documents; Demotic, the common script of everyday Egyptian life; and Ancient Greek, the language of the rulers at the time. The presence of the Greek text was vital, as scholars could read it and use it as a guide to decipher the other two unknown scripts.

The French linguist Jean-François Champollion achieved the final breakthrough in the 1820s. He built upon the work of others who had suspected that the oval frames, or cartouches, in the hieroglyphic text contained the names of rulers. By comparing the cartouches for Ptolemy and Cleopatra, whose names were known from Greek sources, Champollion confirmed that some hieroglyphs were phonetic, representing sounds rather than just ideas. This was the crucial insight that unlocked the entire system.

The decipherment of hieroglyphs had a profound impact, effectively opening a direct window into 3,000 years of Egyptian civilization. For the first time, historians could read ancient Egypt's own records of its history, religion, and daily life, moving beyond the limited and often biased accounts of Greek and Roman writers. The Rosetta Stone itself, a symbol of this monumental intellectual achievement, is now one of the most famous exhibits in the British Museum in London.