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The Decipherment of the Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone, discovered in Egypt in 1799, is an ancient artifact that became the key to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphs. It is a slab of granodiorite inscribed with a decree issued in 196 B.C. on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The true importance of the stone is not the text of the decree itself, but the fact that it is inscribed in three different scripts: Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic script, and Ancient Greek.

For centuries, scholars were unable to read the pictorial script of the ancient Egyptians. The breakthrough came because Ancient Greek was a well-understood language. Scholars could read the Greek portion of the text and correctly assumed that the other two scripts held the same meaning. The French scholar Jean-François Champollion is credited with the final decipherment in the 1820s. His crucial insight was that hieroglyphs were not simply symbolic pictures but a complex mixture of phonetic and ideographic signs. This revelation overturned centuries of incorrect assumptions.

Champollion's method involved comparing the Greek text with the hieroglyphs, focusing on proper names like "Ptolemy" and "Cleopatra," which were enclosed in an oval shape called a cartouche. By identifying the sounds of the letters in these known names, he was able to build up an alphabet of hieroglyphic signs. This monumental achievement unlocked the language of ancient Egypt, allowing for the translation of countless other documents and inscriptions. Consequently, our knowledge of Egyptian history and culture expanded immensely.