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The Rosetta Stone and Ancient Hieroglyphs

The Rosetta Stone, discovered in Egypt by French soldiers in 1799, is a dark granite-like stone that became the key to understanding ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. The stone is a fragment of a larger stele and is inscribed with a decree passed by a council of priests in 196 BC. The text honors the pharaoh of the time, Ptolemy V. What makes the stone so exceptionally important is that the decree is written in three different scripts: hieroglyphic, which was used for important or religious documents; Demotic, the common script of everyday life in ancient Egypt; and Ancient Greek.

For centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, the knowledge of how to read hieroglyphs was lost. Scholars were fascinated by the intricate symbols but could not decipher their meaning. The Rosetta Stone provided the first real opportunity for a breakthrough. Because Ancient Greek was a well-understood language, scholars could use the Greek text as a guide to the Egyptian scripts. The process was not simple, however. It was a long and arduous puzzle that involved the work of numerous scholars across Europe for more than two decades.

The final decipherment was announced in the 1820s by the French linguist Jean-François Champollion. His crucial insight was that the hieroglyphic script was not purely symbolic but a complex mix of alphabetic, syllabic, and determinative signs, representing sounds, syllables, and ideas. This discovery unlocked the language and history of ancient Egypt, allowing for the translation of countless inscriptions and papyri. Housed today in the British Museum, the Rosetta Stone remains a powerful symbol of the deciphering of ancient secrets.