Rosetta Stone: two languages, three scripts and the recovery of Egyptian writing
The Rosetta Stone carries Egyptian and Greek in three scripts: hieroglyphs, Demotic and the Greek alphabet. Hieroglyphs and Demotic both represent Egyptian, so the number of writing systems exceeds the number of languages. Carved in 196 BCE, the surviving slab preserves a decree issued by priests at Memphis in honor of King Ptolemy V. Its original purpose was to proclaim royal honors in temples. Nearly 2,000 years later, the Greek version helped scholars recover the sound values and meanings of Egyptian signs.
The decree belonged to Ptolemaic Egypt, ruled by the descendants of a Macedonian general of Alexander the Great. Ptolemy I had established the dynasty in 305 BCE. The rulers governed from Alexandria while supporting Egyptian temples and priesthoods. Greek was an important language alongside Egyptian, which commonly appeared in Demotic outside monumental settings. Royal images could combine Greek forms with Egyptian poses and insignia. A temple proclamation using different scripts fitted a kingdom whose monarchy operated within both Hellenistic and Egyptian traditions.
The priests credited Ptolemy V with benefits to temples and the wider country. Their proclamation praised gifts of grain and money, temple building and repairs, reduced taxes and the release of prisoners. In return, it prescribed honors for the king. Statues were to be set up in temples and attended by priests, while festivals would mark his birthday and accession. The decree ordered its provisions to be inscribed in sacred, documentary and Greek writing and placed beside royal images. Religious observance and public recognition of royal authority were closely connected.
Only part of the original monument survives. The slab is about 112 centimeters high, 76 centimeters wide and 28 centimeters thick, with portions missing from its corners and upper section. The Rosetta Stone's surviving bands contain 14 lines of hieroglyphs, 32 of Demotic and 54 of Greek. None of the three versions remains complete on the stone itself. Other copies of the decree later supplied portions absent from this fragment. The different versions nevertheless preserved enough shared material to make comparison possible when scholars began working on them.
French troops found the Rosetta Stone in 1799 while working at Fort Julien near Rashid in the Nile Delta. Engineer Pierre-Francois Bouchard recognized the inscription during work involving an old wall. The stone entered the collections assembled during Napoleon's Egyptian expedition. After the French surrender in 1801, it passed to British possession under the capitulation terms. It traveled aboard L'Egyptienne and reached Portsmouth in February 1802. The Society of Antiquaries of London examined it before it was transferred to the British Museum later that year.
Copies of the Rosetta Stone allowed the inscriptions to circulate while the slab itself remained in one place. In Egypt, printers applied ink to its surface and pressed paper against it to produce impressions. These were sent to European scholars. In 1802, the Society of Antiquaries arranged plaster casts for Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Dublin and distributed engraved copies of the Greek text. Different specialists could therefore examine the writing without traveling to London. Work on the Greek and Demotic versions began alongside attempts to understand the hieroglyphs.
In April 1802, Stephen Weston presented an English translation of the Greek inscription to the Society of Antiquaries. French and Latin translations followed. Silvestre de Sacy and Johan David Akerblad also worked on the Demotic text in 1802. Akerblad identified Demotic equivalents of names including Alexander, Alexandria and Ptolemy and made out the general meaning of portions of its opening lines. These efforts preceded the later advances on hieroglyphic sound values. The decipherment brought together work on Greek, cursive Egyptian and monumental signs, with the inscriptions on other Egyptian objects supplying additional names for comparison.
Royal names offered a productive starting point. Hieroglyphic cartouches enclosed names, and the Greek version identified the ruler as Ptolemy. Thomas Young assigned sound values to several signs and recognized Ptolemy's name in the Egyptian text. Comparison with inscriptions from Philae added another royal name, Cleopatra. Signs appearing in both names could be compared at corresponding positions. The process connected specific written forms with spoken sounds, helping establish that hieroglyphs could do more than represent objects or abstract ideas.
Jean-Francois Champollion developed that work in the early 1820s. His knowledge of Coptic, a later form of the Egyptian language, helped him recognize words and assign readings to signs. Coptic religious texts had remained available even after ancient hieroglyphic writing fell out of use. Sound values established through royal names could be tested against a larger language. Champollion expanded the sign list and developed grammatical explanations that made it possible to move from identifying rulers to understanding longer inscriptions.
- E. A. Wallis Budge, The Rosetta Stone (British Museum, 1913), Project Gutenberg — www.gutenberg.org
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Marsha Hill, Egypt in the Ptolemaic Period — www.metmuseum.org
- Mark Cartwright, World History Encyclopedia, Rosetta Stone — www.worldhistory.org