2.3. Deciphering the inscriptions on the Rosetta stone

Decoding the inscriptions on the so called Rosetta stone, made by the French scientist Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832) has become one more important event in the history of translation. That scientific deed can be considered one of the most significant events of the 19^th century.

Ptolemy assumed the crown at the tender age of 5 after a rather turbulent time in Egyptian history. The young ruler was faced with the daunting task of reclaiming lands lost to various invaders and reunifying his country’s populace. As an attempt to reestablish legitimacy for the ruler and create a royal cult, Ptolemy’s priests issued a series of decrees (a judicial decision or order). The decrees were inscribed on stones and erected throughout Egypt. The Rosetta stone is a copy of the decree issued in the city of Memphis.

For 1400 years, no one knew how to read Egyptian hieroglyphs. Virtually all understanding of this mysterious script had been lost since the 4^th century AD. The breakthrough to the decipherment of hieroglyphs came in 1799, a year after Napoleon’s armies successfully captured the Egyptian Nile Delta. A French soldier, while working at a fort on the Rosetta branch of the Nile River, found a black basalt stone (actually it was a granite stone) slab carved with inscriptions that would change the course of Egyptology.

The Rosetta stone (now in the British Museum) was carved with an inscription in three different scripts: Egyptian hieroglyphs at the top, demotic script (a late cursive form of hieroglyphs) in the middle, and Greek at the bottom. The translation of the Greek passage revealed that the inscription was a royal edict issued on March, 27, 196 BC. The decree recorded the benefits conferred on Egypt by the 13 year old pharaoh Ptolemy V Epiphanes at the time of his coronation. The Greek inscription was a translation of the upper two Egyptian passages and thus provided the key to deciphering ancient hieroglyphs. Copies of the Rosetta stone inscription were sent to linguistic experts in Europe. The final breakthrough was made by a French scholar Jean-François Champollion who published his results in 1822. A brilliant linguist, unlocked the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphs, beginning his work on the stone inscriptions in 1808 at age 18. After 14 years of study, he finally deciphered them. The results of his great achievements were announced in 1822 in a now famous letter he wrote to the French Royal Academy of Inscriptions, in which he explained the basic concepts of hieroglyphic script. Finally after nearly 1500 years of silence, ancient Egyptian writing could be read!

What are hieroglyphs? Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is one of the oldest scripts in the world and was used for almost 3500 years. The Greeks first named Egyptian script “ta hieroglyphica” or “sacred carved (letters)”. Hieroglyphic script is mostly pictorial – familiar images of natural and man-made objects. However, it is more than simple picture writing, as it is richer than our own alphabet, and far more difficult to learn. Less than 1000 hieroglyphs were in general use at any one time; in the late period (712-332 BC), however, the number climbed to 6000.

Hieroglyphs are signs that indicate sounds (called phonograms) or represent complete words (called ideograms). Like modern Arabic and Hebrew, only the consonants are written down, specific vowels are not indicated. For example, the word “brook” would be spelled in hieroglyphs as “brk”. However, this combination of signs could also spell “brick”, “break”, or “brake”. In order to tell the difference between similar words, the Egyptian added signs called “determinatives” to avoid confusion and give specific meaning to a particular word. To indicate “brk” as “brook”, the determinative for water would be placed at the end of the word.

Hieroglyphs inscriptions were usually written in rows from right to left or in columns top to bottom. But to create a more pleasing visual effect, they might also be written from left to right. You can tell which way to read an inscription by looking at the direction toward which animals or people face or walk. They always face toward the beginning of the line. With no punctuation or spaces between words or sentences hieroglyphs are even more difficult to read.

“One of history’s great intellectual adventures began on a summer day in 1799 when, near the Egyptian city of Rosetta, soldiers in Napoleon’s ranks found a slab of black basalt engraved in three languages. The stone’s scripts – Greek, demotic (a simplified Egyptian script) and hieroglyphics – seemed to render the same message. If linguists could match the hieroglyphs to the Greece, all of Egyptian literature would be theirs.

It took until 1822 for Jean-François Champollion to discover that hieroglyphics mixed phonetic and symbolic meanings; that some texts should be read right to left, others left to right or top to bottom; and that some symbols had two different meanings. This breakthrough, and the translations it produced, led to revelations both humbling and exhilarating: the Egyptians knew medicine, astronomy, geometry. They used weights and had an organized system of government.

The Rosetta Stone, along with discoveries at Herculaneum and Lascaux, taught us that each age, including our own, occupies but a small space in continuum of time.” (Life Magazine)