Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone is a broken slab of granodiorite, a kind of rock, carved with a decree issued at Memphis, in Egypt, in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. Its makers did not date it 196 BC, as they had not yet been told it was BC.^[1]

The decree is written three times: in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in Demotic script and in Ancient Greek. Saying the same thing three times, in case anyone missed it the first time, is a format now known as a meeting.

Discovery

The stone was found in July 1799 by French soldiers working on fortifications near the town of Rashid, known to Europeans as Rosetta, in the Nile Delta. It has been on display in the British Museum since 1802. It weighs about 760 kilograms, which is why it is moved as rarely as possible.^[2]

Decipherment

Because the Greek part could be read, scholars could compare it with the other two and work out what the hieroglyphs said. Jean-François Champollion announced his breakthrough in deciphering hieroglyphs in 1822, after years of study that also drew on earlier work by the English scholar Thomas Young.

The most famous key to an ancient language is, in essence, paperwork: a decree about honours for the king and privileges for the temples. Historians agree that this is fitting, as paperwork has always been written in a language most people cannot read.^[3]

See also

• Rock (rock) – what the Rosetta Stone is, underneath
• Meeting – the same thing, three times
• List of things that are heavy

References

1. Glyph, G. (1998). Three Times, to Be Sure. Scribe Press.
2. Slab, S. (2009). Heavy Reading. Granite House. Not for loan.
3. Quill, P. (2015). “Nobody Reads the Small Print: Notes on Ancient Paperwork”. Journal of Obvious Translation 2.