The Rosetta Stone: decoding ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics
The Rosetta stone’s discovery in the late 18th century kicked off the study of ancient Egypt as its own field of research and paved the way for millions of tourists to gawk at the wonders of an ancient civilization.
The stone itself tells us a fascinating story about the evolution of languages and religious belief over time. As part of the Memphis decree by Ptolemy V, one of the Greek rulers of Egypt from the 2nd century BC, almost identical copies were displayed in major temples across the country as a way for priests to give thanks to the ruler’s contributions.
The texts inscribed on the stone are in three scripts: sacred hieroglyphic writing, Egyptian demotic and ancient Greek. Comparing the same groups of characters across the three scripts allowed researchers to determine how hieroglyphs represented both ideas (word meanings) and phonetics (syllable sounds).
Check out the British Museum video above and the following links for a quick introduction to the Rosetta stone and the decipherment of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.
How Egyptian hieroglyphs were decoded, a timeline to decipherment
