The Rosetta Stone
Before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, scholars had different ideas about hieroglyphs. Many believed that each hieroglyph represented an idea, specifically what the sign resembled. Other scholars thought hieroglyphics followed no rules and would never be deciphered. This changed after the discovery of the Rosetta Stone.
When Napoleon invaded Egypt in the 1790s, he took scholars with him. In 1799, near the town of Rosetta, troops found the Rosetta Stone. The scholars realized it had the same message carved in Greek, demotic and hieroglyphs. The English attacked the French and confiscated it.
The Greek inscription on the stone was translated in 1802. Ptolemy V had commissioned the stone to commemorate the building of a shrine where people worshiped the pharaoh and his ancestors. Details about how often priests were to make sacrifices were in the inscription.
Thomas Young began studying the demotic text in 1814. He identified Ptolemy’s name in a cartouche and was the first scholar to realize some hieroglyphs were phonetic, and that the script followed rules.
Young’s work set the stage for the work of Jean-Francois Champollion. He began by translating the names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra. Champollion identified signs that represented sounds in each name. He deduced what other signs meant based on the Greek spelling of each name. The first Egyptian names he translated were Ramesses and Thutmose.
Champollion was the first scholar to identify determinatives. He used Coptic to decipher the meaning of some signs. His work opened the door to understanding ancient Egypt and his dictionary served as a foundation for the work of other scholars.
