Archaeology and ScriptsDecipherment

The Rosetta Stone

Found at Rosetta in 1799, the stone carries a decree of 196 BC in hieroglyphs, Demotic and Greek, and went to the British Museum in 1802.

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In July 1799, during Napoleon's expedition, French soldiers rebuilding a fort near the town of Rosetta (Rashid) in the western Delta found a broken slab of dark granodiorite covered in writing. Their officer, Pierre-François Bouchard, saw that it held three blocks of text, one of them in Greek, and reported it at once.

Key idea

The Rosetta Stone carries one decree, issued by a council of priests at Memphis in 196 BC in honor of King Ptolemy V, written three times: in hieroglyphs, in Demotic and in Greek. That makes two languages, Egyptian and Greek, in three scripts. Taken by the British in 1801, it has been in the British Museum since 1802.

Why it works

Scholars could read the Greek. If the other two blocks said the same thing, the Greek was a translation that could be matched against them, word by word and name by name. A text in a known language next to one in an unknown script is the most useful thing a decipherer can have: it supplies the meaning, so the work becomes finding which signs carry which words.
The stone's three texts: hieroglyphs at the top (broken), Demotic in the middle, Greek at the bottom.
Two languages, three scripts.
TextScriptLanguageLines surviving
TopHieroglyphicEgyptian14 (the top is broken off)
MiddleDemoticEgyptian32
BottomGreekGreek54 (only about half complete)

The stone is about 112 cm tall, 76 cm wide and 28 cm thick, and weighs about 760 kg. It is only part of a taller stela. Copies of the same decree were set up in temples across Egypt; the text itself says so. The decree praises the young king, lists the benefits he gave the temples, and orders that his statue and the decree be placed in every temple, written in "sacred, native and Greek letters".

Rosetta lies on the western branch of the Nile, near the coast. The decree was issued at Memphis.

Worked example: Two languages or three?

A guidebook says "the Rosetta Stone is written in three languages". Correct it.
  1. Hieroglyphic and Demotic are two scripts for one language, Egyptian. Hieroglyphs were the formal script; Demotic was the everyday cursive of the time.
  2. The third text is in Greek, the language of the Ptolemaic government.
  3. So: three scripts, two languages.

Answer: "Two languages (Egyptian and Greek) in three scripts."

Common mistake

Saying the stone has three languages. There are two, Egyptian and Greek, in three scripts. Check by asking of each text: what language would a speaker of the time recognize? The top two are both Egyptian.
You can find the Rosetta Stone on the site Timeline, beside the other events of the decipherment.
More on Teddy Rook BookTimeline of the Ancient World

Practice

Pass with 3 right answers, the last 2 in a row. Each right answer earns 1 XP.

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