The Rosetta Stone

Egypt, almost 200 years Before Common Era. The country is governed by a young king, Ptolemy the fifth. Now, he is thirteen years old and is considered an adult. In the year 196 BCE, he celebrates by setting up stone inscriptions outside all the important temples. These tell how good he is, and how much he loves Egypt.

To make sure everyone can read it, he gets the message carved in all three written languages used in Egypt at this time: hieroglyphics, demotic, and Greek. Almost two thousand years later, in 1799, the Frenchman Napoleon has invaded Egypt. Besides soldiers, Napoleon also brings researchers, to gather everything that may be of cultural interest. When some soldiers tear down an old wall near the town of Rosetta, a Captain Bouchard discovers a granite-like rock with inscriptions. The French have seen hieroglyphs before, but they are currently undecipherable.

Bouchard understands immediately that this stone is different, and of cultural interest. Perhaps it might help solve the mystery! He leaves the stone with Napoleon’s scientists. When they see it, they immediately realize that this is a scientific treasure! But they don’t yet know how important it will come to be.

The researchers have no problem reading the Greek text, but they don’t understand the hieroglyphs, nor the third script. They call it demotic script - from the Greek word for ‘people’. They copy the text and send it to researchers around Europe. Now a race begins: Who will decode the hieroglyphs first? But it turns out to be harder than they first thought.

In 1801, Napoleon’s forces in Egypt are beaten by the British. The French are forced to hand over the Rosetta Stone. It ends up in Britain, and there it will remain. In London, a mathematician and doctor, Thomas Young, is working with the Rosetta stone. He notices that around some hieroglyphs there is an oval ring - a cartouche.

He guesses that these cartouches are important and the hieroglyphs inside them are probably the names of kings. He succeeds with help of the Greek inscription to read the name Ptolemy in the hieroglyphs inside the cartouche. But then he's stuck. Meanwhile in France, Jean-François Champollion takes on the job of decoding the Rosetta Stone. He is gifted in languages, and has been studying hieroglyphics for several years.

Even so, it takes him another 10 years before suddenly one day.. he can decipher a name in an old papyrus document. Helped by Young's method of studying cartouches, combined with his own knowledge of Coptic, the Christian language used in Egypt long ago, he has managed to read the name Ramses - an early Egyptian pharaoh. Using his knowledge of Coptic, he can now decipher more and more of the characters written in demotic on the Rosetta Stone! From them, Champollion can read the hieroglyphs, then use the Greek scripture on the stone to check if it’s correct.

It is! He has solved it! Now, he has a way of figuring out what any hieroglyph means! That's why, thanks to the Rosetta Stone, scientists today can read and understand what the ancient Egyptians wrote with their hieroglyphs. The Rosetta Stone is sometimes called the most important stone in the world.

Yes, without it, maybe the hieroglyphs still would have been a mystery today. Then, thousands of years of written history would still be just incomprehensible characters. And we would probably not have a clue that, for instance, Tutankhamun’s name was ‘Tutankhamun’, or that the ancient Egyptians were good mathematicians, and mastered equations containing an unknown factor. If you visit London, you can see the Rosetta stone where it stands in the British Museum.