The Rosetta Stone and Its Role in Understanding Ancient Egypt

For centuries, the great pyramids, majestic temples, and underground tombs of ancient Egypt have been silent witnesses to the passage of time. Along the banks of the Nile River, the remnants of the Pharaohs civilization were still visible – yet, the voices of a forgotten nation remained unheard. The pictorial script carved on rock faces and painted on papyrus had become an indecipherable mystery long after the era of classical antiquity. It was not until the accidental discovery of a single black basalt slab in 1799 that the scholars obtained the key to understand 3 000 years of Egyptian history. That very slab, famous as the Rosetta Stone, has brought Egyptology into the realm of science.

1. The Discovery and Nature of the Artifact

The Rosetta Stone was discovered in July 1799 during Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign. French soldiers excavating fortifications at a Mediterranean port of Rashid (Rosetta) stumbled upon a large stone slab built into an ancient wall. Recognizing the potential historical value of the find, French commanders saved the slab from being used as building material. After the French defeat in Egypt, the Rosetta Stone was turned over to the British in accordance with the Treaty of Alexandria in 1801. The slab has been on display at the British Museum in London since 1802.

A. Material and Inscription Structure

The Rosetta Stone is a piece of a larger granodiorite stele, weighing 760 kg and having dimensions of 112 cm in height, 75 cm in width, and 28 cm in thickness. On the stele, there is an official decree issued in 196 BCE in Memphis on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes during the Ptolemaic period.

B. The Trilingual Inscription

What made the Rosetta Stone famous is that the same decree was inscribed three times on the slab in different scripts:

Hieroglyphic Script: At the top part of the slab (in the partly damaged area), this is the sacred script used to inscribe obelisks, temple walls, and decree official orders. In the 196 BCE, it was only understandable to priests and scribes.

Demotic Script: In the middle part of the slab, this is the everyday script used to write official, legal, commercial, and literary documents.

Ancient Greek Script: At the bottom part of the slab, this is the language of Ptolemaic government. Since Ancient Greek was familiar to classical scholars, the Rosetta Stone provided a coherent basis for deciphering the hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts.

2. The Historical Context of the Memphis Decree

To understand the Rosetta Stone discovery, it is essential to put the historical context of the Memphis decree in 196 BCE. After the death of Alexander the Great, his general Ptolemy I established a Greek-speaking dynasty that ruled Egypt for about three centuries.

When Ptolemy V came to the throne as a young king, Egypt was in chaos with numerous native rebellions in Upper Egypt and economic hardships. To gain the support of native Egyptian priests, the young king issued the Memphis decree at the time of his official coronation.

It formalized a series of privileges and benefits for the temples (tax exemption, debts remission, additional royal donations to the priesthood, and honors to temples gods). In turn, the priests affirmed the divine glory of Ptolemy V and his cult worship in all Egyptian temples. The decree was carved on a stone stele and displayed in all temples as a royal order.

3. The Race to Decipherment: From Young to Champollion

Since the Rosetta Stone contained the Greek script, it took more than 20 years for the scholars to decipher the hieroglyphs.

A. The Symbolism Misconception

For centuries, it was believed in Europe that the hieroglyphs were a form of symbolic or mystical picture-writing. The assumption was that each symbol in the picture represented a whole set of philosophical ideas rather than a sound of the spoken language.

B. Thomas Young’s Phonetic Discovery

In the early 1810s, polymath Thomas Young made the first break in deciphering the Rosetta Stone. He examined Demotic and Hieroglyphic portions of the stone and assumed that the oval rings at the top of the cartouches contained the names of the pharaohs. By comparing the Ancient Greek word for Ptolemy with the corresponding markings in the cartouche, he proved that the hieroglyphs may contain phonetic elements.

C. Jean-Francois Champollion’s Genius

The ultimate breakthrough in deciphering the Rosetta Stone was made in 1822 by French scholar Jean-Francois Champollion. Champollion had extensive knowledge of Coptic language (the latest form of the Egyptian language spoken in ancient Egypt).

He discovered that hieroglyphs were a combination of phonemes, logograms, and determinatives that together formed a comprehensive system of ancient Egyptian writing. Using his Coptic language expertise, Champollion matched the deciphered phonemes to the corresponding sounds in the Greek language. This allowed Champollion to read not only the foreign names (Ptolemy, Cleopatra) but also some native Egyptian names (Ramses, Thutmosis) and read entire sentences of the pictorial script.

4. The Impact on Modern Egyptology and Historical Understanding

The Rosetta Stone discovery and deciphering of hieroglyphs changed the historical understanding of the ancient world forever. First, it allowed historians to read the primary sources describing different aspects of everyday life in the Nile Valley.

A. Reclaiming the Egyptian Voice

Before the Rosetta Stone discovery, most of the historical information about ancient Egypt came from the second-hand accounts of the ancient Greek and Roman historians (Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, and Strabo) or the Biblical scriptures. Deciphering the hieroglyphs allowed historians to read the original accounts of the ancient Egyptians about their life, religion, politics, medicine, and literature.

B. Establishing Dynastic Chronology

By reading temple king lists, royal victory stelae, papyrus scrolls of government business, and tomb autobiographies, historians were able to re-establish the chronology of dynastic Egypt. All these primary sources validated the early attempts of the ancient historians (Manetho) to describe the events of the past.

C. Unlocking Daily Life and Administration

The deciphering of the hieroglyphs allowed historians to read not only the public proclamations of the Pharaohs but also the private letters of the ordinary people. Reading the Demotic and Hieratic scripts on papyrus and temple walls enabled scholars to investigate the day-to-day life in ancient Egypt in great detail.

The Rosetta Stone became one of the most famous artifacts in the world for its unrivaled ability to act as a key to decipher the ancient script. Today, the expression Rosetta Stone is used as a synonym for any key that helps to understand some complex ideas. It is an open secret that without the Rosetta Stone, the voices of the ancient Egyptians would still remain unheard.