Rosetta Stone

This article is about the granite Rosetta Stone found in Egypt; for other uses, see Rosetta Stone (disambiguation).

The Rosetta Stone is dark grey-pinkish granite stone (originally thought to be basalt in composition) with writing on it in two languages, Egyptian and Greek, using three scripts. It was created in 196 BC, discovered by the French in 1799, and translated in 1822. Because Greek was well known, the stone was the key to deciphering the hieroglyphs.

The Rosetta Stone was written in three scripts so that the priests, government officials, and rulers of Egypt could read what it said. The first script was Hieroglyphic, which was the script used for important or religious documents. The second was Demotic Egyptian, which was the common script of Egypt. The third was Greek, which was the language of the rulers of Egypt at that time.

The Stone is 114.4 cm high at its tallest point, 72.3 cm wide, and 27.9 cm thick. (45.04 in. high, 28.5 in. wide, 10.9 in. thick)

The Rosetta Stone has been exhibited in the British Museum since 1802, with only one break. Toward the end of the First World War, in 1917, when the Museum was concerned about heavy bombing in London, they moved it to safety along with other portable, important objects. The Rosetta Stone spent the next two years in a station on the Postal Tube Railway fifty feet below the ground at Holborn.

Creation of the Stone

Ptolemy V assumed the crown at the age of five after a rather turbulent time in Egyptian history. The young ruler was faced with the daunting task of reclaiming lands lost to various invaders and reunifying his country's populace. As an attempt to reestablish legitimacy for the ruler and create a royal cult, Ptolemy's priests issued a series of decrees. The decrees were inscribed on stones and erected throughout Egypt. The Rosetta stone is a copy of the decree issued in the city of Memphis.

The same Ptolemaic decree of 196 BC is written on the stone in the three scripts. The Greek part of the Rosetta Stone begins: Basileuontos tou neou kai paralabontos tēn basileian para tou patros... (Greek: Βασιλεύοντος του νέου και παραλαβόντος την βασιλείαν παρά του πατρός...) (The new king, having received the kingship from his father...) It is a decree from Ptolemy V, describing various taxes he repealed (one measured in ardebs (Greek artabai) per aroura), and instructing that statues be erected in temples and that the decree be published in the writing of the words of gods (hieroglyphs), the writing of the people (demotic), and the Wynen (Greek; the word is cognate with Ionian) language.

The Greeks had the habit of making bilinguals in territories they occupied, and in this case we have Egyptian, and Greek. Thus the Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the Egyptian Demotic (citizen text, as in democratic), was written against the Greek language, as the new occupiers of pharaonic rule, following Alexander the Great's conquest.

The Rosetta Stone is the third in a series of three stones, Stone 1 for Ptolemy III (the Stone of Canopus), Stone 2 for Ptolemy IV (The Memphis Stele), and the Rosetta Stone for Ptolemy V. Stone 1 implemented the Leap Year.

There are approximately two copies of the Stone of Canopus, two of the Memphis Stele (one imperfect), and two and a half copies of the Rosetta Stone, including the Nubayrah Stele and a pyramid Wall inscription with "edits", which resulted from overwritten scene replacements performed by subsequent scribes.

Condensed listing, the three decrees, the three-stone series

Multiple copies of the stones were erected in multiple temple courtyards, as specified in the text of the decrees.

239 BC Decree of Canopus (Ptolemy III), (247–221 BC)

stone 1: Stele of Canopus, (no. 1), found 1866, 37 lines hieroglyphs, 74 lines Demotic (right side), 76 lines Greek 'capitals', fine limestone.

stone 2: Stele of Canopus, no. 2, found 1881, 26 lines hieroglyphs, 20 lines Demotic, 64 lines Greek 'capitals', white limestone.

3rd partial of hieroglyphic lines (location: Louvre).

216 BC Decree of Memphis (Ptolemy IV), (221–203 BC)

stone 1: Stele No. 1, found 1902, hieroglyphs, demotic, and Greek, dark granite.

stone 2: Pithom Stele, No. II, found 1923, hieroglyphs (front), 42 lines Demotic (back), virtually complete providing almost total translation, and Greek (side), sandstone.

196 BC Decree of Memphis (Ptolemy V), (203–198 BC)

stone 1: Rosetta Stone, "Stele of Rosetta", found 1799, (remaining) hieroglyphs, 1987 lines, 2 lines Demotic, 1985 lines Greek 'capitals', dark granite.

stone 2: Stele of Nubayrah, found early 1650s, hieroglyphs, lines 1–300 used to complete missing Rosetta Stone lines, demotic, Greek capitals.

site 3: the Temple of Philae, inscribed hieroglyphs, for Decree of Memphis (Ptolemy IV), on fllors, also overwritten, by scenes, and figures of humans/gods.

Total: 70 stones, or stelae, 1 partial, and 69 temple wall inscription writing.

History of the stone

French Captain Pierre-François Bouchard (sometimes spelled Boussard) (1772–1832) discovered the stone in the Egyptian port city of Rosetta (present-day Rashid) on July 15 1799. Bouchard found a black stone when guiding construction works in the Fort Julien near the city of Rosetta.

Some scientists [1] accompanied Napoleon's French campaign in Egypt (1798–1801). After Napoleon Bonaparte founded the Institut de l'Égypte in Cairo in 1798 some 50 became members of it. When Bouchard discovered the stone, he immediately understood its importance and showed it to General Abdallah Jacques de Menou who decided that it should be brought to the institute, where it arrived in August, 1799.

In 1801 the French had to surrender. A dispute arose about the results of the scientists—the French wishing to keep them, while the British considered them forfeit in the name of King George III.

The French scientist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, writing to the English diplomat William Richard Hamilton, threatened to burn all their discoveries, ominously referring to the burned Library of Alexandria. The British gave in and insisted only on the delivery of the monuments. The French tried to hide the Rosetta Stone in a boat despite the clauses of the capitulation, but failed. The French were allowed to take the imprints they had made previously, when embarking in Alexandria.

When it was brought to Britain, it was presented to the British Museum, where it has been kept since 1802.

In 1814 Thomas Young finished translating the enchorial (demotic) text, and went on to work on the hieroglyphic alphabet.

During the years of 1822–1824, Jean-François Champollion greatly expanded on his work, and he is known as the translator of the Rosetta Stone. Champollion could read both Greek and Coptic. He was able to figure out what the seven Demotic signs in Coptic were. By looking at how these signs were used in Coptic he was able to work out what they stood for. Then he began tracing these Demotic signs back to hieroglyphic signs. By working out what some hieroglyphs stood for, he could make educated guesses about what the other hieroglyphs stood for.

In 1858, the Philomathean Society of the University of Pennsylvania published the first complete English translation of the Rosetta Stone. The work was performed solely by three undergraduate members, Charles R Hale, S Huntington Jones, and Henry Morton. The translation quickly sold out two editions, and was internationally hailed as a monumental work of scholarship. In 1988, the British Museum bestowed the honor of including the Philomathean Rosetta Stone Report in its select bibliography of the most important works ever published on the Rosetta Stone. The Philomathean Society maintains a full-scale cast of the stone in its meeting room at the University of Pennsylvania.

White painted inscriptions, contemporary with its acquisition, record on the left side 'Captured in Egypt by the British Army in 1801' and on the right 'Presented by King George III'. The stone was cleaned by the British Museum in 1998, and this evidence of its history was not removed. A small area of the surface at the bottom left-hand corner was also left uncleaned for comparative purposes.

In July 2003, the Egyptians demanded the return of the Rosetta Stone. Dr. Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo, told the press: "If the British want to be remembered, if they want to restore their reputation, they should volunteer to return the stone because it is the icon of our Egyptian identity."

Rosetta Stone is also used as a metaphor to refer to anything that is a critical key to a process of decryption, translation, or a difficult problem, e.g., "the Rosetta stone of immunology", "thalamo-cortical rhythms, the Rosetta stone of a subset of neurological disorders", "Arabidopsis, the Rosetta stone of flowering time (fossils)".

Full Text of the Stone

In the reign of the new king, who was Lord of the diadems, great in glory, the stabalizer of Egypt, and also pious in matters relating to the gods, Superior to his adversaries, rectifier of the life of men, Lord of the thirty-year periods like Hephaestus the Great, King like the Sun, the Great King of the Upper and Lower Lands, offspring of the Parent-loving Gods, whom Hephaestus has approved, to whom the Sun has given victory, living image of Zeus, Son of the Sun, Ptolemy the ever-living, beloved by Ptah;

In the ninth year, when Aëtus, son of Aëtus, was priest of Alexander and of the Savior Gods and the Brother Gods and the Benefactor Gods and the Parent-loving Gods and the God Manifest and Gracious; Pyrrha, the daughter of Philinius, being athlophorus for Bernice Euergetis; Areia, the daughter of Diogenes, being canephorus for Arsinoë Philadelphus; Irene, the daughter of Ptolemy, being priestess of Arsinoë Philopator: on the fourth of the month Xanicus, or according to the Egyptians the eighteenth of Mecheir.

THE DECREE: The high priests and prophets, and those who enter the inner shrine in order to robe the gods, and those who wear the hawks wing, and the sacred scribes, and all the other priests who have assembled at Memphis before the king, from the various temples throughout the country, for the feast of his recieving the kingdom, even that of Ptolemy the ever-living, beloved by Ptah, the God Manifest and Gracious, which he recieved from his Father, being assembled in the temple in Memphis this day, declared:

Since King Ptolemy, the ever-living, beloved by Ptah, the God Manifest and Gracious, the son of King Pyolemy and Queen Arsinoë, the Parent-loving Gods, has done many benefactions to the temples and to those who dwell in them and also to all those subjects to his rule, being from the beginning a god born of a god and a goddess - like Horus, the son of Isis and Osirus, who came to the help of his Father Osirus - being benevolently disposed toward the gods, has consentrated to the temples revenues both of silver and of grain, and has generously undergone many expenses in order to lead Egypt to prosperity and to establish the temples... the gods have rewarded him with health, victory, power, and all other good things, his sovereignty to continue to him and his children forever.

External links

The Rosetta Stone in The British Museum
The translated text in English
The Finding of The Rosetta Stone
An account of Napoléon's findings in Egypt
The 1998 conservation and restoration of The Rosetta Stone at The British Museum
Champollion's alphabet
The Rosetta Project, a project whose aim is to produce Rosetta Stone-like discs in order to preserve dying languages
Apple Rosetta dynamically translates machine code of PowerPC-based applications to work with newer Intel-based Macs

References

Budge. The Rosetta Stone, E.A.Wallis Budge, (Dover Publications), c. 1929, Dover edition(unabridged), 1989.
Downs, Jonathan. "Romancing the Stone" in History Today (2006) vol. 56, issue 5. pp. 48–54.
Parkinson, R. Cracking Codes, the Rosetta Stone, and Decipherment, Richard Parkinson, with W. Diffie, M. Fischer, and R.S. Simpson, (University of California Press), c. 1999.
The name for the Tool song "Rosetta Stoned" from the 2006 album 10,000 Days was taken from The Rosetta Stone
The main character in the 2002 sci-fi film Teknolust is named Rosetta Stone.