Rosetta Stone

A granodiorite stele with three different copies of an edict issued by King Ptolemy V Epiphanes of Egypt in 196 BC, during the Ptolemaic dynasty, is known as the Rosetta Stone. The bottom text is in Ancient Greek, while the top and center sections are in Egyptian hieroglyphic and demotic characters, respectively. The Rosetta Stone is essential for understanding the Egyptian characters since there are little variations in the edict across the three copies.

It is thought that the stone, which was sculpted in the Hellenistic era, was formerly on display in a temple, maybe at Sais. It was most likely relocated in late antiquity or during the Mamluk era, and it was subsequently utilized as construction material when Fort Julien was built close to the Nile Delta town of Rashid (Rosetta).

During Napoleon’s war in Egypt in July 1799, French officer Pierre-François Bouchard discovered it there. Because of its ability to decode this hitherto untranslated hieroglyphic character, it was the first Ancient Egyptian bilingual text to be found in a modern library. Plaster castings and lithographic replicas quickly spread among academics and museums across Europe.

As stipulated in the provisions of the Capitulation of Alexandria in 1801, the British carried the stone to London after defeating the French. It is the most-seen item in the British Museum, having been on public exhibition nearly nonstop since 1802.

When the first comprehensive translation of the Greek text was released in 1803, research on the edict had already begun. It took even longer for researchers to be able to securely read Ancient Egyptian literature and inscriptions, even after Jean-François Champollion declared in Paris in 1822 that the Egyptian characters had been transliterated.

Major breakthroughs in the decoding process included the realization that the stone provided three different versions of the same text (1799); that phonetic characters were used to spell foreign names in the Demotic text (1802); that phonetic characters were also used to spell native Egyptian words (1822–1824); and that the hieroglyphic text did the same thing and shared many similarities with the Demotic text (1814).

The Decree of Alexandria in 243 BC, the Decree of Canopus in 238 BC, and the Memphis decree of Ptolemy IV, c. 218 BC, are three slightly earlier Ptolemaic decrees. Three more fragmentary copies of the same decree were later found, and several similar Egyptian bilingual or trilingual inscriptions are now known. Even though it is now recognized that the Rosetta Stone is no longer unique, it was crucial to our current comprehension of ancient Egyptian literature and civilization. The key hint to a new field of study is now referred to as the “Rosetta Stone”

An explanation

An 18th-century collection of objects discovered by the French expedition and turned over to British forces in 1801, describes the Rosetta Stone as “a stone of black granodiorite, bearing three inscriptions… found at Rosetta”. Sometime after it arrived in London, the inscriptions were colored in white chalk to improve legibility, and a coating of carnauba wax was applied to the remaining surface to keep visitors’ fingerprints off of it. This gave the stone a dark color that caused it to be mistaken for black basalt.

When the stone was cleaned in 1999, these embellishments were taken out, exposing the crystalline structure’s glitter, the rock’s natural dark gray hue, and a pink vein that crosses the upper left corner. The pink vein is typical of granodiorite from this location. Comparisons with the Klemm collection of Egyptian rock samples revealed a close likeness to rock from a minor granodiorite quarry near Gebel Tingar on the west bank of the Nile, west of Elephantine in the Aswan region.

At its tallest point, the Rosetta Stone is 1,123 mm (3 feet 8 inches) in height, 757 mm (2 feet 5.8 inches) in width, and 284 mm (11 inches) in thickness. It is about 760 kg (1,680 lb) in weight. Three inscriptions can be seen on it: the top register written in Egyptian Demotic hieroglyphs, the second in Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the third in Ancient Greek.

Contrary to popular belief, there is no linguistic difference between these three scripts. The inscriptions are softly carved on the polished front surface, and the sides of the stone have been smoothed. The back of the stone has only been coarsely treated, possibly because it was not visible when the stele was constructed.

Original stele

A bigger stele gets fragmented into the Rosetta Stone. Later examinations of the Rosetta site turned up no more pieces. None of the three manuscripts are complete due to their degraded status. The most damaged register was the top register, which was made up of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The hieroglyphic inscription is only visible in its final 14 lines, 12 of which are damaged on the left and all of which are broken on the right. The best-preserved section of the demotic writing below it is the middle register, which consists of 32 lines, the first 14 of which have little damage on the right side.

A diagonal crack at the bottom right of the stone has left the remaining 54 lines in the bottom register of Greek writing more fractured. Of these, only the first 27 lines have survived in their entirety.

Based on similar steles that have survived, including other copies of the same order, it is possible to estimate the entire length of the hieroglyphic writing and the complete size of the original stele, of which the Rosetta Stone is a piece.

The somewhat older Canopus edict, which was constructed in 238 BC during Ptolemy III’s reign, is 2,190 millimeters high (7.19 ft) and 820 mm (32 in) broad. It has 74 lines of Greek language, 73 demotic lines, and 36 lines of hieroglyphic writing. The texts have comparable lengths. Based on these similarities, it is believed that the top register of the Rosetta Stone is missing 14 or 15 lines of hieroglyphic text, or an extra 300 millimeters (12 in).

There would have been a tableau showing the monarch being delivered to the gods, capped with a winged disk, similar to the Canopus Stele, in addition to the inscriptions. In addition to these parallels, the stone itself has a hieroglyphic “stela” sign (see Gardiner’s sign list).

imply that its top was rounded at first. It is thought that the original stele stood 149 centimeters (4 feet 11 inches) tall.

Memphis decree and its context

Following King Ptolemy V’s coronation, an edict establishing the new ruler’s divine worship was engraved on a stele that was built. A conference of clerics convened in Memphis issued the decision. The date is listed as “18 Mekhir” in the Egyptian calendar, which translates to 27 March 196 BC, and as “4 Xandikos” in the Macedonian calendar.

The inscription certifies that the year is the ninth year of Ptolemy V’s reign, or 197/196 BC, by naming four priests who served in that year: Aetos son of Aetos was a priest of the divine cults of Alexander the Great, and the five Ptolemies down to Ptolemy V himself; the other three priests are named sequentially and led the worship of Berenice Euergetis, Ptolemy III’s wife; Arsinoe Philadelphos, Ptolemy II’s wife; and Arsinoe Philopator, Ptolemy V’s mother. Nevertheless, a second date, which corresponds to November 27, 197 BC, the official anniversary of Ptolemy’s coronation, is also provided in the Greek and hieroglyphic inscriptions.

This is at odds with the demotic text, which lists the edict and the anniversary as occurring on successive days in March. The reason for this mismatch is unknown, but it is evident that the order was issued in 196 BC with the intention of restoring Ptolemaic rulers’ power over Egypt.

During a difficult time in Egyptian history, the order was issued. From 204 until 181 BC, Ptolemy V Epiphanes, the son of Ptolemy IV Philopator and his wife Arsinoe, ruled. According to modern accounts, he had inherited the throne at the age of five following the unexpected deaths of his parents, who had been killed in a plot involving Ptolemy IV’s lover Agathoclea.

After Agathoclea and her family were killed by a mob in Alexandria two years later, a revolution led by General Tlepolemus broke out, and the conspirators essentially took control of Egypt as Ptolemy V’s guardians. In 201 BC, Aristomenes of Alyzia, the senior minister at the time of the Memphis decision, succeeded Tlepolemus as guardian.

The internal issues of the Ptolemaic kingdom were made worse by political forces operating outside Egypt’s boundaries. A deal was struck by Philip V of Macedon and Antiochus III the Great to split up Egypt’s territories abroad. After the Battle of Panium (198 BC), Philip had taken control of various islands and cities in Caria and Thrace, and the Ptolemies had lost Coele-Syria—including Judaea—to the Seleucids. Concurrently, a protracted uprising in the southern region of Egypt had commenced during Ptolemy IV’s reign, spearheaded by Horwennefer and his successor, Ankhwennefer.

When the twelve-year-old Ptolemy V was formally crowned at Memphis, seven years after the commencement of his reign, and the Memphis edict was published somewhat more than a year later, the war and the internal uprising were still going on.

Such stems are exclusive to Ptolemaic Egypt, having been constructed at the temples’ initiative rather than the king’s. It would have been unheard of in the Pharaonic era that anybody other than the divine rulers themselves made choices regarding the country; in contrast, Greek communities were known for their practice of honoring their kings. The monarch had himself exalted and deified by his subjects, or by groups of representatives of his subjects, instead of delivering his own eulogy. According to the edict, the temples received gifts of grain and silver from Ptolemy V.

It further relates that in the ninth year of his reign, the Nile flooded exceptionally high, and he had the extra waters dammed for the farmers’ benefit. The priesthood promised in exchange that the monarch would be worshipped with the other gods on his birthday and coronation day each year, and that all Egyptian priests would perform this act. The edict finishes with the directive to have a copy written in the “language of the gods” (Egyptian hieroglyphs), the “language of documents” (Demotic), and the “language of the Greeks” (the Ptolemaic government’s language) at every temple.

To maintain effective control over the people, the Ptolemaic rulers had to win the favor of the clergy. Being the highest-ranking religious leaders at the period and having sway over the whole kingdom made the High Priests of Memphis, the city where the king was anointed, very significant. It is clear that the young king was keen to win their active support since the order was published in Memphis, the ancient Egyptian capital, rather than Alexandria, the seat of administration of the governing Ptolemies.

Consequently, the Memphis decree, like the three previous decrees of a similar nature, featured writings in Egyptian to demonstrate the government’s link to the common public through the literate Egyptian priests, even though Egypt had been governed by Greek speakers since Alexander the Great’s invasions.

The edict cannot be translated into English definitively due to the subtle discrepancies between the three original texts as well as the ongoing evolution of our understanding of ancient languages. The current translations of all three texts, with an introduction and facsimile drawing, published by Quirke and Andrews in 1989, or the more recent translation by R. S. Simpson, which is based on the demotic text and is available online, clearly supersede the easily accessible but antiquated translations by E. A. Wallis Budge (1904, 1913) and Edwyn R. Bevan (1927).

The stele most likely originated from a temple site further inland, probably the royal town of Sais, rather than at Rashid (Rosetta), where it was initially discovered. The ancient temple was most likely shut down in AD 392 when Theodosius I, the Roman emperor, issued an edict banning the construction of any non-Christian temples. At some point, the original stele fractured, and the biggest fragment became the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone was most likely reused in this way when quarries for new buildings were subsequently dug out of ancient Egyptian temples.

Subsequently, it became part of the base of a stronghold built by the Mameluke Sultan Qaitbay (c. 1416/18–1496) at Rashid to protect the Bolbitine branch of the Nile. Before it was found again, it lay there for at least another three centuries.

Since the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, three other inscriptions that are pertinent to the same Memphis edict have been discovered: the Nubayrah Stele; a stele discovered in Elephantine and Noub Taha; and an inscription found in the Temple of Philae (on the Philae obelisk). These inscriptions’ hieroglyphic writings were largely intact, in contrast to the Rosetta Stone. Although the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone were already decoded when they were discovered, Egyptologists have since utilized them to improve the reconstruction of the hieroglyphs that were required for the missing sections of the hieroglyphic text.

Rediscovery

Along with a corps of 151 technical specialists (savants), known as the Commission des Sciences et des Arts, Napoleon Bonaparte’s French army invaded Egypt in 1798. Colonel d’Hautpoul commanded French soldiers on July 15, 1799, who were fortifying Fort Julien, which was located a few kilometers northeast of the Egyptian port city of Rosetta (present-day Rashid). Lieutenant Pierre-François Bouchard saw, while breaking down a wall within the fort, a stone that the men had discovered with inscriptions on one side. Upon seeing its potential importance, he and d’Hautpoul notified General Jacques-François Menou, who coincidentally was in Rosetta.

Three inscriptions were found on the object, the first in hieroglyphics and the third in Greek. Commission member Michel Ange Lancret reported the discovery to Napoleon’s newly established scientific association in Cairo, the Institut d’Égypte, correctly speculating that the three inscriptions were copies of the same text. Not long after July 25, 1799, a gathering of the Institute heard the reading of Lancret’s report, dated July 19. Meanwhile, Bouchard brought the stone to Cairo so that academics could examine it.

The French expedition’s official newspaper, Courrier de l’Égypte, published an article about the finding in September. The unidentified reporter expressed optimism that the stone will eventually hold the secret to understanding hieroglyphic writing. Three technical specialists on the commission came up with methods to copy the words on the stone around 1800.

Among these specialists was the printer and talented linguist Jean-Joseph Marcel, who is recognized as the first to have recognized that the middle text was not written in Syriac as had been previously believed, but rather in the Egyptian demotic script, which was rarely used for stone inscriptions and rarely seen by scholars at that time.

Nicolas-Jacques Conté, an inventor and artist, figured out how to replicate the writing using the stone itself as a printing block. Antoine Galland came up with a somewhat different plan. General Charles Dugua brought the prints that emerged to Paris. Now that the inscriptions could be seen, scholars in Europe could try to decipher them.

Napoleon’s retreat allowed French forces to repel Ottoman and British invasions for a further eighteen months. The British arrived in Aboukir Bay in March of 1801. At this point, Menou was leading the French mission. In order to confront the enemy, his forces—which included the commission—marched northward toward the Mediterranean shore, carrying the stone and several other artifacts. After losing the fight, he withdrew his troops and fled to Alexandria, where they were besieged and encircled, the stone now within the city. Menou gave himself up on August 30.

From French to British possession

Following the capitulation, there was disagreement about what became of the French scientific and archaeological finds in Egypt, including biological specimens, artifacts, notes, plans, and drawings gathered by the commission members. Menou said that they belonged to the institute and refused to give them up.

John Hely-Hutchinson, the British General, would not lift the siege until Menou submitted. The recently arrived English scholars Edward Daniel Clarke and William Richard Hamilton consented to study the Alexandrian collections and reported discovering several artifacts that the French had concealed. Clarke said that “we found much more in their possession than was represented or imagined” in a letter home.

The French scholar Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire warned Clarke and Hamilton that the French would prefer to burn all of their findings than pass them over, alluding menacingly to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. Hutchinson maintained that all materials belonged to the British Crown.

Hutchinson ultimately conceded that objects like natural history specimens would be regarded as the professors’ private property after Clarke and Hamilton persuasively argued the French scholars’ case. Menou promptly asserted his ownership of the stone as well. Recognizing the stone’s special significance, Hutchinson disregarded Menou’s assertion. After a deal was eventually made, representatives of the British, French, and Ottoman armies signed the Capitulation of Alexandria, which included the items’ handover.

Because many explanations have been given over time, it is unclear exactly how the stone ended up in British hands. The individual who was supposed to transport it to England, Colonel Tomkyns Hilgrove Turner, later stated that he had taken it directly from Menou and taken it away in a gun carriage.

According to a far more thorough story written by Edward Daniel Clarke, a French “officer and member of the Institute” had escorted him, his pupil John Cripps, and Hamilton behind Menou’s house in private, showing them the stone that was concealed amid Menou’s belongings under protective rugs.

Their informant was afraid that if French soldiers spotted the stone, it may be taken, according to Clarke. Notifying Hutchinson immediately, the stone was removed, maybe with the help of Turner and his gun carriage.

In February 1802, Turner arrived at Portsmouth, England, with the stone on board the French ship HMS Égyptienne, which he had seized. He was to give it to King George III together with the other antiques. The King gave the order for it to be housed in the British Museum through War Secretary Lord Hobart.

Turner’s account states that before the stone was finally deposited in the museum, he and Hobart decided that it should be shown to academics at the Society of Antiquaries of London, of which Turner was a member. On March 11, 1802, it was initially observed and discussed there during a conference.

Four plaster castings of the inscriptions, made by the Society in 1802, were donated to Trinity College Dublin as well as the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh. Prints of the inscriptions were created shortly after and distributed to academics throughout Europe. The stone was moved to the British Museum before the end of 1802, and it is now housed there. The slab was repainted with white inscriptions on the left and right borders, which read, “Presented by King George III” and “Captured in Egypt by the British Army in 1801”.

Since June 1802, the stone has been on display virtually nonstop in the British Museum. It was assigned the inventory number “EA 24” in the middle of the 1800s; “EA” stands for “Egyptian Antiquities”. It was a component of an array of ancient Egyptian monuments taken from the French expedition, which also included a big granite fist (EA 9), a figure of a high priest of Amun (EA 81), and a sarcophagus of Nectanebo II (EA 10). The artifacts were eventually found to be too heavy for the flooring of Montagu House, The British Museum’s original structure, and they were moved to a newly constructed addition to the estate.

The Rosetta Stone was moved to the sculpture gallery in 1834, not long after Montague House was destroyed and the British Museum’s current structure took its place. The Rosetta Stone is the museum’s most-visited item, according to records, and a variety of items bearing the text from the stone (or imitating its distinctive shape) are sold in the museum shops. For several decades, a simple image of the stone was the museum’s best-selling postcard.

At first, the Rosetta Stone was shown at a little inclination from the horizontal, resting inside a specially-made metal cradle that required very minute parts of its sides to be shaved off to achieve a snug fit. It was not covered when it was first discovered, and by 1847, even with attendants present, it was discovered that it had to be placed in a protective frame in order to prevent tourists from touching it. The preserved stone has been on exhibit at the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery’s center since 2004 in a specially designed cabinet.

The King’s Library of the British Museum now has a replica of the Rosetta Stone that is open to touch and does not have a case, just how it would have looked to visitors in the early 19th century.

Using the Rosetta Stone

The language and writing of ancient Egypt had not been deciphered since just before the collapse of the Roman Empire, until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and its subsequent decipherment. Even in the later Pharaonic era, the use of hieroglyphic writing had grown more specialized, and by the fourth century AD, very few Egyptians could read them. The final known inscription, known as the Graffito of Esmet-Akhom, dates to August 24, 394, and was discovered near Philae. The monumental usage of hieroglyphs halted when temple priesthoods died out and Egypt was converted to Christianity. Written in 452, the last demotic text is likewise from Philae.

Unlike the Greek and Roman alphabets, hieroglyphs kept their graphic look, and ancient writers emphasized this feature. The priest Horapollo penned Hieroglyphica in the fifth century, which provided an explanation for over 200 symbols. Although his writings were regarded as authoritative, they were really highly deceptive, and this, along with other works, caused a long-lasting barrier to the comprehension of Egyptian writing.

In the ninth and tenth centuries, Arab historians in medieval Egypt attempted to translate later texts. The first historians to examine hieroglyphs did so by contrasting them with the modern Coptic language that Coptic priests of that era used. These scholars were Dhul-Nun al-Misri and Ibn Wahshiyya.

Athanasius Kircher in the 17th century and Pierius Valerianus in the 16th century were two prominent European academics who made unsuccessful attempts at deciphering hieroglyphs throughout their ongoing research of the subject. After a series of researchers unearthed crucial missing pieces of information, the finding of the Rosetta Stone in 1799 enabled Jean-François Champollion to piece together the problem Kircher had dubbed the mystery of the Sphinx.

Greek text

The Rosetta Stone’s Greek text served as the foundation. Scholars knew a great deal about ancient Greek, but they were not familiar with the specifics of its usage as the official language of Ptolemaic Egypt during the Hellenistic period; extensive finds of Greek papyri were still many years off.

The early translations of the stone’s Greek language therefore demonstrate the translators’ continued struggle to understand the historical background as well as technical terms related to administration and religion. In April 1802, Stephen Weston delivered an oral translation of the Greek text into English at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries.

In the meanwhile, in 1801, two of the Egypt-made lithographic reproductions arrived at the Institut de France in Paris. Gabriel de La Porte du Theil, an antique and librarian, began translating the Greek there. However, he was sent abroad very soon on instructions from Napoleon, leaving his incomplete work in the hands of colleague Hubert-Pascal Ameilhon.

To guarantee its widespread distribution, Ameilhon translated the Greek text into Latin and French in 1803, which were the first translations to be published. Richard Porson at Cambridge worked on the Greek text’s missing lower right corner. Together with its printouts of the inscription, the Society of Antiquaries immediately began to distribute his deftly proposed restoration.

Nearly simultaneously, Christian Gottlob Heyne at Göttingen began translating the Greek text into Latin, which turned out to be more accurate than Ameilhon’s translation and was first published in 1803. In 1811, the Society of Antiquaries reproduced it in a special edition of Archaeologia, their magazine, together with Colonel Turner’s account, Weston’s hitherto unreleased English translation, and other papers.

Demotic text

Johan David Åkerblad, a Swedish diplomat and scholar, was working on a little-known script known as Demotic at the time the stone was discovered. Some specimens of this writing had just been discovered in Egypt. Despite its little resemblance to the later Coptic character, he named it “cursive Coptic” because he was sure that it was employed to record some version of the Coptic language, which is a direct descendent of Ancient Egyptian.

Åkerblad had been discussing this project with French Orientalist Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy when the French minister of the interior, Jean-Antoine Chaptal, sent him one of the first lithographic copies of the Rosetta Stone in 1801. It dawned on him that this script also included the center paragraph.

As they got to work, he and Åkerblad concentrated on the center paragraph and presumed that the script was alphabetical. By comparing it with the Greek, they tried to determine where in this unknown text the Greek names should appear. While Åkerblad published an alphabet of 29 letters (more than half of which were correct) that he had identified from the Greek names in the Demotic text, Silvestre de Sacy reported to Chaptal in 1802 that he had successfully identified five names (“Alexandros”, “Alexandreia”, “Ptolemaios”, “Arsinoe”, and Ptolemy’s title “Epiphanes”). Nevertheless, they were unable to recognize the other characters in the Demotic text, which as we now know had additional and ideographic symbols in addition to the phonetic ones.

Hieroglyphic text

After a while Silvestre de Sacy stopped working on the stone, but he was not done. Silvestre de Sacy examined Georg Zoëga’s 1797 suggestion that foreign names in Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions might be written phonetically in 1811 after having a discussion about Chinese script with a Chinese student. He also remembered that Jean-Jacques Barthélemy had proposed as early as 1761 that the characters enclosed in cartouches in hieroglyphic inscriptions were proper names.

Hence, in response to a letter Thomas Young, the foreign secretary of the Royal Society of London wrote about the stone in 1814, Silvestre de Sacy proposed that Young try to read the hieroglyphic text by looking for cartouches that should have Greek names in them and making an effort to identify phonetic characters in them.

Young achieved this, producing two outcomes that combined cleared the path for the ultimate decipherment. He found the phonetic symbols “p t o l m e s” (or, in modern transcription, “p t w l m y s”) that were used to write the Greek name “Ptolemaios” in the hieroglyphic text. In addition, he saw that these characters matched those in the demotic script.

He continued by noting up to eighty parallels between the hieroglyphic and demotic writings on the stone, which is a significant finding since it was previously believed that the two scripts were completely distinct from one another.

Because of this, he was able to properly infer that the demotic script was partially phonetic and also had ideographic letters that were derived from hieroglyphs. The lengthy piece “Egypt” that Young submitted to the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1819 showcased his novel views. But he was unable to go any farther.

Young initially corresponded with Jean-François Champollion, a Grenoble professor who had written a scholarly book on ancient Egypt, regarding the stone in 1814. The names “Ptolemaios” and “Kleopatra” were obliquely observed by William John Bankes on the Philae obelisk in Greek and hieroglyphic, and Champollion viewed reproductions of these short inscriptions in 1822. Champollion deduced the phonetic letters k l e o p a t r a from this (or, in the modern transcription, q l iɆ w p 3 d r 3.t).

He swiftly created an alphabet of phonetic hieroglyphic symbols based on this and the foreign names on the Rosetta Stone. He finished his work on September 14 and made it public in a talk to the Académie royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres on September 27. He submitted his discoveries in the renowned “Lettre à M. Dacier” to the secretary of the Académie, Bon-Joseph Dacier, on the same day.

In the postscript, Champollion observes that there appeared to be a similarity in phonetic characteristics between Greek and Egyptian names. This theory was verified in 1823 when he recognized the names of pharaohs Thutmose and Ramesses engraved on cartouches at Abu Simbel. Bankes had transcribed these far ancient hieroglyphic writings, which Jean-Nicolas Huyot had forwarded to Champollion.

The legends surrounding the Rosetta Stone and the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs split off at this point because Champollion used a variety of sources to create a hieroglyphic lexicon and an Ancient Egyptian grammar that was released following his death in 1832.

Later work

By contrasting the three versions, work on the stone now focuses on gaining a deeper comprehension of the writings and their settings. Classical scholar Antoine-Jean Letronne pledged in 1824 to work on a new, accurate translation of the Greek text just for Champollion. In exchange, Champollion pledged to analyze any area where the three manuscripts appeared to diverge.

Letronne’s work stagnated after Champollion’s untimely death in 1832, and his manuscript of this study was lost. Champollion’s old helper and pupil François Salvolini passed away in 1838; among his files were this analysis and other unaccounted-for manuscripts. Coincidentally, this finding proved that Salvolini’s 1837 paper on the stone was plagiarism.

Finally, in 1841, Letronne published his updated French translation of the Greek text together with his commentary. German Egyptologists Heinrich Brugsch and Max Uhlemann improved their Latin translations of the demotic and hieroglyphic writings in the early 1850s. Three members of the University of Pennsylvania’s Philomathean Society produced the first English translation in 1858.

It is still up for debate as to which of the three manuscripts was the original standard form, from which the other two were translated. In 1841, Letronne made an effort to demonstrate that the Greek translation—a creation of the Egyptian government under the reign of Macedonian Ptolemies—was the original.

The statement “the hieroglyphs were the most important of the scripts on the stone: they were there for the gods to read, and the more learned of their priesthood” has been made by contemporary authors like John Ray. Stephen Quirke interprets the edict as “an intricate coalescence of three vital textual traditions,” whereas Philippe Derchain and Heinz Josef Thissen contend that all three versions were written concurrently.

Richard Parkinson notes that the hieroglyphic version occasionally deviates from ancient formality and adopts language more akin to the demotic register that the priests spoke in daily life. The incompatibility of the three versions—especially with regard to the initial researchers who anticipated a precise bilingual key to Egyptian hieroglyphs—helps to explain why deciphering the text has been more challenging than anticipated.

Rivalries

The decipherment tale was dotted with arguments about plagiarism and precedent even before the Salvolini scandal. Early British critics such as James Browne, a sub-editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (which had published Young’s 1819 article), anonymously contributed a series of review articles to the Edinburgh Review in 1823, praising Young’s work highly and accusing the “unscrupulous” Champollion of plagiarizing it, the 1822 Lettre à M. Dacier acknowledges Thomas Young’s work, though incompletely. Julius Klaproth translated these essays into French, which were then published as a book in 1827. Young reiterated his contribution in his own paper from 1823.

These disagreements persisted even after Young (1829) and Champollion (1832) passed away prematurely. In 1904, E. A. Wallis Budge focused particularly on Young’s contribution in contrast to Champollion’s when working on the stone. Early in the 1970s, English tourists reported that the portrait of Young on a neighboring information panel was larger than the one of Champollion, while French visitors protested that the converse was true. In actuality, the portraits were all the same size.

Requests for repatriation to Egypt

The Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt’s Secretary-General, Zahi Hawass, demanded in July 2003 that the Rosetta Stone be returned to Egypt. The stele was referred to be the “icon of our Egyptian identity” in the Egyptian and foreign media, which made the request for its return to Egypt.

Two years later, in Paris, he made the same proposal, listing the stone as one of several important artifacts from Egypt’s cultural heritage, which also included the museum’s famous bust of Nefertiti, the Great Pyramid architect Hemiunu’s statue in Hildesheim, Germany’s Roemer-und-Pelizaeus-Museum, the Zodiac of the Dendera Temple in Paris, the Louvre in Paris, and the bust of Ankhhaf in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Zahi Hawass restated his earlier requests in August 2022.

Egypt received a full-sized fiberglass copy of the stele that was color-matched in 2005 from the British Museum. This was first on exhibit in the recently refurbished Rashid National Museum, located in the nearest city to the stone’s discovery site, Rashid (Rosetta), in an Ottoman home. Although Hawass reiterated the ultimate intention of a permanent return, in November 2005 he proposed a three-month loan of the Rosetta Stone. He offered in December 2009 to give up his demand for the Rosetta Stone’s permanent repatriation in exchange for the British Museum lending the artifact to Egypt for three months in time for the Grand Egyptian Museum’s 2013 launch in Giza.

“The day may come when the stone has spent longer in the British Museum than it ever did in Rosetta,” as John Ray has noted.

National museums generally voice strong resistance to the return of internationally significant artifacts, like the Rosetta Stone, to their native countries. In 2002, a joint statement was released by over thirty of the world’s top museums, including the British Museum, the Louvre, the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, in response to repeated requests from Greece for the return of the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon and similar requests to other museums worldwide:

• Museums serve not just the population of one country, but the people of all nations. As such, objects collected in prior eras must be seen in the context of various sensibilities and values indicative of that earlier age.

Idiomatic use

Because they allowed the decipherment of ancient written scripts, a number of ancient bilingual or even trilingual epigraphical writings have been referred to as “Rosetta stones”. The Greco-Bactrian ruler Agathocles’ bilingual Greek-Brahmi coins, for instance, have been compared as “little Rosetta stones” since they made it possible for Christian Lassen to make the first steps toward decoding the Brahmi script and thereby reading ancient Indian epigraphy. Due to its connection between the translations of three ancient Middle Eastern languages—Old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian—the Behistun inscription has also been likened to the Rosetta stone.

The phrase “Rosetta stone” has also been used colloquially to refer to the first significant key that is needed to decode encoded data, particularly in cases where a tiny but representative sample is identified as the key to comprehending a larger whole. The term’s earliest metaphorical usage, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was in a 1902 Encyclopaedia Britannica article about the chemical analysis of glucose. The term is also used in H. G. Wells’ 1933 novel The Shape of Things to Come when the protagonist discovers a shorthand document that holds the key to deciphering more fragmented text that is typewritten and written in longhand.

The phrase has now become commonly used in several settings. For instance, Nobel laureate Theodor W. Hänsch stated that “the spectrum of the hydrogen atoms has proven to be the Rosetta Stone of modern physics: once this pattern of lines had been deciphered much else could also be understood” in a 1979 Scientific American article on spectroscopy. It has been called “the Rosetta Stone of immunology” to fully comprehend the critical collection of genes encoding the human leucocyte antigen. The “Rosetta Stone of flowering time” is the name given to the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana. It has been said that a gamma-ray burst (GRB) discovered with a supernova is the key to unlocking the mystery surrounding the origin of GRBs.

For medical professionals attempting to comprehend the intricate mechanism via which the left ventricle of the human heart can fill during different types of diastolic failure, the Doppler echocardiography technique has been referred to as a “Rosetta Stone.” Launched to investigate comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission is intended to contribute to our knowledge of the Solar System’s beginnings by identifying the comet’s composition.

The name is applied to a number of translation services and software products. The language-learning program “Rosetta Stone” is marketed by Rosetta Stone Inc., a US company with its headquarters located in Arlington County. Furthermore, “Rosetta” is an online language translation tool to assist in software localization that is created and maintained as part of the Launchpad project by Canonical, the Ubuntu Linux corporation.

“Rosetta” is one program that allows applications designed for PowerPC processors to operate on x86 processor Apple Inc. computers. It is marketed as a “lightweight dynamic translator”. A distributed computer initiative called Rosetta@home aims to translate amino acid sequences into protein structures by predicting their structures.

With the goal of continuing to be helpful between AD 2000 and 12,000, the Rosetta Project brings together native speakers and language experts to create a meaningful survey and almost permanent collection of 1,500 languages in both physical and digital form.

Here are 50 detailed facts about the Rosetta Stone:

1. What It Is: The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele that features inscriptions in three scripts: Greek, Demotic, and Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. It was crucial in deciphering hieroglyphs.
2. Discovery: The stone was discovered in 1799 by French soldiers during Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign near the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta.
3. Size and Weight: The stone is about 112.3 cm tall (44 inches), 75.7 cm wide (30 inches), and 28.4 cm thick (11 inches), weighing around 760 kg (1,676 pounds).
4. Material: The stone is made of granodiorite, a type of igneous rock, which gives it a dark, almost black appearance.
5. Date of Creation: The inscription on the Rosetta Stone dates back to 196 BC during the reign of the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt.
6. Languages: The inscription is written in three scripts:
   • Hieroglyphic (used for religious documents)
   • Demotic (a simplified form of Egyptian script for daily purposes)
   • Ancient Greek (used by the ruling Ptolemies).
7. Purpose of the Text: The inscription on the stone is a decree issued by Egyptian priests to commemorate the first anniversary of the coronation of Ptolemy V.
8. Hieroglyphic Script: The hieroglyphic text, found on the top section of the stone, was used for religious and ceremonial purposes.
9. Demotic Script: The middle portion of the stone contains Demotic, a common script used for everyday business, administration, and legal documents in ancient Egypt.
10. Greek Script: The bottom part of the stone is inscribed in Ancient Greek, which was the administrative language of Egypt under the Ptolemaic dynasty, a Hellenistic Greek kingdom.
11. Rosetta: The stone is named after the location where it was discovered—Rosetta (modern-day Rashid), a port city on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt.
12. Importance in Deciphering Hieroglyphs: Because the text was written in both Greek (a known language) and hieroglyphs (an unknown language), the Rosetta Stone was key to unlocking the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphs.
13. Jean-François Champollion: In 1822, French scholar Jean-François Champollion famously deciphered the hieroglyphic text on the Rosetta Stone using his knowledge of Greek and Coptic, the language derived from ancient Egyptian.
14. Thomas Young: English physicist Thomas Young also contributed to the decipherment, particularly in recognizing that some hieroglyphs represented phonetic sounds rather than just symbolic meanings.
15. Bilingual Text: The Rosetta Stone contains the same message in all three scripts, allowing scholars to cross-reference and compare the texts to unlock the meaning of hieroglyphs.
16. Text Structure: The decree is structured to praise Ptolemy V, detailing his benevolence and the privileges granted to the priesthood, including tax exemptions and religious honors.
17. Ptolemaic Dynasty: The Ptolemies were a Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt after the conquests of Alexander the Great, and Ptolemy V was the fifth ruler of this line.
18. Location of Discovery: The Rosetta Stone was found during the construction of Fort Julien, a Napoleonic defense fort built by the French soldiers in Rosetta.
19. Seizure by British Forces: After Napoleon’s defeat in Egypt, the Rosetta Stone was seized by the British under the Capitulation of Alexandria in 1801, along with other Egyptian artifacts.
20. Current Location: The stone is currently housed in the British Museum in London, where it has been on display since 1802.
21. Replica Disputes: Egypt has long sought the return of the Rosetta Stone, with several formal requests to repatriate the artifact back to its homeland.
22. Other Fragments: Besides the main Rosetta Stone, two smaller fragments with similar inscriptions in Demotic and Greek have been discovered, supporting the interpretation of the texts.
23. Champollion’s Breakthrough: Champollion realized that hieroglyphs were not purely symbolic but also phonetic, leading to a major breakthrough in understanding the script.
24. Hieroglyphs Misunderstood: Before the Rosetta Stone’s decipherment, Egyptian hieroglyphs had been misunderstood for centuries, often seen purely as a mystical or symbolic language.
25. Hieroglyphic Decline: By the time of the Rosetta Stone’s creation, hieroglyphs were in decline as a written language, used mainly for religious and ceremonial purposes.
26. Decree’s Significance: The decree on the stone symbolizes the unity between the ruling Greek elite and the Egyptian priesthood, who played a crucial role in maintaining social stability.
27. Decipherment Impact: The successful decipherment of the Rosetta Stone opened up the entire field of Egyptology, allowing scholars to read thousands of other ancient Egyptian texts.
28. Greek as Key: The Greek text at the bottom of the Rosetta Stone was critical for unlocking the meanings of the other two scripts, since Greek was already understood by scholars.
29. Date Inscribed: The stone’s decree was issued on March 27, 196 BC, during the reign of Ptolemy V, specifically celebrating his divine status and rulership.
30. Pharaoh Worship: The inscription emphasizes Ptolemy V’s divine qualities and his role in supporting Egypt’s traditional religious structures, showcasing the fusion of Greek and Egyptian culture.
31. Fort Julien: After its discovery, the stone was sent to Cairo and then transported to Alexandria before being handed over to British forces following Napoleon’s surrender.
32. Original Full Stone: The Rosetta Stone is only a fragment of a much larger stele, though the top and some portions of the middle text are missing.
33. Decoding Coptic: Champollion used his understanding of Coptic, the later form of the Egyptian language written in the Greek alphabet, to interpret parts of the hieroglyphs.
34. First Public Display: The British Museum first displayed the Rosetta Stone to the public in 1802, where it became an instant curiosity.
35. Symbol of Scholarship: The Rosetta Stone is often considered a symbol of scholarly achievement, as it solved a linguistic mystery that had puzzled scholars for centuries.
36. Visitor Attraction: The Rosetta Stone remains one of the most visited exhibits at the British Museum, attracting millions of tourists each year.
37. Multilingual Inscription: The trilingual nature of the inscription is a reflection of the multicultural Ptolemaic kingdom, where Greek and Egyptian traditions

coexisted.

38. Scribes’ Role: The text on the Rosetta Stone was likely written by Egyptian scribes who were fluent in both the Greek and Egyptian scripts, illustrating the administrative needs of the Ptolemaic era.
39. Chiseled Inscription: The inscriptions were chiseled into the stone by artisans, with the hieroglyphic text at the top suffering the most damage over time.
40. Replicas Worldwide: Replicas of the Rosetta Stone have been made and are displayed in museums around the world, including the Louvre and other prominent institutions.
41. Hieroglyphs as Sacred: The hieroglyphic script was considered sacred and used primarily in religious texts, tombs, and temple inscriptions in ancient Egypt.
42. Demotic Script: The Demotic script evolved from the earlier Egyptian hieratic script and was used for everyday writing during the Ptolemaic period.
43. Comparative Text Analysis: Scholars could use the Greek text, which was well understood, to cross-reference and translate the Demotic and hieroglyphic texts.
44. Ancient Multilingualism: The Rosetta Stone reflects the multilingual society of Egypt under the Ptolemies, where both Greek and Egyptian languages were used by different segments of the population.
45. British Museum Damage: The stone sustained damage during World War I, when it was briefly moved for safekeeping from the British Museum to the London Underground for protection from bombing raids.
46. Ownership Controversy: Egypt continues to request the stone’s return from the British Museum, arguing that it is a symbol of their cultural heritage and should be repatriated.
47. No Hieroglyphic Alphabet: Before the Rosetta Stone’s decipherment, it was wrongly believed that hieroglyphs were an ideographic language, with no phonetic alphabet.
48. Ancient Priesthood Power: The decree on the Rosetta Stone highlights the influence of the Egyptian priesthood, who played a major role in maintaining the ruler’s divine status.
49. Legacy in Language: The term “Rosetta Stone” has since become a metaphor for any discovery or tool that provides the key to understanding a previously undecipherable system.
50. Continued Research: Despite being deciphered over 200 years ago, the Rosetta Stone continues to be a subject of study and fascination, symbolizing the intersection of cultures, languages, and scholarship.

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