The Rosetta Stone
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The complete Rosetta Stone complied from three separate plates in the Description de lÉgypte Antiquités |
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Inset of the Rosetta Stone, from Description de lÉgypte Antiquités |
The Rosetta stone is a dark grey granite slab three feet tall with a pink vein running
through the top left corner, and it is carved with writing in three scripts: Greek,
Egyptian demotic, and Egyptian hieroglyphic. Because the text of each of the
Egyptian scripts is the same as the Greek text, which scholars were able to translate
quickly after discovery of the monument, the Rosetta Stone became the key to deciphering the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. It is the most famous discovery made by the
French forces in Egypt. When it was taken to Cairo and given over to the
scholars of the
Institute of Egypt, they recognized immediately that it was the single most important
object in their care.
The stone was discovered in July 1799, one year after the French had arrived in
Egypt. Captain François-Xavier Bouchard, an engineer and officer in Napoleons
Egyptian army, was in charge of the demolition of an ancient wall in the city of Rosetta
on a branch of the Nile, a few miles from the sea. The Rosetta Stone was built into the
wall, but Bouchard recognized that the stone might make it possible to decipher
hieroglyphics. So he saved it, and the stone was taken to the scientists in Cairo in
mid-August 1799.
The text, for most people, is not particularly interesting, apart from its use in
breaking the code of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. The inscription is a priestly decree
and it is only a fragment, since the original stele was at least twice as large as the piece
that we call the Rosetta Stone. The decree was issued at Memphis, the principal city of
ancient Egypt, and it concerns the young Ptolemy V Epiphanes, king of all Egypt
(205-180 BC). It is the very last sentence of the Greek inscription that, when translated,
confirmed to scholars that the stone preserved the same text in three different
languages. The last sentence read:
This decree shall be inscribed on a stele of hard
stone in sacred [i.e., hieroglyphic] and native [i.e., demotic] and Greek characters and
set up in each of the first, second and third [rank] temples beside the image of the
ever-living king.
The original site where the stone was erected is unknown, but it was certainly not
Rosetta. The land where it was found is built up from sedimentation that had
accumulated only after the time of the stones creation. Scholars surmise that the
stele was moved with other blocks as building material from a site further inland,
and that it was probably already broken when it was moved to Rosetta. Attempts
to find additional fragments of the stone at Rosetta have all been in vain. The original edges of the stone are preserved on the left, right and bottom sides, and the
original shape of the complete stele is thought to have been generally rectangular,
but slightly wider at the base and with an arched top, much like a tombstone. The
original shape is shown in the
last line of the hieroglyphs.
Although the French
savants copied thousands of hieroglyphs and bas reliefs
faithfully by hand for publication in the
Description de lÉgypte, copying the
Rosetta Stones slight incisions by hand proved difficult. The director of the
Institutes printing house suggested that the stone itself be used as a printing block.
The surface was washed, brushed and dried, with all of the incisions left moist so
that they would not take up any ink that was applied to the surface. A dampened
sheet of paper was pressed onto the stone in contact with the raised surface and, in
a kind of lithographic printing process, a reverse image of the writing was
successfully produced with white letters on a black background. It could be read
from the back side, or in a mirror.
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Detail of the Rosetta Stone, showing the cartouche containing hieroglyphs for Ptolemy. The elongated ovals, or cartouches, in the hieroglyphic section always contain a royal name; in this case, Ptolemy, from Description de lÉgypte Antiquités, v. 5 |
Detail of the Rosetta Stone, showing an image of the original stele on last line, from Description de lÉgypte Antiquités,v. 5 |
Nicolas-Jacques Conté, already known for his inventive skills, used the stone
in the manner of a copper plate engraving to produce an image of the text by a
different printing method. Ink was applied to the whole surface, including the
incisions, and then the ink was cleaned off all of the raised surfaces. The resulting
print, also in reverse, showed an image of the text in black letters on a white background. Copies of the prints reached Paris by the autumn of 1800, and additional
prints were widely distributed throughout Europe in the early years of the
nineteenth century. The significance of the Rosetta Stone as key to hieroglyphs
was clearly realized. The full-sized reproductions of the text eventually appeared
on
three plates in the
Description de lÉgypte, in volume 5 of the
Antiquités,
published in 1822. Even using the largest size paper available for printing, the
stone was too large to reproduce on a single sheet.
A sulfur cast of the Rosetta Stone made by Arien Raffeneau-Delile in Egypt
was used to make the engravings in the
Description de lÉgypte of the demotic
(middle) and Greek (lower) sections. The upper part of the stone with the
hieroglyphics was reproduced from a plaster cast. It was made in London by Edme
Jomard, editor in chief of the
Description de lÉgypte, who traveled to England in
1815 to study the stone, which was by then in the British Museum.
The Rosetta Stone came to London and to the British Museum (where it
remains) in 1802, after the French surrender to the British forces in Egypt.
Though defeated, the French were reluctant to surrender the stone. The scientists
of the Institute of Egypt held their final meeting in Cairo on March 22, 1801, and
then moved to Alexandria. The Rosetta Stone went with them. Under the terms of
the treaty, however, all of the Egyptian antiquities that had been collected by the
French, including the Rosetta Stone, were to be handed over to the British forces.
All arguments and attempts by the French to keep the stone out of British hands
failed and it finally left Egypt on board an English ship bound for Portsmouth,
where it arrived in February 1802.
By the time the engravings of the Rosetta Stone were published in the
Description de lÉgypte in 1822, scholars had already spent years on the problem of
decipherment. Among these, Thomas Young in England and Jean-François
Champollion in France were the leading figures, not to say rivals. Ultimately it
was Champollion who unlocked the code that allowed the hieroglyphs to be read,
publishing a short report of his research in 1822 and a full exposition in 1824 that
was the decisive analysis for decipherment. He did this without ever having seen
the stone itself, and instead worked with a copy from the
Description. In 1824,
Champollion made a brief trip to England and to the British Museum. It was the
only time he ever saw the Rosetta Stone itself.
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View of Rosetta, from Description de lÉgypte État moderne, v. 1 |
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