It is a piece of granite found in 1799 on the outskirts of the city of Rosetta, Egypt, and which was the key to understanding hieroglyphs. It was found by French soldiers during the invasion of Napoleon Bonaparte, who wanted to interrupt the routes from England to the Indies. In 1801, however, the English defeated Napoleon’s troops, and France was forced to hand over the stone, which today belongs to the collection of the British Museum, in London.
SIMULTANEOUS TRANSLATION
The stone dates from 196 BC, when Egypt was controlled by the Greeks (the so-called Ptolemaic period). It contains the same text in three spellings, hieroglyphics, ancient Greek and demotic. This allowed the decoding of ancient Egyptian symbols, which were used for over 3,000 years.
THEY DIDN’T COUNT ON HIS CULTIVITY
The Englishman Thomas Young came close to the feat when he noticed the repetition of the name of the pharaoh at the time, Ptolemy 5th. But who deciphered everything was the Frenchman Jean-François Champollion, in 1822. Without ever having seen the stone, he analyzed copies and identified that the hieroglyphs were phonetic writing, that is, the symbols could represent more than one sound.
OFFICIAL DIARY
As the part written in Greek was larger than that of hieroglyphs, Champollion concluded that each Egyptian symbol could represent one, two or three different sounds (or even be a representative sign). The translation revealed a bureaucratic text, with political concessions from the pharaoh to the priests.
QUICK GUIDE
Start to understand (a little) the hieroglyphics
- The reading order is defined by where the symbols point. If the hieroglyphs are facing right, that line reads from right to left.
- Those who defined the spacing and arrangement of the hieroglyphs were the priests, in order to make the text as beautiful as possible. They created more than 3000 symbols.
- Hieroglyphic writing has consonants and semivowels. In addition to the symbols that represent sounds, there are determinatives, which indicate the category to which the word belongs.
Suggestion: Victor Tomitsuka. Consultancy: Cíntia Gama, PhD in Egyptology and professor at FMU.