The Rosetta Stone Discovery
by Owen Borville
March 31, 2021
Bible, Archaeology, History
The Rosetta Stone is an ancient black granite stone slab stele with carved writings in three different languages or scripts parallel to each other and representing a royal decree from Memphis, Egypt in 196 B.C. during the Ptolemaic Dynasty. The discovered slab is actually broken piece from a larger original stone slab. The first two language scripts are written in ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics and Egyptian Demotic scripts while the third script on the stone is written in Ancient Greek. The three scripts are very similar in meaning, paralleling each other, and help translate the ancient Egyptian languages, particularly ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, which is very important to Biblical history.
The Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799 by French engineers working for Napoleon Bonaparte near the town of Rosetta (Rashid) during the French invasion of Egypt. The discovery was one of the most important in history, and in particular Biblical history. French and English scientists have debated the interpretation of the stone's message.
The message itself is a royal decree by Egyptian priests praising the young Egyptian King Ptolemy V Epiphanes after the first year of his coronation as king. Scholars assert that the message itself is not as important as the fact that the message is written in three different scripts, ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, Egyptian Demotic, and Ancient Greek, and therefore the presence of these three scripts enabled for the translations of these languages, particularly the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, which had not been translated.
The ancient Greek text was the easiest to translate, but scholars still learned new things about this language from this particular time period of the 2nd century B.C. The Egyptian demotic script, the middle script on the stone, was the next to be translated. The Egyptian hieroglyphics was eventually translated using knowledge of the ancient Greek language.
Jean-Francois Champollion, the French scholar and a leading founder of Egyptology, made the complete translation of the Egyptian Hieroglyphics in the 1820's. He described the hieroglyphics in an 1822 letter as "It is a complex system, writing figurative, symbolic, and phonetic all at once, in the same text, the same phrase, I would almost say in the same word..."
by Owen Borville
March 31, 2021
Bible, Archaeology, History
The Rosetta Stone is an ancient black granite stone slab stele with carved writings in three different languages or scripts parallel to each other and representing a royal decree from Memphis, Egypt in 196 B.C. during the Ptolemaic Dynasty. The discovered slab is actually broken piece from a larger original stone slab. The first two language scripts are written in ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics and Egyptian Demotic scripts while the third script on the stone is written in Ancient Greek. The three scripts are very similar in meaning, paralleling each other, and help translate the ancient Egyptian languages, particularly ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, which is very important to Biblical history.
The Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799 by French engineers working for Napoleon Bonaparte near the town of Rosetta (Rashid) during the French invasion of Egypt. The discovery was one of the most important in history, and in particular Biblical history. French and English scientists have debated the interpretation of the stone's message.
The message itself is a royal decree by Egyptian priests praising the young Egyptian King Ptolemy V Epiphanes after the first year of his coronation as king. Scholars assert that the message itself is not as important as the fact that the message is written in three different scripts, ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, Egyptian Demotic, and Ancient Greek, and therefore the presence of these three scripts enabled for the translations of these languages, particularly the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, which had not been translated.
The ancient Greek text was the easiest to translate, but scholars still learned new things about this language from this particular time period of the 2nd century B.C. The Egyptian demotic script, the middle script on the stone, was the next to be translated. The Egyptian hieroglyphics was eventually translated using knowledge of the ancient Greek language.
Jean-Francois Champollion, the French scholar and a leading founder of Egyptology, made the complete translation of the Egyptian Hieroglyphics in the 1820's. He described the hieroglyphics in an 1822 letter as "It is a complex system, writing figurative, symbolic, and phonetic all at once, in the same text, the same phrase, I would almost say in the same word..."