The stone was carved during theHellenistic period and is believed to have originally been displayed within a temple, possibly atSais. It was probably moved in late antiquity or during theMamluk period, and was eventually used as building material in the construction ofFort Julien near the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in theNile Delta. It was found there in July 1799 by French officerPierre-François Bouchard during the Napoleoniccampaign in Egypt. It was the first Ancient Egyptian bilingual text recovered in modern times, and it aroused widespread public interest with its potential to decipher this previously untranslated hieroglyphic script. Lithographic copies and plaster casts soon began circulating among European museums and scholars. When the British defeated the French, they took the stone to London under the terms of theCapitulation of Alexandria in 1801. Since 1802, it has been on public display at theBritish Museum almost continuously and it is the most visited object there.
Study of the decree was already underway when the first complete translation of the Greek text was published in 1803.Jean-François Champollion announced thetransliteration of the Egyptian scripts in Paris in 1822; it took longer still before scholars were able to read Ancient Egyptian inscriptions and literature confidently. Major advances in the decoding were recognition that the stone offered three versions of the same text (1799); that the Demotic text used phonetic characters to spell foreign names (1802); that the hieroglyphic text did so as well, and had pervasive similarities to the Demotic (1814); and that phonetic characters were also used to spell native Egyptian words (1822–1824).
Three other fragmentary copies of the same decree were discovered later, and several similar Egyptianbilingual or trilingual inscriptions are now known, including three slightly earlierPtolemaic decrees: the Decree of Alexandria in 243 BC, theDecree of Canopus in 238 BC, and theMemphis decree of Ptolemy IV, c. 218 BC. Though the Rosetta Stone is now known to not be unique, it was the essential key to the modern understanding of ancient Egyptian literature and civilisation. The term "Rosetta Stone" is now used to refer to the essential clue to a new field of knowledge.
The Rosetta Stone is listed as "a stone of blackgranodiorite, bearing three inscriptions ... found at Rosetta" in a contemporary catalogue of the artefacts discovered by the French expedition and surrendered to British troops in 1801.[1] At some period after its arrival in London, the inscriptions were coloured in whitechalk to make them more legible, and the remaining surface was covered with a layer ofcarnauba wax designed to protect it from visitors' fingers.[2] This gave a dark colour to the stone that led to its mistaken identification asblack basalt.[3] These additions were removed when the stone was cleaned in 1999, revealing the original dark grey tint of the rock, the sparkle of its crystalline structure, and a pinkvein running across the top left corner.[4] Comparisons with theKlemm collection of Egyptian rock samples showed a close resemblance to rock from a small granodiorite quarry atGebel Tingar on the west bank of theNile, west ofElephantine in the region ofAswan; the pink vein is typical of granodiorite from this region.[5]
The Rosetta Stone is 112.3 cm (3 ft 8 in) high at its highest point, 75.7 cm (2 ft 5.8 in) wide, and 28.4 cm (11 in) thick. It weighs approximately 760 kilograms (1,680 lb).[6] It bears three inscriptions: the top register in Ancient Egyptianhieroglyphs, the second in the EgyptianDemotic script, and the third inAncient Greek.[7] These three scripts are not three different languages, as is commonly misunderstood.[8][9] The front surface is polished and the inscriptions lightlyincised on it; the sides of the stone are smoothed, but the back is only roughly worked, presumably because it would have not been visible when the stele was erected.[5][10]
The Rosetta Stone is a fragment of a larger stele. No additional fragments were found in later searches of the Rosetta site.[11] Owing to its damaged state, none of the three texts is complete. The top register, composed of Egyptian hieroglyphs, suffered the most damage. Only the last 14 lines of the hieroglyphic text can be seen; all of them are broken on the right side, and 12 of them on the left. Below it, the middle register of demotic text has survived best; it has 32 lines, of which the first 14 are slightly damaged on the right side. The bottom register of Greek text contains 54 lines, of which the first 27 survive in full; the rest are increasingly fragmentary due to a diagonal break at the bottom right of the stone.[12]
The full length of the hieroglyphic text and the total size of the original stele, of which the Rosetta Stone is a fragment, can be estimated based on comparable steles that have survived, including other copies of the same order. The slightly earlierdecree of Canopus, erected in 238 BC during the reign ofPtolemy III, is 2,190 millimetres high (7.19 ft) and 820 mm (32 in) wide, and contains 36 lines of hieroglyphic text, 73 of demotic text, and 74 of Greek. The texts are of similar length.[13] From such comparisons, it can be estimated that an additional 14 or 15 lines of hieroglyphic inscription are missing from the top register of the Rosetta Stone, amounting to another 300 millimetres (12 in).[14] In addition to the inscriptions, there would probably have been a scene depicting the king being presented to the gods, topped with a winged disc, as on the Canopus Stele. These parallels, and a hieroglyphic sign for "stela" on the stone itself (seeGardiner's sign list),
suggest that it originally had a rounded top.[7][15] The height of the original stele is estimated to have been about 149 centimetres (4 ft 11 in).[15]
The stele was erected after thecoronation of KingPtolemy V and was inscribed with a decree that established the divine cult of the new ruler.[16] The decree was issued by a congress of priests who gathered atMemphis. The date is given as "4 Xandikos" in theMacedonian calendar and "18Mekhir" in theEgyptian calendar, which corresponds to27 March196 BC. The year is stated as the ninth year of Ptolemy V's reign (equated with 197/196 BC), which is confirmed by naming four priests who officiated in that year:Aetos son of Aetos was priest of the divine cults ofAlexander the Great and the fivePtolemies down to Ptolemy V himself; the other three priests named in turn in the inscription are those who led the worship ofBerenice Euergetis (wife ofPtolemy III),Arsinoe Philadelphos (wife and sister ofPtolemy II), andArsinoe Philopator, mother of Ptolemy V.[17] However, a second date is also given in the Greek and hieroglyphic texts, corresponding to27 November 197 BC, the official anniversary of Ptolemy's coronation.[18] The demotic text conflicts with this, listing consecutive days in March for the decree and the anniversary.[18] It is uncertain why this discrepancy exists, but it is clear that the decree was issued in 196 BC and that it was designed to re-establish the rule of the Ptolemaic kings over Egypt.[19]
The decree was issued during a turbulent period in Egyptian history. Ptolemy V Epiphanes, the son ofPtolemy IV Philopator and his wife and sister Arsinoe, reigned from 204 to 181 BC. He had become ruler at the age of five after the sudden death of both of his parents, who were murdered in a conspiracy that involved Ptolemy IV's mistressAgathoclea, according to contemporary sources. The conspirators effectively ruled Egypt as Ptolemy V's guardians[20][21] until a revolt broke out two years later under generalTlepolemus, when Agathoclea and her family werelynched by a mob in Alexandria. Tlepolemus, in turn, was replaced as guardian in 201 BC byAristomenes of Alyzia, who was chief minister at the time of the Memphis decree.[22]
Political forces beyond the borders of Egypt exacerbated the internal problems of the Ptolemaic kingdom.Antiochus III the Great andPhilip V of Macedon had made a pact to divide Egypt's overseas possessions. Philip had seized several islands and cities inCaria andThrace, while theBattle of Panium (198 BC) had resulted in the transfer ofCoele-Syria, includingJudaea, from the Ptolemies to theSeleucids. Meanwhile, in the south of Egypt, there was a long-standing revolt that had begun during the reign of Ptolemy IV,[18] led byHorwennefer and by his successorAnkhwennefer.[23] Both the war and the internal revolt were still ongoing when the young Ptolemy V was officially crowned at Memphis at the age of 12 (seven years after the start of his reign) and when, just over a year later, the Memphis decree was issued.[21]
Stelae of this kind, which were established on the initiative of the temples rather than that of the king, are unique to Ptolemaic Egypt. In the preceding Pharaonic period it would have been unheard of for anyone but the divine rulers themselves to make national decisions: by contrast, this way of honouring a king was a feature of Greek cities. Rather than making his eulogy himself, the king had himself glorified and deified by his subjects or representative groups of his subjects.[24] The decree records that Ptolemy V gave a gift of silver and grain to thetemples.[25] It also records that there was particularly highflooding of the Nile in the eighth year of his reign, and he had the excess waters dammed for the benefit of the farmers.[25] In return the priesthood pledged that the king's birthday and coronation days would be celebrated annually and that all the priests of Egypt would serve him alongside the other gods. The decree concludes with the instruction that a copy was to be placed in every temple, inscribed in the "language of the gods" (Egyptian hieroglyphs), the "language of documents" (Demotic), and the "language of the Greeks" as used by the Ptolemaic government.[26][27]
Securing the favour of the priesthood was essential for the Ptolemaic kings to retain effective rule over the populace. TheHigh Priests ofMemphis—where the king was crowned—were particularly important, as they were the highest religious authorities of the time and had influence throughout the kingdom.[28] Given that the decree was issued at Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt, rather than Alexandria, the centre of government of the ruling Ptolemies, it is evident that the young king was anxious to gain their active support.[29] Thus, although the government of Egypt had been Greek-speaking ever since theconquests ofAlexander the Great, the Memphis decree, like the three similarearlier decrees, included texts in Egyptian to show its connection to the general populace by way of the literate Egyptian priesthood.[30]
There can be no one definitive English translation of the decree, not only because modern understanding of the ancient languages continues to develop, but also because of the minor differences between the three original texts. Older translations byE. A. Wallis Budge (1904, 1913)[31] andEdwyn R. Bevan (1927)[32] are easily available but are now outdated, as can be seen by comparing them with the recent translation by R. S. Simpson, which is based on the demotic text and can be found online,[33] or with the modern translations of all three texts, with introduction and facsimile drawing, that were published by Quirke and Andrews in 1989.[34]
The stele was almost certainly not originally placed atRashid (Rosetta) where it was found, but more likely came from a temple site farther inland, possibly the royal town ofSais.[35] The temple from which it originally came was probably closed around AD 392 whenRoman emperorTheodosius I ordered the closing of all non-Christian temples of worship.[36] The original stele broke at some point, its largest piece becoming what we now know as the Rosetta Stone. Ancient Egyptian temples were later used as quarries for new construction, and the Rosetta Stone probably was re-used in this manner. Later it was incorporated in the foundations of a fortress constructed by theMamelukeSultanQaitbay (c. 1416/18–1496) to defend theBolbitine branch of the Nile at Rashid. There it lay for at least another three centuries until its rediscovery.[37]
Three other inscriptions relevant to the same Memphis decree have been found since the discovery of the Rosetta Stone: theNubayrah Stele, a stele found inElephantine and Noub Taha, and an inscription found at theTemple of Philae (on thePhilae obelisk).[38] Unlike the Rosetta Stone, the hieroglyphic texts of these inscriptions were relatively intact. The Rosetta Stone had been deciphered long before they were found, but later Egyptologists have used them to refine the reconstruction of the hieroglyphs that must have been used in the lost portions of the hieroglyphic text on the Rosetta Stone.
French forces underNapoleon Bonaparteinvaded Egypt in 1798, accompanied by a corps of 151 technical experts (savants), known as theCommission des Sciences et des Arts. On15 July 1799, French soldiers under the command of Colonel d'Hautpoul were strengthening the defences ofFort Julien, a couple of miles north-east of the Egyptian port city of Rosetta (modern-day Rashid). LieutenantPierre-François Bouchard spotted a slab with inscriptions on one side that the soldiers had uncovered when demolishing a wall within the fort. He and d'Hautpoul saw at once that it might be important and informed GeneralJacques-François Menou, who happened to be at Rosetta.[A] The find was announced to Napoleon's newly founded scientific association in Cairo, theInstitut d'Égypte, in a report by Commission memberMichel Ange Lancret noting that it contained three inscriptions, the first in hieroglyphs and the third in Greek, and rightly suggesting that the three inscriptions were versions of the same text. Lancret's report, dated19 July 1799, was read to a meeting of the Institute soon after25 July. Bouchard, meanwhile, transported the stone to Cairo for examination by scholars.[39]
The discovery was reported in September inCourrier de l'Égypte, the official newspaper of the French expedition. The anonymous reporter expressed a hope that the stone might one day be the key to deciphering hieroglyphs.[A][11] In 1800 three of the commission's technical experts devised ways to make copies of the texts on the stone. One of these experts wasJean-Joseph Marcel, a printer and gifted linguist, who is credited as the first to recognise that the middle text was written in the Egyptiandemotic script, rarely used for stone inscriptions and seldom seen by scholars at that time, rather thanSyriac as had originally been thought.[11] It was artist and inventorNicolas-Jacques Conté who found a way to use the stone itself as aprinting block to reproduce the inscription.[40] A slightly different method was adopted byAntoine Galland. The prints that resulted were taken to Paris by GeneralCharles Dugua. Scholars in Europe were now able to see the inscriptions and attempt to read them.[41]
After Napoleon's departure, French troops held off British andOttoman attacks for another 18 months. In March 1801, the British landed atAboukir Bay. Menou was now in command of the French expedition. His troops, including the commission, marched north towards the Mediterranean coast to meet the enemy, transporting the stone along with many other antiquities. He was defeated in battle, and the remnant of his army retreated to Alexandria where they weresurrounded and besieged, with the stone now inside the city.Menou surrendered on 30 August.[42][43]
Left and right sides of the Rosetta Stone, with inscriptions: (Left) "Captured in Egypt by the British Army in 1801" (Right) "Presented by King George III".
After the surrender, a dispute arose over the fate of the French archaeological and scientific discoveries in Egypt, including the artefacts, biological specimens, notes, plans, and drawings collected by the members of the commission. Menou refused to hand them over, claiming that they belonged to the institute. British GeneralJohn Hely-Hutchinson refused to end the siege until Menou gave in. ScholarsEdward Daniel Clarke andWilliam Richard Hamilton, newly arrived from England, agreed to examine the collections in Alexandria and said they had found many artefacts that the French had not revealed. In a letter home, Clarke wrote that "we found much more in their possession than was represented or imagined".[44]
Hutchinson claimed that all materials were property of theBritish Crown, but French scholarÉtienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire told Clarke and Hamilton that the French would rather burn all their discoveries than turn them over, referring ominously to the destruction of theLibrary of Alexandria. Clarke and Hamilton pleaded the French scholars' case to Hutchinson, who finally agreed that items such as natural history specimens would be considered the scholars' private property.[43][45] Menou quickly claimed the stone, too, as his private property.[46][43] Hutchinson was equally aware of the stone's unique value and rejected Menou's claim. Eventually an agreement was reached, and the transfer of the objects was incorporated into theCapitulation of Alexandria signed by representatives of theBritish,French, andOttoman forces.
It is not clear exactly how the stone was transferred into British hands, as contemporary accounts differ. ColonelTomkyns Hilgrove Turner, who was to escort it to England, claimed later that he had personally seized it from Menou and carried it away on agun-carriage. In a much more detailed account, Edward Daniel Clarke stated that a French "officer and member of the Institute" had taken him, his student John Cripps, and Hamilton secretly into the back streets behind Menou's residence and revealed the stone hidden under protective carpets among Menou's baggage. According to Clarke, their informant feared that the stone might be stolen if French soldiers saw it. Hutchinson was informed at once and the stone was taken away—possibly by Turner and his gun-carriage.[47]
Turner brought the stone to England aboard the captured French frigateHMSÉgyptienne, landing inPortsmouth in February 1802.[48] His orders were to present it and the other antiquities to KingGeorge III. The King, represented byWar SecretaryLord Hobart, directed that it should be placed in theBritish Museum. According to Turner's narrative, he and Hobart agreed that the stone should be presented to scholars at theSociety of Antiquaries of London, of which Turner was a member, before its final deposit in the museum. It was first seen and discussed there at a meeting on11 March 1802.[B][H]
In 1802, the Society created four plaster casts of the inscriptions, which were given to the universities ofOxford,Cambridge andEdinburgh and toTrinity College Dublin. Soon afterwards, prints of the inscriptions were made and circulated to European scholars.[E] Before the end of 1802, the stone was transferred to the British Museum, where it is located today.[48] New inscriptions painted in white on the left and right edges of the slab stated that it was "Captured in Egypt by theBritish Army in 1801" and "Presented by King George III".[2]
The stone has been exhibited almost continuously in the British Museum since June 1802.[6] During the middle of the 19th century, it was given the inventory number "EA 24", "EA" standing for "Egyptian Antiquities". It was part of a collection of ancient Egyptian monuments captured from the French expedition, including asarcophagus ofNectanebo II (EA 10), the statue of ahigh priest of Amun (EA 81), and a large granite fist (EA 9).[49] The objects were soon discovered to be too heavy for the floors ofMontagu House (the original building of The British Museum), and they were transferred to a new extension that was added to the mansion. The Rosetta Stone was transferred to the sculpture gallery in 1834 shortly after Montagu House was demolished and replaced by the building that now houses the British Museum.[50] According to the museum's records, the Rosetta Stone is its most-visited single object,[51] a simple image of it was the museum's best selling postcard for several decades,[52] and a wide variety of merchandise bearing the text from the Rosetta Stone (or replicating its distinctive shape) is sold in the museum shops.
A crowd of visitors examining the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum in 2014, now behind glass
The Rosetta Stone was originally displayed at a slight angle from the horizontal, and rested within a metal cradle that was made for it, which involved shaving off very small portions of its sides to ensure that the cradle fitted securely.[50] It originally had no protective covering, and it was found necessary by 1847 to place it in a protective frame, despite the presence of attendants to ensure that it was not touched by visitors.[53] Since 2004 the conserved stone has been on display in a specially built case in the centre of the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery. A replica of the Rosetta Stone is now available in theKing's Library of the British Museum, without a case and free to touch, as it would have appeared to early 19th-century visitors.[54]
The museum was concerned aboutheavy bombing in London towards the end of theFirst World War in 1917, and the Rosetta Stone was moved to safety, along with other portable objects of value. The stone spent the next two years 15 m (50 ft) below ground level in a station of thePostal Tube Railway atMount Pleasant nearHolborn.[55] Other than during wartime, the Rosetta Stone has left the British Museum only once: for one month in October 1972, to be displayed alongside Champollion'sLettre at theLouvre in Paris on the 150th anniversary of the letter's publication.[52] Even when the Rosetta Stone was undergoing conservation measures in 1999, the work was done in the gallery so that it could remain visible to the public.[56]
Hieroglyphs retained their pictorial appearance, and classical authors emphasised this aspect, in sharp contrast to theGreek andRoman alphabets. In the5th century, the priestHorapollo wroteHieroglyphica, an explanation of almost 200glyphs. His work was believed to be authoritative, yet it was misleading in many ways, and this and other works were a lasting impediment to the understanding of Egyptian writing.[59] Later attempts at decipherment were made byArab historians inmedieval Egypt during the 9th and 10th centuries.Dhul-Nun al-Misri andIbn Wahshiyya were the first historians to study hieroglyphs, by comparing them to the contemporaryCoptic language used byCoptic priests in their time.[60][61] The study of hieroglyphs continued with fruitless attempts at decipherment by European scholars, notablyPierius Valerianus in the 16th century[62] andAthanasius Kircher in the 17th.[63] The discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799 provided critical missing information, gradually revealed by a succession of scholars, that eventually allowedJean-François Champollion to solve the puzzle thatKircher had called theriddle of the Sphinx.[64]
Richard Porson's suggested reconstruction of the missing Greek text (1803)
TheGreek text on the Rosetta Stone provided the starting point. Ancient Greek was widely known to scholars, but they were not familiar with details of its use in theHellenistic period as a government language in Ptolemaic Egypt; large-scale discoveries of Greekpapyri were a long way in the future. Thus, the earliest translations of the Greek text of the stone show the translators still struggling with the historical context and with administrative and religious jargon.Stephen Weston verbally presented an English translation of the Greek text at aSociety of Antiquaries meeting in April 1802.[65][66]
Meanwhile, two of the lithographic copies made in Egypt had reached theInstitut de France in Paris in 1801. There, librarian and antiquarianGabriel de La Porte du Theil set to work on a translation of the Greek, but he was dispatched elsewhere on Napoleon's orders almost immediately, and he left his unfinished work in the hands of colleagueHubert-Pascal Ameilhon. Ameilhon produced the first published translations of the Greek text in 1803, in bothLatin and French to ensure that they would circulate widely.[H] AtCambridge,Richard Porson worked on the missing lower right corner of the Greek text. He produced a skilful suggested reconstruction, which was soon being circulated by the Society of Antiquaries alongside its prints of the inscription. At almost the same moment,Christian Gottlob Heyne inGöttingen was making a new Latin translation of the Greek text that was more reliable than Ameilhon's and was first published in 1803.[G] It was reprinted by the Society of Antiquaries in a special issue of its journalArchaeologia in 1811, alongside Weston's previously unpublished English translation,Colonel Turner's narrative, and other documents.[H][67][68]
At the time of the stone's discovery, Swedish diplomat and scholarJohan David Åkerblad was working on a little-known script of which some examples had recently been found in Egypt, which came to be known asDemotic. He called it "cursive Coptic" because he was convinced that it was used to record some form of theCoptic language (the direct descendant of Ancient Egyptian), although it had few similarities with the laterCoptic script. French OrientalistAntoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy had been discussing this work with Åkerblad when, in 1801, he received one of the early lithographic prints of the Rosetta Stone, fromJean-Antoine Chaptal, French minister of the interior. He realised that the middle text was in this same script. He and Åkerblad set to work, both focusing on the middle text and assuming that the script was alphabetical. They attempted to identify the points where Greek names ought to occur within this unknown text, by comparing it with the Greek. In 1802, Silvestre de Sacy reported to Chaptal that he had successfully identified five names ("Alexandros", "Alexandreia", "Ptolemaios", "Arsinoe", and Ptolemy's title "Epiphanes"),[C] 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.[D][65] They could not, however, identify the remaining characters in the Demotic text, which, as is now known, includedideographic and other symbols alongside the phonetic ones.[69]
Champollion's table of hieroglyphic phonetic characters with their demotic and Coptic equivalents (1822)
Silvestre de Sacy eventually gave up work on the stone, but he was to make another contribution. In 1811, prompted by discussions with a Chinese student aboutChinese script, Silvestre de Sacy considered a suggestion made byGeorg Zoëga in 1797 that the foreign names in Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions might be written phonetically; he also recalled that as early as 1761,Jean-Jacques Barthélemy had suggested that the characters enclosed incartouches in hieroglyphic inscriptions were proper names. Thus, whenThomas Young, foreign secretary of theRoyal Society of London, wrote to him about the stone in 1814, Silvestre de Sacy suggested in reply that in attempting to read the hieroglyphic text, Young might look for cartouches that ought to contain Greek names and try to identify phonetic characters in them.[70]
Young did so, with two results that together paved the way for the final decipherment. In the hieroglyphic text, he discovered the phonetic characters "p t o l m e s" (in today's transliteration "p t w l m y s") that were used to write the Greek name "Ptolemaios". He also noticed that these characters resembled the equivalent ones in the demotic script, and went on to note as many as 80 similarities between the hieroglyphic and demotic texts on the stone, an important discovery because the two scripts were previously thought to be entirely different from one another. This led him to deduce correctly that the demotic script was only partly phonetic, also consisting of ideographic characters derived from hieroglyphs.[I] Young's new insights were prominent in the long article "Egypt" that he contributed to theEncyclopædia Britannica in 1819.[J] He could make no further progress, however.[71]
In 1814, Young first exchanged correspondence about the stone withJean-François Champollion, a teacher atGrenoble who had produced a scholarly work on ancient Egypt. Champollion saw copies of the brief hieroglyphic and Greek inscriptions of thePhilae obelisk in 1822, on whichWilliam John Bankes had tentatively noted the names "Ptolemaios" and "Kleopatra" in both languages.[72] From this, Champollion identified the phonetic charactersk l e o p a t r a (in today's transliterationq l i҆ w p 3 d r 3.t).[73] On the basis of this and the foreign names on the Rosetta Stone, he quickly constructed an alphabet of phonetic hieroglyphic characters, completing his work on 14 September and announcing it publicly on 27 September in a lecture to theAcadémie royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.[74] On the same day he wrote the famous "Lettre à M. Dacier" toBon-Joseph Dacier, secretary of the Académie, detailing his discovery.[K] In the postscript Champollion notes that similar phonetic characters seemed to occur in both Greek and Egyptian names, a hypothesis confirmed in 1823, when he identified the names of pharaohsRamesses andThutmose written in cartouches atAbu Simbel. These far older hieroglyphic inscriptions had been copied by Bankes and sent to Champollion byJean-Nicolas Huyot.[M] From this point, the stories of the Rosetta Stone and thedecipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs diverge, as Champollion drew on many other texts to develop an Ancient Egyptian grammar and a hieroglyphic dictionary which were published after his death in 1832.[75]
Replica of the Rosetta Stone, displayed as the original used to be, available to touch, in what was theKing's Library of the British Museum, now the Enlightenment Gallery
Work on the stone now focused on fuller understanding of the texts and their contexts by comparing the three versions with one another. In 1824 Classical scholarAntoine-Jean Letronne promised to prepare a new literal translation of the Greek text for Champollion's use. Champollion in return promised an analysis of all the points at which the three texts seemed to differ. Following Champollion's sudden death in 1832, his draft of this analysis could not be found, and Letronne's work stalled.François Salvolini, Champollion's former student and assistant, died in 1838, and this analysis and other missing drafts were found among his papers. This discovery incidentally demonstrated that Salvolini's own publication on the stone, published in 1837, wasplagiarism.[O] Letronne was at last able to complete his commentary on the Greek text and his new French translation of it, which appeared in 1841.[P] During the early 1850s, German EgyptologistsHeinrich Brugsch andMax Uhlemann produced revised Latin translations based on the demotic and hieroglyphic texts.[Q][R] The first English translation followed in 1858, the work of three members of thePhilomathean Society at theUniversity of Pennsylvania.[S]
Whether one of the three texts was the standard version, from which the other two were originally translated, is a question that has remained controversial. Letronne attempted to show in 1841 that the Greek version, the product of the Egyptian government under the MacedonianPtolemies, was the original.[P] Among recent authors, John Ray has stated that "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".[7] Philippe Derchain and Heinz Josef Thissen have argued that all three versions were composed simultaneously, while Stephen Quirke sees in the decree "an intricate coalescence of three vital textual traditions".[76]Richard Parkinson points out that the hieroglyphic version strays from archaic formalism and occasionally lapses into language closer to that of the demotic register that the priests more commonly used in everyday life.[77] The fact that the three versions cannot be matched word for word helps to explain why the decipherment has been more difficult than originally expected, especially for those original scholars who were expecting an exact bilingual key to Egyptian hieroglyphs.[78]
Even before the Salvolini affair, disputes over precedence and plagiarism punctuated the decipherment story. Thomas Young's work is acknowledged in Champollion's 1822Lettre à M. Dacier, but incompletely, according to early British critics: for example,James Browne, a sub-editor on theEncyclopædia Britannica (which had published Young's 1819 article), anonymously contributed a series of review articles to theEdinburgh Review in 1823, praising Young's work highly and alleging that the "unscrupulous" Champollion plagiarised it.[79][80] These articles were translated into French byJulius Klaproth and published in book form in 1827.[N] Young's own 1823 publication reasserted the contribution that he had made.[L] The early deaths of Young (1829) and Champollion (1832) did not put an end to these disputes. In his work on the stone in 1904E. A. Wallis Budge gave special emphasis to Young's contribution compared with Champollion's.[81] In the early 1970s, French visitors complained that the portrait of Champollion was smaller than one of Young on an adjacent information panel; English visitors complained that the opposite was true. The portraits were in fact the same size.[52]
In 2005, the British Museum presented Egypt with a full-sized fibreglass colour-matched replica of the stele. This was initially displayed in the renovatedRashid National Museum, an Ottoman house in the town ofRashid (Rosetta), the closest city to the site where the stone was found.[86] In November 2005, Hawass suggested a three-month loan of the Rosetta Stone, while reiterating the eventual goal of a permanent return.[87] In December 2009, he proposed to drop his claim for the permanent return of the Rosetta Stone if the British Museum lent the stone to Egypt for three months for the opening of theGrand Egyptian Museum atGiza in 2013.[88]
A replica of the Rosetta Stone in Rashid (Rosetta), Egypt
AsJohn Ray has observed: "The day may come when the stone has spent longer in the British Museum than it ever did in Rosetta."[89]
National museums typically express strong opposition to the repatriation of objects of international cultural significance such as the Rosetta Stone. In response to repeated Greek requests for return of theElgin Marbles from theParthenon and similar requests to other museums around the world, in 2002, over 30 of the world's leading museums—including the British Museum, the Louvre, thePergamon Museum in Berlin, and theMetropolitan Museum in New York City—issued a joint statement:
Objects acquired in earlier times must be viewed in the light of different sensitivities and values reflective of that earlier era...museums serve not just the citizens of one nation but the people of every nation.[90]
The termRosetta stone has been also usedidiomatically to denote the first crucial key in the process of decryption of encoded information, especially when a small but representative sample is recognised as the clue to understanding a larger whole.[93] According to theOxford English Dictionary, the first figurative use of the term appeared in the 1902 edition of theEncyclopædia Britannica relating to an entry on the chemical analysis ofglucose.[93] Another use of the phrase is found inH. G. Wells's 1933 novelThe Shape of Things to Come, where the protagonist finds a manuscript written inshorthand that provides a key to understanding additional scattered material that is sketched out in bothlonghand and ontypewriter.[93]
The name is used for various forms oftranslation software and services. "Rosetta Stone" is a brand of language-learning software published by Rosetta Stone Inc., who are headquartered inArlington County, US. Additionally, "Rosetta", developed and maintained byCanonical (the Ubuntu Linux company) as part of theLaunchpad project, is an online language translation tool to help with localisation of software. One program, billed as a "lightweight dynamic translator" that enables applications compiled forPowerPC processors to run onx86 processorApple Inc. systems, is named "Rosetta". TheRosetta@home endeavour is adistributed computing project for predicting protein structures from amino acid sequences (i.e.translating sequence into structure).Rosetta Code is a wiki-basedchrestomathy website with algorithm implementations in several programming languages. TheRosetta Project brings language specialists and native speakers together to develop a meaningful survey and near-permanent archive of 1,500 languages, in physical and digital form, with the intent of it remaining useful from AD 2000 to 12,000.[citation needed]
1802:Silvestre de Sacy,Lettre au Citoyen Chaptal, Ministre de l'intérieur, Membre de l'Institut national des sciences et arts, etc: au sujet de l'inscription Égyptienne du monument trouvé à Rosette. Paris, 1802Retrieved July 14, 2010
1802:Johan David Åkerblad,Lettre sur l'inscription Égyptienne de Rosette: adressée au citoyen Silvestre de Sacy, Professeur de langue arabe à l'École spéciale des langues orientales vivantes, etc.; Réponse du citoyen Silvestre de Sacy. Paris: L'imprimerie de la République, 1802
1803: "Has tabulas inscriptionem ... ad formam et modulum exemplaris inter spolia ex bello Aegyptiaco nuper reportati et in Museo Britannico asservati suo sumptu incidendas curavit Soc. Antiquar. Londin. A.D. MDCCCIII" inVetusta Monumenta vol. 4 plates 5–7
1803:Hubert-Pascal Ameilhon,Éclaircissemens sur l'inscription grecque du monument trouvé à Rosette, contenant un décret des prêtres de l'Égypte en l'honneur de Ptolémée Épiphane, le cinquième des rois Ptolémées. Paris: Institut National, 1803Retrieved July 14, 2010
1803:Chr. G. Heyne, "Commentatio in inscriptionem Graecam monumenti trinis insigniti titulis ex Aegypto Londinum apportati" inCommentationes Societatis Regiae Gottingensis vol. 15 (1800–1803) p. 260 ff.
1811: Matthew Raper,S. Weston et al., "Rosetta stone, brought to England in 1802: Account of, by Matt. Raper; with three versions: Greek, English translation by S. Weston, Latin translation by Prof. Heyne; with notes by Porson, Taylor, Combe, Weston and Heyne" inArchaeologia vol. 16 (1810–1812) pp. 208–263
1823: Thomas Young,An account of some recent discoveries in hieroglyphical literature and Egyptian antiquities: including the author's original alphabet, as extended by Mr. Champollion, with a translation of five unpublished Greek and Egyptian manuscripts (London: John Murray, 1823)Retrieved July 14, 2010
1827: James Browne,Aperçu sur les hiéroglyphes d'Égypte et les progrès faits jusqu'à présent dans leur déchiffrement (Paris, 1827; based on a series of articles inEdinburgh Review beginning with no. 55 (February 1823) pp. 188–197)Retrieved July 14, 2010
1837:François Salvolini, "Interprétation des hiéroglyphes: analyse de l'inscription de Rosette" inRevue des deux mondes vol. 10 (1937)At French Wikisource
1858:Report of the committee appointed by the Philomathean Society of the University of Pennsylvania to translate the inscription on the Rosetta stone. Philadelphia, 1858
Bierbrier, M. L. (1999). "The acquisition by the British Museum of antiquities discovered during the French invasion of Egypt". In Davies, W. V (ed.).Studies in Egyptian Antiquities. (British Museum Publications).
Brown, V. M.; Harrell, J. A. (1998). "Aswan Granite and Granodiorite".Göttinger Miszellen.164:133–137.
Clarysse, G. W.; Van der Veken, G. (1983).The Eponymous Priests of Ptolemaic Egypt (P. L. Bat. 24): Chronological lists of the priests of Alexandria and Ptolemais with a study of the demotic transcriptions of their names. Assistance by S. P. Vleeming. Leiden: Brill.ISBN90-04-06879-1.
Clarysse, G. W. (1999). "Ptolémées et temples". In Valbelle, Dominique (ed.).Le Décret de Memphis: colloque de la Fondation Singer-Polignac a l'occasion de la celebration du bicentenaire de la découverte de la Pierre de Rosette. Paris.
Clayton, Peter A. (2006).Chronicles of the Pharaohs: the reign-by-reign record of the rulers and dynasties of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson.ISBN0-500-28628-0.
Downs, Jonathan (2008).Discovery at Rosetta: the ancient stone that unlocked the mysteries of Ancient Egypt. Skyhorse Publishing.ISBN978-1-60239-271-7.
Iversen, Erik (1993) [First edition 1961].The Myth of Egypt and Its Hieroglyphs in European Tradition. Princeton University Press.ISBN978-0-691-02124-9.
Kitchen, Kenneth A. (1970). "Two Donation Stelae in the Brooklyn Museum".Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt.8:59–67.doi:10.2307/40000039.JSTOR40000039.
Miller, E.; et al. (2000). "The Examination and Conservation of the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum". In Roy, A.; Smith, P (eds.).Tradition and Innovation. (British Museum Publications). pp. 128–132.
