6/18/2020 0:00:00
■■■ What is Rosetta Stone? ■■■
● The Rosetta Stone (Rosetta Stone to the west) is a black basalt stone that was discovered in July 1799. It is a black basalt stone, 115 cm long, 73 cm wide, and 28 cm thick. It is believed that its original height was six feet, but its upper peak and the corners at the top and bottom have disappeared.
According to the book “Rashid” by the writer Jihan Mamdouh Mamoun, the stone was discovered under the ruins of Qaitbay Citadel, “Tabiyeh Rashid,” in the city by a French soldier named Pierre-François Bouchard while he was carrying out engineering work inside it. It is believed that the stone was part of a huge memorial located in one of the ancient temples of Rashid. It is believed that it was based on a raised base.
The stone contains (three lines), the upper part of the stone is written in hieroglyphic script, the middle part of the stone is written in demotic script, while the lower part of the stone is written in Greek script.
● What is the historical occasion for writing this stone?!
The stone is a decree issued in Memphis, Misr, in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic Dynasty (330 BC – 60 BC) on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes.
On the occasion of writing the stone… a revolution broke out in Misr by the priests against Ptolemy IV in the Delta, and after his death in 204 AD, internal strife arose, then his son Ptolemy V (Epiphanes 204 BC – 180 BC) took over the rule of Misr, and he eliminated Revolutions, pardoned people, abolished taxes, released prisoners, and restored to the priests their privileges that his father had taken away.
Here the priests wanted to glorify the deeds of Ptolemy V…so they held great celebrations to pledge allegiance to him and recorded those deeds on the Rosetta Stone. The stone includes a decree from the priests gathered in the city of Memphis (Mit Rahina – Al Badrashin Center – Giza Governorate currently). In which they thank King Ptolemy V, around 196 BC, for granting endowments to the temples and exempting the priests from some obligations.
This decree was recorded in three scripts, in order of writing from top to bottom: hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek. The bulk of the hieroglyphic script and a small portion of the Greek text have been lost. The priests wanted to record this gratitude to the Ptolemaic king in the official script, the script of the priests, which is the hieroglyphic script. The dominant daily life script in this period was the Demotic script, then the Greek script, which was the script in which the language of the Ptolemies, who occupied Misr, was written.
The purpose of writing the three lines in which the stone was written was to enable the priests in Misr, the Egyptian people, and the Ptolemies in the neighboring Greek state to understand the contents of the decree.
It is believed that the stone had many copies, but they disappeared and only the Rosetta Stone remained.
The stone is considered the first ancient Egyptian bilingual text discovered in the modern era……….. Therefore, the stone has sparked widespread public interest in its potential to decipher this previously untranslated hieroglyphic text.
The stone is a single decree written in stone in three copies, and there is no difference between the copies except minor differences between the three versions. Therefore, the Rosetta Stone (Rosetta Stone) became a key to decoding Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, and it opened a window on ancient Egyptian history.
It was fortunate for the Egyptian civilization that the Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799 AD, because that stone contained the keys to the ancient Egyptian language, and without which the Egyptian civilization would have remained mysterious and we know nothing about it. Because we cannot read the writings that the ancient Egyptians wrote on their monuments.
Note: According to Western sources, three other fragmentary copies of the same decree were discovered later. Bilingual or trilingual ancient Egyptian inscriptions have been discovered next to the Rosetta Stone: the Edict of Alexandria in 243 BC, the Edict of Canopus in 238 BC, and the Edict of Ptolemy IV, c. 218 BC.
So the Rosetta Stone is no longer unique, but it was the fundamental key to the modern understanding of ancient Egyptian literature and civilization.
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What are the major scientific developments that took place that led to the unraveling of this Rosetta Stone?!
● July 15, 1799…………. The stone was discovered in the town of Rosetta
● July 19, 1799 ………… It was officially recognized that the stone may be three copies of one text by the Scientific Committee in Cairo ……. and it was written in hieroglyphic and ancient Greek script.
● July 30, 1799 ………. The stone was transported to Cairo.
● August 1799…….. The official name known for the stone began to circulate in the West (the Rosetta Stone), and Napoleon, the leader of the French expedition, ordered the preparation of several copies of it to be accessible to those interested in Egyptian civilization in Europe in general and in France in particular. .
● September 1799……… News of the discovery was published in an official French newspaper, and the first words appeared in it saying [that the stone may one day be the key to deciphering hieroglyphics]
● 1800 …………It was officially recognized that the middle text in the stone was written in the Egyptian Demotic script (the people’s script), and the credit goes to the French scientist Marcel, who was in Misr as part of the French campaign.
● 1802 ………….The stone arrived in Britain in accordance with the Al-Arish Agreement concluded between England, led by Commander Nelson, and France, led by Commander Mennot, under which England received the stone and other antiquities.
Researchers began translating the Greek text, and researchers Silvestre de Sacy and Akerblad showed special interest in the Demotic script.
Western scholars arrived at the Demotic text that used phonetic letters to spell (foreign names).
● 1803 ………. The study of the texts was ongoing and the first complete translation of the Greek text appeared and it was discovered that it was a decree written by a Greek king named (Ptolemy).
● 1814….. This year is considered the first important step that contributed to deciphering hieroglyphs.
This step in the field of hieroglyphic script came at the hands of the English scientist Thomas Young, who obtained a printed copy of the Rosetta Stone in 1814 and who assumed that the circular frames present in the hieroglyphic text contained the names of kings.
● 1815…… The Philae Obelisk was discovered, which contains text in Greek and hieroglyphics.
The assumption was confirmed by the scientist (Thomas Young)… after he relied on other similar texts, such as the obelisk that was found in the Temple of Philae in 1815, which contains a text in Greek and another in hieroglyphics, and the Greek text after its translation spoke about a queen named ( Cleopatra).
This assumption… came from the idea that frames always appear when the Greek text talks about kings, and this means that the frame may contain the name of a king out of honor and glorification, as a message from a king to a Greek king.
But Young believed that Egyptian writing was symbolic, not phonetic.
● 1816 – 1821 (five years)… during which the first words of the stone were deciphered.
Important attempts were made during this period by scholars to decipher hieroglyphs, and among these scholars was a young Frenchman named Jean-François Champollion. (1790 – 1832).
Champollion was very inclined to know the ancient Egyptian language and the civilization of ancient Misr, and what he read from Greek and Roman books helped him in that. He learned the Gebeti language and was forced to meet some of the Coptic community in Paris until he mastered it so well that he became a professor in teaching Gebete.
Champollion’s mastery of the Jebetic language, in addition to Greek and other languages, and also his great knowledge of history…all of this made him try to decipher ancient Egyptian writing, and he wanted to take credit for deciphering this writing.
He was very involved in this scientific and historical mission, and he was forced to buy pieces, paintings, and drawings in order to gain the honor of this scientific conquest that would immortalize his name in history.
The young Frenchman, Jean-François Champollion, obtained a copy of the stone, as did other researchers, and he initially studied it, paying great attention to the hieroglyphic script and relying on his long experience in the ancient Greek language, and in ancient languages in general, including Coptic.
Champollion had to solve a set of assumptions:
The first is: Do the three scripts (hieroglyphic – demotic – Greek) represent three different texts in terms of content, or do they represent one topic, but it was written in the official script (hieroglyphic), the daily life script prevalent in this period (demotic), and then in the language of the Greeks who were ruling Misr? .
Second: It relates to the structure of the Egyptian language. Is it based on an alphabet of any group of letters, like living languages, for example? Or was it written with signs whose phonetic value ranged from one to two or three letters or perhaps more.
Third: Did this writing know the letters of the vowel? …Are the signs pictorial or audio? What tools did Al-Masry use to determine the meaning of vocabulary? Did you use assignments and explanatory signs?!!…etc
These and other assumptions and questions must have been on Champollion’s mind as he was dealing with the stone, and it must have come to his attention that there is more than one script for the ancient Egyptian language, in addition to questions including: Is there a linear relationship between hieroglyphics, hieratic, and demotic?
Is there a linguistic relationship in the field of grammar, morphology, etc. Then, these cylindrical signs in the hieroglyphic text that surround some of the hieroglyphic signs – which we later knew as the frame – what do they mean?
Champollion read the Greek text in the Rosetta Stone, understood its content, and read the name of King Ptolemy in it.
Chanpollion took an approach based on the idea that proper names are unchangeable when written in any language. Then he moved to the hypothesis that this decree, which was issued during the reign of King Ptolemy V in 196 BC, must have been written alongside Greek in two of the national language scripts. For Misr….. Ptolemy’s name in Greek must appear repeatedly in the hieroglyphic and demotic scripts.
The difficulty for Champollion was to understand the vowel letters that determine the pronunciation of consonants with fatha, dhammah, or kasra…… Therefore, Champollion relied on the idea that the consonants of proper names do not change, no matter how many languages they wrote.
For example… in Arabic, we find a name like (Majdi) whose first three letters (M J D) cannot fall out when written in any language, and likewise (Hassan), even if the movement of the letters is slowed, inverted, or changed.
Inside the Rosetta Stone there is a single frame in which a name was repeated six times, and the name of Ptolemy was repeated several times in the Greek text, and it is the same name that was also mentioned on the Philae Obelisk in addition to the name (Cleopatra), which was discovered in 1815.
Champollion assumed that the name (Ptolemy) is present within this frame found in the Rosetta Stone, and that the name (Cleopatra) is also present within the frame of the Philae Obelisk.
Champollion recorded the name (Ptolemy) in the Greek language, which appeared in the Greek text, and he numbered the letters of the name…….. He also recorded the name (Cleopatra), which was mentioned in the Philae Obelisk in Greek, and the number of each letter in the word, and the reason is because The two names share the phonetic value of some signs, such as the b, the ta, and the lām.
ptolemys
cleopatra
Then Champollion recorded the marks contained in the Ptolemy cartouche and their number, and he did the same for the Cleopatra cartouche found in the Philae Obelisk.
There, he found the sharing of similar symbols between the two frames, which confirms his hypothesis. The consonants (btl) are common in Greek writing, and there is also a commonality between the two frames, in several symbols.
Then he identified the first sign of the name “Ptolemy” in hieroglyphs and the corresponding sign in his name in Greek, and “Champollion” was able to recognize the phonetic value of some hieroglyphic signs based on their phonetic value in Greek.
The phonetic letters in hieroglyphic writing were known.
● 1822…… This year is considered the last step that contributed to deciphering hieroglyphs.
This year, an antique piece arrived to Champollion from a friend. It had been removed from one of Misr’s temples and contained a frame with four symbols written inside it.
As for the first symbol inside the frame …………. .its phonetic value was known to Champollion, because it was the same symbol found inside the frame in the Rosetta Stone and the phonetic value that he reached was: (S).
Champollion knew well that this frame must contain the name of a king, because the names of kings are written inside the frames… as we know.
One day, Champollion’s mind began to work and his eyes were fixed on the piece. The agitation and tension increased, and his hand began to shake. The name began with a symbol resembling the shape of the sun, and because Champollion had knowledge and familiarity with the Jebetic language, he knew that the word (sun) was pronounced. In the Jebeti language…. (Ra’).
So, the king’s name begins with (Ra’), followed by a symbol that is still unknown, then followed by a repeated symbol representing a folded piece of cloth.
Ra .( ¤ ) .S.S
That is, the king’s name… will begin with the word (Ra’).
And here a genius idea flashed into Champollion’s head: What if the king’s name was Rameses, the most famous king of ancient Misr, about whom he had read a lot in Greek history books?
Just a hypothesis… but not confirmed.
With trembling hands, Champollion began to flip through the other drawings, thoughts racing wildly…and then his gaze was once again fixed on another image that contained the same symbol (S) that was present in the Rosetta Stone and in the frame that reached it… The symbol V was present at the end of the name, and the name begins with a symbol of the sacred bird Ibis, which embodies the Allah Tut, and in the middle of the name is the same previously unknown symbol (¤).
If Champollion’s translation is correct regarding the name (Ra – m – s – s), and the unknown middle symbol means nothing but the letter (m)… then the name in the picture is then Totmus (Thout – m – s)… …..And indeed Thutmose was the second most famous king of ancient Misr.
There was not the slightest doubt in Champollion… The veil had fallen from Champollion’s eyes, and here he was holding in his hand the key to the history of ancient Misr, which had been lost for 2000 years.
Champollion announced his discovery at the French Society of Sciences and Languages. The audience applauded him… so much so that the most famous linguist at that time, De Sacy, who is credited with developing the first theories of linguistics, rose from his chair and embraced him warmly. De Sasi finally admitted his genius to Champollion, who had always dreamed of sitting with him.
Champollion’s genius appeared… in that he discovered the phonetic values of the rest of the symbols himself by matching them in the Jebetic language, and this genius made the King of France give him a gold box engraved with the phrase: “This is a gift from the King of France, Louis XVIII, to Champollion.” For his discovery of the hieroglyphic alphabet.
Chateaubriand said about him: “The name of Champollion is still alive, as long as these monuments remain, the mysterious secrets of which were revealed to us.”
Then France honored him as one of the greats of history, and he was appointed director of the museum and professor of Egyptology at the university, and his name was entered into the pantheon of French immortals.
Champollion announced in Paris to the whole world that he had been able to decipher the symbols of the ancient Egyptian language, and informed the world of the structure of writing in the Egyptian language.
Chameleon concluded that hieroglyphs are not based on an alphabet only, but rather are based on signs that give the value of one letter, other signs that give the value of two letters, and other signs that give the value of three letters, and he emphasized the use of allocations at the end of vocabulary to determine the meaning of the word.
Champollion discovered that hieroglyphic writing (pictorial) is phonetic writing that contains multiple phonetic values, and is devoid of vowel letters.
Thus, Champollion laid the first building blocks in the edifice of the ancient Egyptian language. After him came hundreds of researchers who contributed to completing the construction of this lofty edifice. With knowledge of the ancient Egyptian language, the mystery about Egyptian civilization began to be cleared, and Egyptology began to make its way strongly among other sciences.
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It took about 22 years since the discovery of the stone, before scholars could read ancient Egyptian inscriptions and literature with confidence.
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And, Allah willing, in our next conversation……we will talk about this information and this approach that the West has adopted and whether it seems correct, scientific and logical.