The Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone provided the key to deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. The priestly decree inscribed on the stone was written in three languages in 196 BC. Two of the texts, in Greek and ancient demotic script, are easily translated, which allowed experts to work out the meaning of the third, hieroglyphic text.

Jean-Francois Champollion, the French scholar who finally interpreted the Rosetta Stone. He worked with Young for a time, but soon overshadowed him. Champollion published his detailed findings in 1824.

Pierre Francois Bouchard was a 28-year-old engineer lieutenant in Napoleon's army in Egypt in 1799. The French emperor put Bouchard in charge of rebuilding an old fort in the Nile delta near the town of Rosetta (modern-day Rashid). In mid-July that year, he happened to find among the rubble a large dark stone over 1 metre (3 feet 4 inches) long made of granodiorite, a tough stone from eastern Egypt, and had an inscription in three languages cut into one of its sides. Bouchard was intrigued: the big stele was obviously important, and he immediately drew it to the attention of his colleagues - and to Napoleon himself.

Sir Thomas Young, the British scientist whose breadth of knowledge and obsessive curiosity led him to tackle the challenge of deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs in 1813

What Bouchard had stumbled upon was, in fact, one of the most precious archaeological finds ever discovered. The stone had probably been used 300 years earlier by Egyptian Mameluke builders in the construction of the fort. They would have had no idea what it was or what was written on it. They had almost certainly salvaged it from a collapsed ancient Egyptian temple at the nearby ruins of Sais on the Nile.

The unfortunate Bouchard was later captured by the British, who threw Napoleon and his French army out of Egypt, but by this time, experts, first French and then British, were enthusing about the new discovery they called the Rosetta Stone. They were quick to discern that it had some kind of decree on it inscribed in three languages - Egyptian hieroglyphics at the top, Egyptian demotic script in the middle, and ancient Greek at the bottom. If the words in the three scripts meant the same, they knew this could be the key to interpreting the previously indecipherable hieroglyphic script of ancient Egypt.

The Rosetta Stone, with hieroglyphic text at the top, demotic in the center and Greek at the bottom. The hieroglyphic cartouche (signature) of the Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy V is highlighted.

Bouchard had unearthed an inscription dating back to 196 BC, an uneasy year for Egypt. Ptolemy V had become pharaoh when he was only five years old, in 204 BC, after his parents were murdered. He was now 13, and his country was in a turbulent state. Parts of Egypt were in rebellion, and the decree inscribed on the stone reveals the extent to which the royal family depended on the priesthood for its own and the country's welfare. On the Rosetta Stone, the priests promise that in return for the king's gift of grain and silver to Egypt's temples, they will ensure that the king's birthday and coronation days will be the occasion for annual festivities.

The value of the stone went much further than this trifling piece of dynastic history. It was to open the door to the written record of one of the world's most sensational cultures. All of those anonymous monuments and tombs in Giza, Saqqara, Luxor, and the other great ancient Egyptian sites were soon to disclose their personalities. It took two decades of Anglo-French research and rivalry for the revelations to become a reality. However, the discord started in Egypt, where the victorious British had a frantic tussle with the French over the stone's ownership. According to one story, the defeated French army commander was found to have hidden the stone inside several carpets in his baggage as he left for France.

The stone was transported to England on a captured French frigate, HMS Egyptienne, and placed in the British Museum. Copies of its inscription were widely circulated at home and abroad, and an intellectual struggle between Britain and France followed. The two key protagonists were Thomas Young in London and Jean-François Champollion in Grenoble. Young in particular worked very hard on what were called the 'cartouches', clearly framed phrases in the hieroglyphs that were thought to denote the names of the kings of Egypt. He managed to discover that a cartouche on the Rosetta Stone contained the symbols that spelled the name "Ptolemy". Both Young and Champolion made important contributions to the final deciphering of the hieroglyphs, but it was Champolion's publication of what amounted to a hieroglyphic dictionary in 1822 that was the springboard from which Egyptologists were able to understand the writing in Egyptian tombs and temples. These texts revealed the stories of the dynasties, the kings, and the high officials.

The rivalry between the two men took on international dimensions when visitors to the British Museum complained about the size of their portraits on display. In the early 1970s, there were protests from French visitors to the Museum that the portrait of Young was larger than Champollion's and from British visitors that Champollion's was bigger, although apparently both pictures were exactly the same size.

Champollion's notebook reflects his painstaking work in deciphering the Egyptian hieroglyphs. His study of each symbol unlocked the forgotten language of the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt. That's the spot.