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    The Rosetta Stone
    The Rosetta Stone
    The Rosetta Stone
    Ebook84 pages1 hour

    The Rosetta Stone

    By E.A. Wallis Budge

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    The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek. Because it presents essentially the same text in all three scripts (with some minor differences among them), the stone provided the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs. The stone is believed to have originally been displayed within a temple, possibly at nearby Sais. It was probably moved during the early Christian or medieval period, and was eventually used as building material in the construction of Fort Julien near the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta. It was rediscovered there in 1799 by a soldier named Pierre-Francois Bouchard of the Napoleonic expedition to 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 ancient language. Study of the decree was already under way when the first full translation of the Greek text appeared in 1803. It was 20 years, however, before the transliteration of the Egyptian scripts was announced by Jeas-Francois Champollion 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 (Thomas Young, 1814); and that, in addition to being used for foreign names, phonetic characters were also used to spell native Egyptian words (Champollion, 1822–1824).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarmakis Edzioni
    Release dateJan 30, 2016
    ISBN9788898301416
    The Rosetta Stone

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      Book preview

      The Rosetta Stone - E.A. Wallis Budge

      THE ROSETTA STONE

      From The Mummy,

      Chapters on Egyptian Funeral Archaeology

      by E. A. Wallis Budge

      harmakis edizioni

      Division S.E.A. Servizi Editoriali Avanzati,

      Registered office in Via Del Mocarini, 11 - 52025 Montevarchi (AR) ITALY

      Headquarters the same aforementioned.

      Editorial Director Paola Agnolucci

      www.harmakisedizioni.org - info@harmakisedizioni.org

      THE ROSETTA STONE ¹ AND THE STELE OF CANOPUS.

      The following remarks upon the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphics may be fitly introduced by a description of the remarkable objects of antiquity whose names stand at the head of this chapter.

      The Rosetta Stone is a slab of black basalt, which is now preserved in the British Museum (Egyptian Gallery, No. 24). It was found by a French artillery officer called Boussard, among the ruins of Fort Saint Julien, near the Rosetta mouth of the Nile, in 1799, but subsequently came into the possession of the British Government at the capitulation of Alexandria. It is inscribed with fragments of 14 lines of hieroglyphics, 32 lines of demotic, and 54 lines of Greek. A portion of the stone has been broken off from the top, and the right-hand bottom corner has also suffered injury. It now measures 3 ft. 9 in. × 2 ft. 4½ in. × 11 in. We may arrive at an idea of the original size of the Rosetta Stone by comparing the number of lines upon it with the number of those upon the Stele of Canopus, which is inscribed in hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek, measures 7 ft. 2 in. × 2 ft. 7 in. x 1 ft. 2 in., and is inscribed with 36 lines of hieroglyphics, 73 lines of demotic, and 74 lines of Greek. The demotic inscription is on the edge of the stele. This stele was set up at Canopus in the ninth year of the reign of Ptolemy III., Euergetes I. (B.C. 247-222), to record the decree made at Canopus by the priesthood, assembled from all parts of Egypt, in honour of the king. It records the great benefits which he had conferred upon Egypt, and states what festivals are to be celebrated in his honour, and in that of Berenice, etc., and, like the Rosetta Stone, concludes with a resolution ordering that a copy of this inscription in hieroglyphics, Greek and demotic, shall be placed in every large temple in Egypt. Now the Rosetta Stone is inscribed with 32 lines of demotic, and the Stele of Canopus with 73; but as the lines on the Rosetta Stone are rather more than double the length of those on the Stele of Canopus, it is pretty certain that each

      p. 109

      , ṭā ānch, giver of life.

      The inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone form a version of a decree of the priesthood assembled at Memphis in honour of Ptolemy V., Epiphanes, King of Egypt, B.C. 195, written in hieroglyphics, demotic and Greek. A facsimile ² of them was published by the Society of Antiquaries ³ in 1802, and copies were distributed among the scholars who were anxious to undertake the investigation of the texts. The hieroglyphic text has been translated by Brugsch in his Inscriptio Rosettana, Berlin, 1851; by Chabas, L’Inscription hiéroglyphique de Rosette, Paris, 1867; and by Sharpe, The Rosetta Stone in hieroglyphics and Greek, London, 1871, etc. The Demotic text has been studied by M. de Sacy, Lettre à M. Chaptal sur l’inscription égypt. de Rosette, Paris, 1802; by Akerblad, Letter à M. de Sacy sur l’inscription égypt. de Rosette, Paris, 1802; by Young, Hieroglyphics (collected by the Egyptian Society, arranged by Dr. T. Young, 2 vols., fol., 100 plates, 1823-1828), pl. x ff.; by Brugsch, Die Inschrift von Rosette nach ihrem ägyptisch-demotischen Texte sprachlich und sachlich erklärt, Berlin, 1850; Salvolini, Analyse Grammaticale Raisonnée de

      p. 110

      différents textes des anciens Egyptiens, Vol. I., Texte hiéroglyphique et démotique de la pierre de Rosette, Paris, 1836. This work was never finished. The Greek text has been edited by Heyne, Commentatio in inscriptionem græcam monumenti trinis titulis insigniti ex Aegypto Londinum apportati, in tom. xv. of Comment. Soc. R. Sc. Gött., pp. 260-280; Ameilhon, Eclaircissements sur l’inscription grecque du monument trouvé à Rosette, Paris, 1803; Drumann, Commentatio in inscriptionem prope Rosettam inventam, Regiomont., 1822; and Drumann, Historisch-antiquarische Untersuchungen über Aegypten, oder die Inschrift von Rosette aus dem Griechischen übersetzt und erläutert, Königsberg, 1823; Lenormant, Essai sur le texte grec de l’inscription de Rosette, Paris, 1842; Letronne, Recueil des inscriptions grecques et latines d’Egypte, Paris, 1842; by Franz in Boeckh, Corpus Inscriptionum Græcarum, t. iii., 1853, p. 334 f, No. 4697, etc.

      The inscriptions upon the Rosetta Stone set forth that Ptolemy V. Epiphanes, while king of Egypt, consecrated revenues of silver and corn to the temples, that he suppressed certain taxes and reduced others, that he granted certain privileges to the priests and soldiers, and that when, in the eighth year of his reign, the Nile rose to a great height and

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