The Rosetta Stone
On July 2, 1798, the French army landed in Egypt under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte. Egypt was an ally of England and the French emperor tried with this expedition to strike his mortal enemy hard.
Following the emperor traveled scientists with the task of discovering and studying the remains of ancient Egyptian civilizations.
One day in August 1799, Pierre Francois Xavier Bouchard, a French officer, was excavating for the construction of Fort Julien in an area near the town of Rosetta. During the excavations a stone with mysterious engravings is brought to light. Intrigued, he ordered the stone to be transported to a place where experts who had come following Napoleon could study it calmly. At first glance, it can be seen that in the lower part of the stone there are Greek engravings, in the central part in demotic character, the cursive language of the Egyptians already partially known, while in the upper part there are hieroglyphs. The Hellenists who know the first text well understand immediately that this is the translation of the other two. It was nothing but a decree issued by a pharaoh, Ptolemy V Apifane who had ruled in 196 BC. This discovery will have incredible repercussions for the future of archaeology. In fact, before this discovery, the main problem faced by archaeologists with Egyptian discoveries was precisely not understanding the hieroglyphs. They could neither date nor attribute the paternity of temples and tombs to the various pharaohs. With the Rosetta stone all this will be possible.
Unfortunately for the French, however, the discovery was theirs but the stone was taken to London in England. Napoleon abandoned his troops to certain defeat and although the French general Menou loaded the stele onto one of the French ships the plenipotentiary Hamilton discovered it and loaded it onto a ship bound for London.
Menou made various casts of this stele and one of these came into the hands of Champoleon who decided to show it to his fifteen-year-old cousin: Champollion.
Comparing a copy of the three texts, a Swedish diplomat expert in oriental languages, Akerbald, demonstrated that the names of the kings, in the Greek part, appear in the same position in the demotic text and advanced with some certainty the hypothesis that the three sections were the translation of a single text: a protocol of the priestly college of Memphis, dated 27 March 196 BC, which exalted Ptolemy V Epiphanes for the subsidy granted to a temple. It was a blessing that in Ptolemaic times, when government functions were all entrusted to Greeks and Greek was the official language, public deeds should have bilingual publication, in Egyptian and Greek. The Rosetta Stone appears to be an easy gateway to the Egyptian language, since one of the three inscriptions is in the well-known Greek language. However, not everything turned out to be so easy, in fact the hieroglyphics came with too many signs to be an alphabetic writing and too few instead to express an ideographic writing.
The young Champollion entered this climate of uncertainty and lack of progress in decoding the Stele. Like many young people of the time, Champollion did not study at school but was followed by a tutor who introduced him to many linguistic subjects. One of his dreams was to decipher the Egyptian language and put Egyptian history in order.
However, his work, like that of the English scientist Thomas Young and the Swedish Akerblad, went very slowly. One of the big problems that he had to encounter was the political one. Supporter of Bonaparte when the latter was sent to the island of Elba, he fell into disgrace.
Moving to Paris, he did not give up, and followed the developments of his competitors with great interest, the most feared was the Englishman Young who had a great preparation. After twenty years none of the three, including the Swedish Akerblad, was able to solve the enigma of the Rosetta Stone. The critical point that united everyone was understanding whether the Egyptian writing was phonetic or ideographic, did it express a sound or an idea?
The climate among the scientists was incandescent, to understand the level of tension just read the few lines of this letter:
I think, sir, that you are further along and that you read a large part, at least, of the Egyptian text. If I have one piece of advice for you, it is not to communicate your discoveries too much to Monsieur Champollion. It could happen that he would later claim priority. He tries in several places of his work to make believe that he has discovered many words of the Rosetta inscription. I fear this is quackery and I have good reason to think so.
This letter was addressed to the Englishman Thomas Young.
Who wrote it? One could think of a bitter enemy and instead with great amazement it was written by the same master of Champollion: Sylvestre de Sacy.
Finally we arrive at the fateful September 14, 1822. Champollion had a brilliant intuition: what if hieroglyphs were a set of phonetic and ideographic signs? He ran to his brother with a bundle of papers shouting "Je tiens l'affaire" (I have found the solution).
Comparing a copy of the three texts, a Swedish diplomat expert in oriental languages, Akerbald, demonstrated that the names of the kings, in the Greek part, appear in the same position in the demotic text and advanced with some certainty the hypothesis that the three sections were the translation of a single text: a protocol of the priestly college of Memphis, dated 27 March 196 BC, which exalted Ptolemy V Epiphanes for the subsidy granted to a temple on the occasion of the first anniversary of his coronation. The text reports all the benefits rendered to the country by the king, the taxes he repealed, and the consequent decision of the clergy to erect a statue in his honor in all the temples of the country, and golden statues to be placed next to those of the gods, and to organize celebrations in honor of the king. It also stipulates that the decree be published in the writing of the words of the gods (hieroglyphics), in the writing of the people (demotic) and in Greek. The Greek part begins like this:
Basileuontos tou neou kai paralabontos tén basileian para tou patros...(The new king, having received the monarchy from his father...)
Champollion understood that the cartouche (part of the text surrounded and highlighted by a line) in the hieroglyphic text contained the name of the pharaoh, and was reported in the same way in the underlying Greek text. After many years of tiring and hard work, through careful comparisons with other texts, the scholar was able, in 1822, to decipher the hieroglyphics based on another language used in late Egyptian: Coptic. The merit was obtained by a subsequent discovery which took place in 1815, when two small obelisks were found on the island of Philae: they were a second stele as there was engraved the double hieroglyphic and Greek text; furthermore, the name of another pharaoh Ptolemy (Evergetes II) appeared with his wife Cleopatra III. Champollion, reading the Greek text, had noticed that an oval ring called a cartouche recurred eight times, containing numerous hieroglyphics and including two signs that are not read: a definite one indicating the male or female category to which the name belongs and another indicating the ending of the same.
Champollion put the letters of the name reported in order, observing the position of the ideograms, under the corresponding signs of the cartouche and was able to understand which reading of our alphabet corresponded to each sign. The same did for Cleopatra, the other name depicted. He therefore perceived that for each hieroglyph a word did not necessarily correspond; furthermore they were not pictograms or ideograms as they did not exclusively represent objects or concepts but within an identical text, they could have both symbolic and phonetic value.
Champollion transcribed an alphabet which he later published: Le Lettre à M. Dacier. The foundations for the emergence of a modern science of Egyptology are laid.
In 1824 Champollion wrote a book with his discoveries. In 1825 he visited Italy and copied the texts of the hieroglyphics contained in Turin, but he immediately realized that the material available to him was not sufficient to improve his knowledge. Together with Ippolito Rosellini, a Tuscan scholar passionate about the discoveries of Champollion, he left for Egypt. The two traveled taking notes and drawing the wall paintings of Ancient Egypt. Upon his return, his abilities were finally recognized. Elected a member of the Academie, a chair of Egyptology at the College de France was created especially for him.
Soon his too much work irreparably undermined his physique; he died very young in Paris at the age of 42.
