Information on the Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone is a stone tablet that provided the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. Discovered in 1799 by engineers in Napoleon's army, it has since become a by-word for any key to unlocking a mystery, deciphering a code or translating a language.
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Physical Description
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The Rosetta Stone is a basalt tablet 114.4 cm high, 72.3 cm wide, 27.9 cm thick, weighing 760 kilograms. Its surface bears three different scripts: Greek, demotic and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Each script says the same thing. The stone was inscribed in 196 B.C.
Discovery of and Removal from Egypt
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Pierre Francois-Xavier Bouchards found the Rosetta Stone at Rosette (el-Rashid) in the Nile Delta of Egypt in 1799. The stone was housed at the Institut d'Egypte in Cairo until the defeat of Napoleon's army, and then taken by the English to London in 1802. It has been housed in the British Museum since then.
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Significance
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Prior to discovery of the Rosetta Stone, the ability to read Egyptian hieroglyphs had been lost. Fortunately, the Rosetta Stone bore three types of writing: Ionian Greek (an administrative script), demotic (a secular script), and Egyptian hieroglyphs (a script used for priestly decrees). By identifying phonetic characters in the demotic script and comparing these with the Greek, scholars were able to identify proper names in the hieroglyphic script, thus providing the basis for reading the phonetic characters of Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Translation
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Thomas Young was the first scholar to prove that the elongated circles (called cartouches) in the Egyptian hieroglyphs contained the phonetic characters of a proper name, in this case Ptolemy. Working from Young's discovery, Jean-Francois Champollion was able to provide a full-translation of the hieroglyphs in 1822.
Cultural References
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The name "Rosetta Stone" is used to refer to any tool that provides significant assistance in the process of translation or in the deciphering of codes.
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