The famous Rosetta stone. Rosetta Stone

Rosetta Stone

But in early XIX century there was a revolution in Egyptology. This is how it all happened.

At the end of the 18th century, after the victorious Italian campaign, Napoleon Bonaparte began to prepare for a new military campaign. He longed for victory over France's main rival, England. However, a direct assault on the island could not be successful, since the English fleet was significantly superior to the French naval forces. Where could England be dealt a crushing blow? Egypt became such a country. Napoleon believed that British troops invading French lands would be destroyed during this military action. In addition, Egypt, which was part of the Ottoman Empire, could become an important strategic base for France from which it would be convenient to attack India, which was at that time a British colony and had just signed a trade agreement with the Egyptian beys (the local rulers of Egypt).

Having secured the support of the Directory, which harbored faint hopes that a military campaign would lead to the death of a potential usurper of power, Bonaparte prepared to carry out this risky undertaking. When he thought about his upcoming military campaign, he could not even imagine what discovery would be made during this expedition. This discovery will be a priceless treasure discovered by the French on Egyptian territory and, in a bitter irony of fate, soon taken from them by the enemy without a single drop of blood.

At dawn on May 19, 1798, several hundred French warships set sail from Toulon. They carried more than 50 thousand soldiers and several hundred horses, ready to take part in the upcoming battles. The ships also carried the best engineers, geologists, archaeologists, mathematicians and poets, selected by Napoleon to create a detailed description of the mysterious Egypt and to educate its inhabitants.

The start of the military campaign was successful, and the French conquered Egypt, celebrating victory after victory, until British Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson defeated the French fleet in the Mediterranean on August 3, 1898, during the Battle of Aboukir. Trapped in African lands, French troops organized a defense while a group of scientists worked hard on various projects. Despite the centuries-old history of Egypt, Europeans knew very little about this country, so French scientists set themselves the task of carefully studying everything connected with it.

In July 1799, during the construction of defensive fortifications of Fort Saint-Julien near the city of Rosetta (or, in other words, Rashid), located near the mouth of the western branch of the Nile Delta, one of the soldiers or engineers discovered an ancient stone in the ruins. There were mysterious inscriptions on it, so it was immediately recognized as a historical object of scientific interest. The found relic was sent to Cairo, to the Egyptian Institute. The scientists who accompanied Napoleon and had by that time dispersed throughout the country almost immediately received an invitation from this institute to come. Perhaps the mysterious stone really hid greatest secrets distant past.

There were three inscriptions on the stone. The top two, hieroglyphs and demotic (a type of cursive script), were in Egyptian; lower, third, - in Greek. Although the number of lines in each of the inscriptions varied, increasing from top to bottom, the three fragments of these inscriptions were the same size. Therefore, experts from the Egyptian Institute suggested that all three of these fragments could contain the same message. The Greek language was well known to them, but people consigned the language of hieroglyphs to oblivion thirteen centuries ago. Nevertheless, scientists hoped that Greek could be used as a basis for recognizing hieroglyphs. And if it is possible to restore the alphabet and grammar of hieroglyphs, then in the end it will be possible to read and understand the meaning of most other hieroglyphic inscriptions on various antique objects. Thus, enormous opportunities and tempting prospects opened up for scientists. There is hope that it will soon be possible to unravel the greatest secrets of the past, and this - with the help of an ancient stone discovered in Egypt!

Europe was quickly overwhelmed by joyful excitement on this occasion. Napoleon himself wanted to look at the Rosetta Stone - Pierre de Rosette, as the French called it - and when he saw it, he was delighted. Printers made impressions from this stone, and one of the scientists made plaster casts; all copies of the stone made were distributed among European scientists.

In Europe, meanwhile, significant changes took place: several countries declared war on France, where confusion and despondency reigned; The Directory, hated by many French, was weak - and Napoleon, seeing that Egypt was completely in his power, decided to return home to his homeland. In August 1799, without even discussing his decision with General Jean Baptiste Kleber, to whom he was transferring command of the French army in Egypt after his departure, Napoleon boarded the Muyron and departed for France. The ship managed to slip unnoticed under the noses of the British soldiers; It is from this moment that the stage of rapid changes in the history of France and its people begins. Napoleon, greeted upon arrival by a storm of applause from his compatriots, led a coup d'état and overthrew the government of the Directory, but British and Turkish troops soon attacked the French army in Egypt. During the siege, in order to avoid capture by enemy troops, the Rosetta Stone was transported from Cairo to Alexandria. However, until the signing of the capitulation agreement in Alexandria, in which France admitted its defeat to Great Britain, the British forced the French to hand over to them all the antiques and all the valuables collected during the years of their stay in Egypt. Needless to say, the British dreamed of taking possession of the Rosetta Stone, which by that time had become widely known throughout Europe.

At first the French refused to voluntarily give up the valuables, but after some time they had to change their minds. General J. F. Menu, who kept the stone in his house, wrote to the English Colonel Christopher Geley-Hutchinson: “Do you want to get it, General? You can do this since you are the stronger of the two of us... Take it whenever you wish.” In September 1801, the English Colonel Tomkins Hillgrove Turner, who took part in the battles in Abukir Bay and Alexandria, came to Menu and took the relic. When a detachment of artillerymen carried the treasure through the streets of Alexandria, French soldiers and city residents shouted curses and insults after them.

During the journey from Egypt to Britain, many Egyptian valuables were damaged. However, because of the special value that the Rosetta Stone represented, Colonel Turner personally escorted the precious cargo during its voyage aboard the frigate. The Rosetta Stone left Egypt and sailed from Alexandria to England in February 1802.

At Deptford the stone was lifted aboard a small ship and carried through the customs posts. It was placed in one of the halls of the Antiquarian Society so that scientists could easily examine and study it, and after some time it was sent to its place of permanent residence - to the museum for public viewing. Turner wrote on this occasion: “I believe that the Rosetta Stone - this antiquarian relic, which made it possible to establish the connection of the Egyptian language with other known languages, will be preserved for a long time. This is a magnificent trophy of the British (I can even say spolia opima - armor taken from an enemy commander, lat.), honorably obtained by them during the war with the French, and not taken from the defeated defenseless inhabitants.” Current location: British Museum, London, UK.

Although the lines written in Greek (like other inscriptions) were somewhat damaged, their meaning was not difficult to understand. This stone was supposedly one of several that were inscribed after a meeting of priests in Memphis. The text on the stone dates back to 196 BC. e. and is an inscription of gratitude addressed to King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. During the Hellenistic period, many such documents circulated within the Greek ecumene in the form of bi- or trilinguistic texts. A comparison of the three text options was supposed to serve as the starting point for deciphering.

The decree carved in stone stated that Ptolemy, who was not yet thirteen years old and who ruled the country under the tutelage of senior advisers, had managed to bring prosperity to Egypt; this message was "carved on steles of solid stone in the form of hieroglyphs, as well as in Egyptian and Greek, and exhibited in all the temples of the first, second and third classes in which the exaltation of the Emperor took place." The main benefits of Ptolemy V are: the decoration and restoration of temples, the release of prisoners, the end of forced recruitment into the navy, the creation of a fair justice system in the country, the prevention of floods by building dams, and the decree on the execution of notorious criminals who committed serious crimes.

However, initial hopes that the Rosetta Stone would become the long-awaited key to deciphering ancient languages were soon dashed. Because several pieces of stone were missing, translating hieroglyphs and demotic writing by comparing these fragments proved extremely difficult. In addition, at that time it had not yet been conclusively proven that all three fragments of text carved on stone contained the same message. Hieroglyphs were the most ancient form of Egyptian writing.

Usually hieroglyphs were carved on stone. When papyrus began to be used as a writing material, hieroglyphs were gradually replaced by other forms of writing; for example, hieratic writing - a cursive form of writing - eventually led to the emergence of an even simpler cursive form of writing, demotic. Thus, the discovery of the Rosetta Stone did not contribute to solving the mystery of ancient Egyptian writing. European scientists have attempted to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs since the 16th century. The German Jesuit Antonasius Kircher, the English Bishop William Warburton and the French scientist Nicolas Frere are the most famous specialists who have worked on this. However, due to the erroneous assumption that hieroglyphs simply represent some system of pictures, they were unable to accurately decipher their meaning.

The meaning of some pictures was quite obvious, such as images of animals, while the meaning of other pictures, in which rather strange and mysterious images were visible, remained unclear. Moreover, there was also no precise evidence that the meaning of the most understandable pictures was exactly the same as the scientists attributed to them. Experts had more and more questions in connection with the study of hieroglyphs. Does one symbol express any one idea or can it express several? Can several symbols express a single thought? In which direction should hieroglyphs be read? What guided the ancient Egyptian scribes when they drew certain hieroglyphs to express meaning?

One of the first scientists who began analyzing the demotic writing of the Rosetta Stone was the famous orientalist Frenchman A. I. Sylvester de Sacy. He managed to correctly understand some words in the text. Later, in 1802, the Swedish scientist I. D. Aherblat deciphered several more symbols; He also managed to understand the meaning of several words written in Coptic. However, this was where Okerblat's discoveries ended; the words he identified were composed of letters of the alphabet, and the scientist himself was firmly convinced that demotic writing was purely alphabetic. This point of view was eventually recognized as erroneous.

Throughout all these years, the mysterious stone was quietly kept in the British Museum, while experts continued to put forward various assumptions about the nature of the mysterious hieroglyphs written on it, trying to find a code to decipher them. The first major discovery along this path was made around 1816 by the English physicist and physician Thomas Young, who also received one of the copies of the Rosetta Stone.

He suggested that hieroglyphs may also have phonetic value, that is, they represent the different sounds of a language. This idea was not new, but previously scientists had not been able to find convincing evidence of this fact. Previously, scientists assumed that the special figurines in which various symbols, depicted royal names. Jung tried to identify the phonetic meaning of the symbols of one such picture, which was present in several places on the Rosetta Stone: he was convinced that they related to the designation of the name of Ptolemy, which was subsequently confirmed by the successful identification of several such symbols. Such pictures were called cartouches.

But despite individual breakthroughs and guesses, the hieroglyphs could not be fully deciphered. Only many years later, one scientist was able to solve the riddle posed by the ancients.

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On a July day in 1799, during Napoleon's Egyptian expedition, while digging trenches in the fortification of Saint-Julien at the mouth of the Nile, near the city of Rosetta, a large black stone was dug out of the ground. The basalt slab, broken at the edges, was covered with incomprehensible writing. “The upper part of it was significantly broken off and contained fourteen lines of hieroglyphs, the figures of which are six lines in size and are located from left to right, following not the direction common to eastern languages, but the direction of our European languages.

The second inscription under the hieroglyphic part is the most complete. It consists of 32 lines of alphabetical writing, which follow in the opposite direction to the upper inscription, and its nature is unknown.

The third part, located directly below the previous two, is a Greek inscription made in archaic letters. It contains 54 lines, the last of which are missing more or less of their part due to the fact that a triangular piece was broken off from one of the lower corners.”

The French officers, however, immediately appreciated their find, and General Menou immediately gave the order to translate the Greek text inscribed on the stone. The Greek inscription, which was easy to read, spoke of the decree of the priests in honor of the Egyptian king Ptolemy Epiphanes (Greek by origin), who reigned in 196 BC. He showed a number of favors to the priests, and in gratitude for this they decided to place his statue next to the statue of the supreme deity, and also to declare the king’s birthday and the day of his accession to the throne as temple holidays.

However, no one could read the other two inscriptions. They knew that these were hieroglyphs from the words of Greek writers. Herodotus, for example, was greatly impressed by the Egyptian way of writing: “The Hellenes write and count from the left hand to the right, and the Egyptians from the right to the left, although they claim that they write to the right hand, and the Hellenes to the left. The Egyptians use two scripts: one is called sacred, the other is popular, simple.” Another Greek scientist, Diodorus, spoke about the same thing, and in the Greek text of the Rosetta Stone it was said that the same content was repeated twice in Egyptian: in sacred hieroglyphs and in demotic (folk) writing.

The Egyptians themselves called hieroglyphics “the letter of the word of God,” that is, they revered it as a revelation from above. Patron of knowledge and writing in Egyptian mythology the great and omnipotent Thoth was considered - the god of the moon, wisdom, counting and writing. He created writing and taught people counting and writing; Egyptian scribes considered him their patron and made libations to him before starting work. He divided time into months and years, he was called the “lord of time”, as he recorded the births and deaths of people and kept chronicles. He ruled “all languages” and was himself considered the language of the god Ptah. The Egyptians called him “an excellent scribe, with clean hands... a scribe of truth, hating sin, guardian of the brush of the Lord of the World, lord of laws.”

The Rosetta Stone was first exhibited at the Egyptian Institute in Cairo, founded by Napoleon to guide exploration of that country. But soon the English fleet defeated the French and threatened to cut off the French troops from France. The remnants of Napoleonic army returned, the British strengthened themselves in Egypt, and under the treaty of 1801 they received the Rosetta Stone. The basalt slab was taken to England and exhibited in the British National Museum.

As soon as a copy of the Rosetta Stone appeared in Europe, scientists from different countries began to study its inscriptions, but the task before them was very difficult. Although the contents of all three inscriptions were known, this was not enough. It was necessary to find out the meaning of each individual sacred hieroglyph, each demotic sign; it was necessary to understand how words were made from these signs, how they were pronounced, and what grammatical rules the Egyptians had.

More than 20 years passed before the correct path to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs was found. At this time, Jean Francois Champollion lived in the French city of Grenoble (with his older brother Jacques-Joseph). Here he became acquainted with the Egyptian collection of the scientist J.B. Fourier, a member of Napoleon's Egyptian expedition. Appointed governor of the Isère department, the French scientist, in addition to his official duties, was busy composing an extensive preface to the famous work “Description of Egypt.”

In the house of J.B. Fourier could see beautiful drawings depicting ancient Egyptian monuments, then unknown to anyone, and there were many genuine things here. The hospitable host willingly talked about Egypt to the elder Champollion, who acted as his house secretary.

One day Jacques-Joseph brought his younger brother with him, and from then on he became “sick” of Egypt. Subsequently, he admitted that already on his first visit to the house of Zh.B. Fourier was overcome by a passionate desire to decipher the incomprehensible Egyptian hieroglyphs.

However, eleven-year-old Jean Francois Champollion understood the difficulty of the goal he had set for himself, and within a few years he studied literally everything that had been written over the last 2500 years about Egypt and hieroglyphs. Even in the ninth year of his life, Jean Francois knew Greek and Latin (having mastered them from the books of his bookseller father), at the age of eleven he read the Bible in the original Hebrew, at thirteen he studied Arabic and soon Coptic, at fifteen he studied Persian and the most difficult languages of the Ancient East. : Zend, Pahlavi and Sanskrit (also Chinese for fun).

Thus, by the age of 25, Jean Francois Champollion was fully equipped to attack the Egyptian hieroglyphs. First of all, he sought to understand what they were. Attempts to decipher them were also made by other scientists, but they discovered the meaning of only individual signs, achieving only partial success.

All scientists of that time believed that only human thoughts, but not the sounds of human speech, could be conveyed using hieroglyphs. J.F. Champollion was the first to understand the fallacy of this view, since he had long been convinced that a significant part of hieroglyphs had a purely sound meaning and that the Egyptians at all times used them to convey not only proper names, but also grammatical endings and even many words.

J.F. Champollion did not yet have evidence to confirm his theory, so he did not yet dare to speak out against the authoritative opinion of contemporary scientists, or even against the evidence of ancient writers. Therefore, he began to analyze the proper names of the Greco-Roman period in the history of Egypt, since the hieroglyphs that made up these names and were enclosed in oval frames (cartouches) were generally recognized to have a purely sound sound.

In September 1822, J.F. Champollion received several copies of the reliefs of Egyptian temples, which were sent to him by his friend, the French architect Guyot. While putting in order his papers, which covered his desk in piles, in one of them he suddenly saw a familiar cartouche, inside of which there were four hieroglyphs. The meaning of two of them was already known: the depicted circle (or disk) was the name of the solar god, who the Egyptians called Ra. It remained to explain the meaning of two other hieroglyphs, which he quite often encountered on other Egyptian inscriptions. And suddenly... mechanically, without even realizing what happened, Zh.F. Champollion completely freely read the name of Pharaoh Ramses and his title: “Horus, son of Osiris, born of Isis.”

It was as if a veil had fallen from the eyes of the young scientist, and at first he didn’t even believe himself. Frantically rummaging through papers, J.F. Champollion grabbed one list after another: here is another of the same name, another, another and another, and he reads them all freely, although they are written differently on different copies.

The correct reading of Egyptian hieroglyphs was confirmed on other cartouches. But here's something else. “Thutmose,” reads J.F. Champollion. This pharaoh reigned three hundred years before Ramses, and here he is, Jean Francois Champollion, freely reads not only the inscriptions of the Greco-Roman period, but also more ancient ones.

After reading the names of the pharaohs, J.F. Champollion proceeded to read the names of gods and individuals, as well as all other words found in ancient Egyptian texts. Egyptian names were very often made up of two words: Ramses - the son of the god Ra, Thutmose - the son of the god Thoth, etc. Reading such names, J.F. Champollion also read the words that made them up, and he often noticed that these same words with exactly the same meaning are found in the Coptic language. Using his alphabet, which gradually expanded and was replenished with new characters, he established how Egyptian words were pronounced. And having learned their pronunciation, he often found their meaning with the help of a Coptic dictionary. “So my system is correct!” - All the happy scientist could exclaim and immediately collapsed from exhaustion on the floor.

Several days passed before the young man recovered from his joyful shock. On September 27, he already gave a report on his discovery at a meeting of the Paris Academy of Sciences. On that dark and rainy autumn day, the famous German scientist and traveler A. Humboldt and Thomas Jung, an outstanding physicist and astronomer, were present at the meeting as guests. The Englishman appreciated the merits of J.F. Champollion in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs and to those who claimed that it was he, Thomas Young, who was the first to begin reading cartouches, he replied: “They say that he used an English key, but the lock was so rusty that an unusually strong hand was needed to turn this key.” "

On that day, September 27, 1822, a new science was born - Egyptology. In 1824 J.F. Champollion published a large work, “Essay on the Hieroglyphic System,” in which he spoke in detail about the nature of hieroglyphic writing.

Discovery of J.F. Champollion is the result of enormous work, intense and titanic work, and not a random smile of fate. If he was lucky, then he was deservedly lucky, for this wonderful scientist devoted his entire life to the study of Ancient Egypt. The God of Writing Thoth entrusted him with preparing the keys to open the doors to the treasury of ancient Egyptian writing through reading the Rosetta Stone. Open them, not hack them...

A unique slab, dotted with unknown embossed symbols, was found by the French during the wars of the Great Commander Napoleon. It was not difficult to guess that these were some kind of writings. All hieroglyphs and signs were arranged in even rows. It was clear that the inscriptions were different written languages. The find was named the Rosetta Stone. Many works are devoted to its study: linguists, physicists, historians, geographers and other areas studying the past of the Earth.

The discovered slab is granodiorite. It was found in Egypt in 1799. There are several texts on the stone. The Rosetta ancient Egyptian stone is processed differently: the front part is polished, and the back part is rough, unpolished. The slab is included in the catalog of things found by the French during the Napoleonic military landings in different countries. The first description of the find is “a stone of black granite, having three inscriptions in hieroglyphs, Egyptian and Greek, found under Rosetta.” Later, the opinion of scientists changed: the slab became a rock of black basalt. In 1999, they analyzed the natural material and determined that the Egyptian Rosetta stone has a slightly different structural composition. This is granodiorite - a rock of igneous origin. Its composition is close to granite and diorite.

Main characteristics of the Rosetta plate:

height – 1 m, 14 cm and 4 mm;
width – 72 cm and 3 mm;
thickness – 27 cm and 9 mm;
weight – 760 kg.

After examining the chips of the slab, scientists came to the conclusion that the piece was part of an entire wall. The damage does not allow the inscription to be completely restored, since the last lines are chipped. There are 3 texts on the plate:

Greek text is 54 stripes of characters. Fully readable 27. Next comes a diagonal split.
Hieroglyphic - 28 rows of characters. All lines are broken and damaged.
Additional text – another 14 or 15 lines.

Scientists suggest that a piece of about 30 cm was broken off and lost. In total, the slab piece was probably higher - 149 cm.

The find was discovered by a member of the French campaign, Bouchard. The soldiers built fortifications and dug trenches. They lifted a huge slab from the ground. It was broken off at the edges. Even the soldiers ignorant of writing understood that they had discovered something unique. Egyptian hieroglyphs were arranged in even rows and evoked respect for the ancestors of even a foreign country. The letters were located in different directions. The Egyptians had the ability to write in two ways: from right to left and vice versa. Herodotus was also amazed at this ability. One method was considered sacred, the other - folk.

The value of a priceless find

In Europe, little was known about the life and culture of Egypt. The country attracted many myths and legends. Scientists from almost all known fields went with Napoleon: linguists, botanists, geologists, meteorologists, geographers. The collection of finds grew and surprised. The Rosetta ancient Egyptian stone connected several eras. One of the inscriptions dates back to 196 BC, during the reign of Ptolemy. Scientists have never gone this far before. Other symbols belonged to the era of cursive writing - demotic writing. The third text had Greek symbols. Scientists assumed that there was one chronicle on the stone different languages, I wanted to unravel, decipher the ancient Greek hieroglyphs.

The Rosetta Stone has become a key, a solution, an assistant to multiple writings and historical facts lying in museums without explanation of their contents.

The inscriptions were of greatest interest. To understand their contents, the outlines were colored with white chalk. The rest of the surface was covered with wax. They tried to protect the slab not only from exposure environment, but also a person. After each touch, fingerprints remained on the inscription. The Rosetta Stone became darker from the wax. Because of this, it was recognized as black basalt. After cleansing, a dark gray tint appeared. The rock began to shine, and veins of a pink hue appeared. To work on deciphering the inscriptions, scientists made plaster casts.

They were transferred to universities in various cities:

Oxford;
Cambridge;
Edinburgh;
Dublin.

Prints of the casts were distributed to European universities.

Read also:

Jean-François Champollion's contribution to the decoding of symbols

Jean-François Champollion is considered among scientists to be the “father of Egyptology.” He managed to understand the written records of ancient Egypt and discovered the secrets of peoples who had gone into the distant past, laying the foundation for Egyptology as a science. His painstaking work lasted many decades. The Rosetta stone of ancient Egypt helped prove the false conclusions of the scientific world of that time. Jean-François studied many works on hieroglyphs and penetrated their secrets.

Demotic writing consisted, according to linguists, of 25 characters. Most believed that Egyptian signs do not express sounds, they are whole words and concepts, that is, hieroglyphs are a pictorial representation of events. Champollion guessed the names Ptolemy and Cleopatra on the slab. The names of the kings became the starting point for reading all the preserved words. A linguist has proven that Greek writing is not drawings. He searched for the truth in papyri, comparing the found designs with the inscriptions on the slab.

The signs on the stone were repeated. Sometimes only 3 hieroglyphs were required for one word. The linguist identified 166 different designs on the stone. The names of rulers and kings were surrounded by a special sign - an oval frame. Its name is cartouche. Francois Champollion came to the conclusion that writing is sound-syllabic.

A French researcher of ancient languages created a dictionary and the first textbook on the grammar of ancient Egyptian writing. But his efforts did not complete the decoding.

There are three types of text chronicles on the stele:

Greek;
demotic;
hieroglyphic.

New styles have also appeared on both sides:

on the left side: "Captured in Egypt by the British Army in 1801";
on the right side: "Given by King George III."

The museum exhibit is considered the most visited among tourists.

Interpretation of the inscriptions on the Rosetta tablet

The deciphering of symbolic writings of antiquity has gone through a complex history. Before the discovery of the slab, linguists did not understand ancient Egyptian symbolism. The lines are the whole history of the country, a legend or a description of a certain period of Egypt. Each line was translated by scientists into its own language, but linguists tried to preserve the era of a mysterious and great power.

The text is a historical document. It is called differently:

resolution;
decree;
agreement;
decree;
tradition.

The slab was created on the anniversary of the coronation. She was already a historical monument. Egyptian hieroglyphs are a gift from the priests.

Secrets from the past

“Epiphanes was crowned, he received the throne of a great country already in an era of prosperity. He needed to control it with the help of a strong religion. The agreement between him and the priests needed to be perpetuated. The slab became the place where an important decree was recorded. On it, ministers of religion were exempt from taxes, but promised constant support to the young pharaoh.”

Historical information obtained during the translation made it possible to collect bit by bit knowledge about the past lost in time. Each line is an honor to the king. As a result, it was decided to write down the decree in different languages, to place steles in each temple in front of the image of the king, the great and eternally living. Wikipedia provides a translation of the first line into Russian: “To the new king, who received the kingdom from his father.”

You can try to recreate the text of ancient rock art, such a figurative recreation of events:

“The young prince inherited part of his father’s kingdom. The glorious father strengthened his power and, like God, became a great ruler, strong as a Bull, bright as the Sun. The prince turned all the peoples of Egypt upside down when he went to war down the country. The troops were greeted as a holiday. One day the prince entered his father’s domain and was captured.

King Ptolemy did a lot of good, kind and valuable things for the people of Egypt. He sought to create a new state, perfect and fair. Seeing the son of the gods Isis and Osiris, Horus, he realized that he needed to pray for shelter for his subjects. He fed everyone, loved them and brought them to the sea. The king went for a swim and showed an example of how to remove the heaviness from skin that had been charred under the hot sun. Next are years of new wars and suffering. King Ptolemy became the first to believe in the power of God and devoted himself to the service of religion. Beautiful temples appeared. The whole country was divided into three kingdoms, distributing power to the sons. The priests sang songs praising the great king.”

The literal translation of scientists proves that the biography of Ptolemy is written on the slab.

Hieroglyphic inscription – decree, excerpts from the king’s speech. The priests carved into stone the ruler's promises to change life, to lead the country out of debt, internecine wars and decline.

The Rosetta Egyptian stone came to Europe and became the property of a museum in England. Visitors can watch it and appreciate the greatness of a power lost in history. The inscription helps to feel how strong a person’s desire is to pass on his knowledge to his heirs, how the masters wanted to perpetuate individual milestones in life. They did not understand the full significance of their work, but they believed in the need to create such products. The Rosetta Stone is the key to the secrets of the past.

No. 145. ROSETTA DECREE

(Ditt., Or. Gr. 90)

The famous trilingual Rosetta inscription was found in 1799 during Napoleon Bonaparte's campaign in Egypt. Based on her study, Francois Champollion began deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. The inscription dates back to 196 BC. e. and dedicated to King Ptolemy V Epiphanes (1). It is a solemn decree of a meeting of Egyptian priests on the occasion of the king's victory over the rebel Egyptians. The inscription contains important data on the economic and political situation in Egypt at the beginning of the 2nd century. Don. e., reflects the beginning of the economic decline of the country, reports the fierce struggle of the oppressed population against the Ptolemies and the solidarity of the Egyptian priests with the latter.
The main text of the inscription was written in Egyptian (the Greek text is a copy).

During the reign of the young (king) and heir of his father in the kingdom, the glorious owner of the crowns; who established order in Egypt; pious towards the gods; victorious over enemies; who improved the lives of people, high priests, soothsayers, priests who gathered from the temples of the country to Memphis before the king for the celebration of accepting the crown of the ever-living Ptolemy, beloved Ptah (2), the god Epiphanes Eucharist (3), which he received from his father, [all these priests], having gathered in the Memphis temple on this very day, decreed:
Since the ever-living king Ptolemy, beloved Ptah, the god Epiphanes Eucharist, born of King Ptolemy and Queen Arsinoe, the Philopator gods (4), showed many benefits to the temples and those who are in them, and to everyone under his royal authority; and since he is a god, descended from a god and goddess (like Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris, who avenged his father Osiris (5)), and being generous towards the gods, he donated the income in the form of money and food to the temples and incurred great costs in order to bring Egypt into a calm state and erect temples;
and he, to the best of his ability, showed philanthropic aspirations and of the incomes and taxes received in Egypt, he completely abolished some, and made others easier, so that the people and all others during his reign would be in prosperity;
and the debts to the royal treasury, which lay on the Egyptians and on the population of other parts of his kingdom and which were very large, he forgave;
as for those in prison and those people against whom trials had long since been initiated, he freed them from all charges;
and since he ordered, in addition, that the income of the temples and the donations that are brought to them every year in the form of food and money, and likewise the gifts due to the gods from the vineyards, gardens and other lands that belonged to the gods in the reign of his father, remained on the same basis;
and since he also ordered regarding the priests, that they should not pay at their initiation more than what had to be paid before the first year of his father's reign; and he exempted the people of the sacred colleges from the annual voyage to Alexandria; then he ordered that no more collection be made for the fleet, and he reduced the amount of linen fabrics donated by the temples to the royal treasury by two-thirds;
and since everything that had previously remained neglected, he put it in proper order, wanting that what is usually done for the gods should be properly arranged;
at the same time, he gave justice to everyone, like the twice great Hermes (6): he ordered that native warriors and other persons returning to their homeland, who were hostile (towards the authorities) during the period of unrest, should remain in owning your property;
and since he also made sure that cavalry and foot forces and ships were sent against the enemies who were marching against Egypt by sea and land, and at the same time incurred great expenses in money and food so that the temples and the entire population of the country were safe ;
and having come to Lycopolis (7), located in the nome of Busiris, which was captured and fortified in order to withstand the siege, and a large quantity of weapons and other equipment was delivered there, since wicked men filled with a rebellious spirit had gathered in this city, who had caused much harm to the temples and the population of Egypt, the king surrounded this city, building around it amazing embankments and walls and digging ditches; and due to the fact that the rise of the Nile in the eighth year was very high, and, as usual, the river threatened to flood the valley, the king held back the waters by closing the mouths of the canals in many places, spending a considerable amount of money on this; Having posted horsemen and foot soldiers to protect them (it is unclear whether the new dams or the rebels) he in a short time took the city by force and defeated all the wicked people in it [who rose up against the god-king], just as before Hermes and Horus, the sons of Isis and Osiris , subdued those who rebelled against them in the same area; As for the leaders of the rebels under his father, who ruined the country and committed injustice in relation to the temples, he, having appeared in Memphis and avenging his father and his crown, punished them as they deserved, when the time came for performing the ceremonies accompanying the adoption crowns;
and since, further, he canceled the debts of the temples to the royal treasury that had accumulated until the eighth year in the form of a very significant amount of food and money; He acted in the same way with regard to payment for linen fabrics that were not submitted to the royal treasury and with regard to the inspection of those fabrics that were delivered before the same deadline; he also freed the temples from the obligation to give artaba (8) [grains] from the arura (9) of the sacred land, and, likewise, a pot [of wine] from the arura of the vineyard;
and since he made many gifts to Apis (10) and Mnevis (11) and other sacred animals of Egypt, much more than previous kings, taking care of everything that concerned these animals; he generously and in a dignified manner gave what was necessary for their burial, as well as funds to the temples specially dedicated to them, along with sacrifices, celebrations and everything else that was required in such cases;
and since he preserved the privileges of the temples and Egypt unchanged and intact in accordance with the laws, and adorned Apeiyon (12) with magnificent structures, bringing into it large quantities of gold, silver and precious stones, and erected temples, sanctuaries and altars; He repaired the [temples] that needed restoration, having the zeal of a beneficent god in everything that concerns the deity; having found out about the most respected temples, he restored them, as befits his reign;
for this the gods granted him health, victory, strength and all other blessings, as well as the lasting possession of the crown by him and his descendants forever and ever - in good time!
[As a result of all this] the priests of all the temples of the country decreed:
To increase as much as possible the honors currently given to the ever-living king Ptolemy, the beloved Ptah, the god Epiphanes the Eucharist, and likewise the honors given to his parents, the gods Philopators, and his ancestors, the gods Euergetes and the gods Adelphi and the gods Soter.
Place in the most prominent place in each temple an image in honor of the ever-living king Ptolemy, the god Epiphanes Eucharist, which will bear the name of Ptolemy, the protector of Egypt, and which should take the place of the most important god in the temple, holding in his hands the weapon of victory, according to the customs accepted in Egypt .
The priests must perform religious service three times a day before these images and dress them in sacred clothes and perform all other ceremonies that are due in this country in solemn honoring of all other gods ...
(The following are other honors that the college of priests decided to bestow on the king.)
This decree should be written down on a stele made of solid stone in sacred writing in the native and Hellenic languages and displayed in every temple of the first, second and third category in front of the image of the ever-living king http://www.detskiysad.ru/raznlit/drevniymir.html.

Also

The Rosetta Stone: translation of the demotic text

The stone was happily found in 1799.

And what is surprising is that the text does not add anything to what Europeans knew about Egypt before its discovery - from Herodotus, Plutarch, etc.

Here are the names and titles:
Egypt, Ptolemy, Ptah, Ra, Amon, Alexander, Berenice, Diogenes, Arsinoe, Horus, Isis, Osiris, Thoth, Apis, Memphis, Nile, etc. (The mysterious Soter from the Russian translation is the Savior).

Everything is clear to anyone who has read the textbook "History" Ancient world"for 5th grade of secondary school.

The Rosetta Stone, a stone slab that provided the key to deciphering Egyptian writing. The circumstances of the find are very curious. In May 1799, Napoleon's fleet sailed from Toulon to crush the British military forces in Egypt.

Napoleon hoped in this way to create a threat to Britain's position in India, and his plan almost succeeded. Many famous scientists of that time - geographers, geologists, botanists and linguists - went on the expedition with the army, since very little was known about Egypt in Europe at that time.

During the almost three-year French occupation of the Nile Valley, exceptionally rich information was obtained about this country and a huge collection of Egyptian antiquities was collected, among which the most remarkable item is the Rosetta Stone. It was found by a member of the French expedition, Bouchard, during the construction of Fort Saint-Julien in Rosetta, a city located near the mouth of the western branch of the Nile. When the French were defeated in 1801, the stone was sent to England along with countless other treasures, which formed the basis of the Egyptian collection of the British Museum.

The basalt Rosetta Stone contains a long decree dating back to 196 BC, during the reign of Ptolemy Epiphanes, and written, firstly, in hieroglyphs (sacred signs used by priests), and secondly, in demotic script (a cursive script widespread in that era ) and thirdly, in Greek. The Greek inscription could be easily read by scholars, and the other two parts of the inscription contained the text of the same decree. Researchers rightly hoped that if the Egyptian writing turned out to be based on a phonetic system, then by comparing its language with the modern Coptic language - the heir of the Egyptian one - they would receive the key to deciphering it.

Hieroglyphics presented more difficulties. The key to understanding picture writing was lost in Roman times, and the last attempt to decipher it was made by the Jesuit scientist A. Kircher in the 17th century. The first steps towards deciphering the hieroglyphic inscription on the Rosetta Stone were made by the English physicist T. Young, who was able to decipher some of the signs by again turning to the various titles of the pharaoh. But only the French scientist Champollion managed to completely unravel the texts, who showed that the system of hieroglyphs largely consisted of alphabetic and other phonetic signs. By 1822, he was able to read and translate many other hieroglyphic texts and, by the time of his untimely death, had managed to compile not only a fundamental dictionary, but also a grammar of the ancient Egyptian language.

The role of the Rosetta Stone in the rediscovery of the ancient Egyptian language has to some extent distracted attention from its significance as a historical document. It represents a decree issued by the Memphis priests in honor of Ptolemy Epiphanes (c. 205–181 BC) in gratitude for the generosity he had shown towards the temples and priesthood at his accession and coronation; it contains excerpts from the appeals with which the king addressed the people, trying to change the clearly unfavorable situation that had developed by that time in Egypt.

The population was crushed by debts, suffered from robbery and internecine wars, fields were abandoned, and the irrigation system, so important for the country, fell into disrepair. The priests express gratitude not only on their own behalf, but, as they repeatedly repeat, on behalf of “all people” for the measures taken by Ptolemy (which, unfortunately, turned out to be unsuccessful) - such as amnesties, forgiveness of arrears and exemption from conscription. The decree ends with the decision that its text should be engraved on “solid stone” and imprinted in “hieroglyphs, demotic and Greek script.”

195 years ago, Jean-François Champollion spoke about reading the Rosetta Stone. September 27, 1822 is considered the date of birth of the science that was later called Egyptology. On this day in Paris, Jean-François Champollion is a young professor and corresponding member of the Academy of Inscriptions and belles lettres(then an academic meeting that united humanists involved in history, archeology and linguistics) made a report at the Academy in which he stated that he was able to read the hieroglyphs carved on the famous Rosetta Stone.

The Egyptologist finally understood how Egyptian hieroglyphs were structured just a week earlier, on September 14. On the morning of that day, he received a letter from a friend with a picture of a hieroglyphic inscription found in Abu Simbel. Comparing what he was able to find out about the inscriptions carved on the Rosetta Stone, he realized that the hieroglyphs could be read. And the main thing is that I understood how.

Let us recall that the Rosetta Stone is a monolithic slab of black basalt, on which Egyptian priests carved three texts identical in meaning, but in different scripts - one was ancient Greek, the other two were written in hieroglyphic writing and the so-called demotic, a simplified version of hieroglyphic writing. The slab was accidentally found near the town of Rosetta (now Rashid) by Napoleon's soldiers during the Egyptian campaign in 1799. And if demotic writing could still be deciphered someday, no one had such hope about the hieroglyphic text - it was believed that Egyptian hieroglyphs were signs-symbols, the meaning of which had long been lost and, therefore, they could never be read.

Champollion thought differently. WITH early childhood he showed extraordinary abilities for languages, and since his older brother, Jacques-Joseph, was interested in the history of ancient Egypt and its writing, this hobby passed on to his younger brother.

Jean-François learned about the discovery of the Rosetta Stone at the same time it was discovered. As the scientist recalled, he read about the discovery in a magazine at the age of nine. And even then, having heard that deciphering his hieroglyphs was impossible, he publicly announced at school that he would definitely read them. He really began to study the artifact about ten years later - in any case, it was then that he began to discuss the Rosetta Stone in correspondence with his brother.

Start adult life Champollion's life was quite stormy, since it was the time of the Napoleonic Wars and the subsequent Restoration. Champollion, like his brother, was a convinced Bonapartist, so he experienced both successes and hardships - after the overthrow of Bonaparte, he was deprived of his professorship and exiled to Grenoble without a livelihood. However, no matter what happened to him, Jean-Francois was always absorbed in the study of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The first thing that was found out during the analysis of the inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone is that some signs of the demotic script resemble characters of the Coptic alphabet. He then proved that these coincidences were not accidental. However, the hieroglyphs eluded researchers for a long time. At first he mistakenly believed that they stood for words, not letters, but this was a dead end. Subsequently, Champollion realized that Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is a mixture of symbols and letter signs.

On September 14, when Champollion made his discovery, he saw in the sketches sent to him hieroglyphs in a cartouche, that is, surrounded by an oblong outline with a horizontal line at the bottom. And in Ancient Egypt, as has already been established, the Egyptians circled the name of the pharaoh with a cartouche.

Champollion was the first to figure out the name of Pharaoh Ramses. The word in the cartouche began with the image of the Sun, which he took to be the letter "r", since the word for "sun" in Coptic sounds like "re". The word ended with an image that had been deciphered earlier and displayed the sound mms. The researcher remembered the inscription in another cartouche, Rosetta. Having begun to examine it, Champollion saw that the hieroglyph mms was also at the end of the word, and it began with an unsolved image of an ibis. But ibis sounds like “that” in Coptic. And this means that the name of the pharaoh here is Thutmose.

For short time, remaining before the report at the Academy of Inscriptions, Champollion managed to analyze the remaining hieroglyphs of the Rosetta Stone, fortunately he knew them almost by heart. He eventually found that most hieroglyphs consisted largely of almost alphabetic characters.
In subsequent years, Champollion tried his best to read all the existing ancient Egyptian inscriptions. In search of new hieroglyphic texts, he visited Italy, where, in particular, he discovered in one of the collections an inscription similar to Rosetta - with Greek, demotic and hieroglyphic texts. In this inscription he was able to read two names - Cleopatra and Caesarion, her son from Julius Caesar.

The main journey in his life was a trip to Egypt as part of a Franco-Tuscan expedition, which lasted for two years - 1828 and 1829. Looking for inscriptions, he visited almost the entire country - Rosetta, Cairo, the temples of Luxor and Karnak. He later claimed that, to his joy, his method of phonetic reading of hieroglyphs during this time did not give a single failure; every day he better understood the patterns of hieroglyphic writing and increased the number of readable characters.

He became, without exaggeration, a celebrity, he was greeted with honor everywhere, a street in Champollion’s hometown of Figeac was renamed in his honor. He had everything - except health. At the age of forty, the famous explorer died from a whole bunch of diseases.

Greek text

Richard Porson's proposed reconstruction of a lost Greek text (1803)
Ancient Greek was widely known to scholars, but the details of its use during the Hellenistic period as the official language of Ptolemaic Egypt were less known. In April 1802 Stephen Weston orally presented English translation Greek text at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries. Meanwhile, two of the lithographic copies made in Egypt reached the Institute of France. There, the librarian and antiquarian Gabriel de La Porte du Theil began work on translating the Greek. Almost immediately, by order of Napoleon, he was sent to another place. He left his unfinished work to Hubert Pascal Ameillon, who in 1803 produced the first published translation of the Greek text, in Latin and French, to provide widespread. At Cambridge, Richard Porson worked on the lost Greek text in the lower right corner. He created a supposed reconstruction, which soon spread throughout the antiquarian community.

Demotic text

The secrets of the demotic text were discovered quite quickly. At the time of the stone's discovery in Egypt, Swedish diplomat and scholar David Åkerblad was working on little-known texts that had recently been found in Egypt (today known as demotic). The French orientalist Sylvestre de Sacy received one of the first lithographic prints of the Rosetta stone from the French Minister of the Interior Jean Anthony Chaptal in 1801. Sasi realized that the middle text had the same writing system as the texts Åkerblad was working on. Sasi and Åkerblad set to work focusing on the middle text and believing that the writing system was alphabetic.

They tried to find repeating groups of signs in the demotic inscription, spaced apart from each other by a distance proportional to the distance between the corresponding similar names in the Greek text. In 1802, Sylvester de Sacy reported to Chaptal that he had successfully identified five names ("Alexander", "Alexandria", "Ptolemy", "Arsinoe" and Ptolemy's nickname "Epiphanes"), and Åkerblad published an alphabet of 29 letters that he had identified from Greek names into demotic text. However, they were unable to identify all the other symbols in the demotic text, which is now known to include ideographic and other symbols along with phonetic ones.

Hieroglyphic text

Deciphering the hieroglyphic version of the text seemed to be a difficult task for scientists, since at that time hieroglyphic writing was almost unexplored. There was a lot of controversy about the very meaning of hieroglyphs - whether they are phonetic (that is, the hieroglyph denotes sounds, not objects) or not. An important contribution to the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs was made by the French scientist Jean-François Champollion, who first moved from the idea of the symbolism of hieroglyphs to the fact that only foreign names and names are written using hieroglyphs as sounds, and only then, after comparing hieroglyphs and the Coptic language, he established their relatedness, which was a giant step forward for Egyptology. Thus it was established that late Egyptian hieroglyphs were phonetic. It should be added that the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the stone go from right to left, which is traditional for ancient Egyptian writing. However, in other inscriptions there is writing from top to bottom and from left to right. The order of reading hieroglyphs (from left to right or from right to left) can be determined by where the heads of people and animals that are hieroglyphs are directed - they always look at the beginning of the line. If you need to read from top to bottom, the text will be divided into columns by long straight lines.

What is it: The Rosetta Stone is a fragment of an ancient Egyptian stele made of granodiorite, on which is carved a sacred decree establishing the cult of the 13-year-old Egyptian king Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The inscription was made in 196 BC. The text is written in three alphabets: there are ancient Greek scripts, ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and demotic script (cursive Egyptian script). The stone was discovered in the coastal town of Rosetta (El Rashid) during the Egyptian campaign of Napoleon I in 1799. The combination of alphabets on the stone allowed Jean-François Champollion (1790–1832) to begin reading Egyptian hieroglyphs in the 1820s.

Why is this interesting for science: During the Hellenistic period, there was a merger of Greek and Egyptian cultures. Greek was the official language of the court, and Egyptian hieroglyphs were used only by Egyptian priests in formal contexts. Demotic writing was used for everyday purposes. The trilingual decree is the embodiment of a multicultural society. And although the stone is named after the place in which it was found, it is unknown in which temple the stele was originally located. The inscription on the stone is quite common for the period, but the stone has acquired extraordinary historical significance within the framework of modern European Egyptology. He helped scientists understand that graphic hieroglyphs were not just symbolic images, but also a system of signs illustrating the sound of the ancient Egyptian language, which was already familiar from its medieval descendant - the Coptic language.

Why should I know this: The decipherment of hieroglyphs revealed the linguistic and textual culture of an entire civilization that kept historical, literary and administrative records for more than three thousand years. Although other inscriptions and factors also played an important role in the original decipherment, the Rosetta Stone captured public attention and became a symbol of all attempts to study other cultures and even other worlds. It had such an impact that even the space probe launched by the European Space Agency in 2004 was named Rosetta. The Rosetta Stone is the most popular exhibit in the British Museum.

Return to Egypt

For the first time, claims to the Rosetta Stone were made by the head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt, Zahi Hawass, at the 250th anniversary of the British Museum, calling the artifact “an icon of Egyptian identity.” Two years later, he listed objects important to the Egyptian heritage, which, in addition to the Rosetta Stone, included a bust of Nefertiti (Egyptian Museum Berlin), a statue of Hemiun (Museum Römer and Pelizaeus in Hildesheim, Germany), the Dender Zodiac (Louvre, Paris), a bust of Ankhaf (English .) (Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), USA).

In 2005, the British Museum donated a full-size copy of the Stone to Egypt, which was installed near the discovery site. In November 2005, Hawass requested that the Stone be provided for a period of 3 months for an exhibition in Egypt, again recalling the final return of the artifact. In 2009, Hawass promised to forget demands for return if the British Museum put the stele on temporary display during the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in 2013. The request was rejected.

Severe opposition to the idea of repatriating monuments prevails among national museums cultural heritage humanity, explaining that "objects acquired in earlier times must be viewed in the light of the different perceptions and values reflecting that early era" and that "museums do not serve the citizens of one nation, but the people of all nations."

Named after the Rosetta Stone:

Rosetta Stone - software helping to learn a foreign language
Dynamic Rosetta translator designed to run Power PC on Apple computers
International Association of Linguists and Native Speakers Project "Rosetta"
Distributed computing project Rosetta@home
Rosetta Stone - British gothic rock band
Rosetta Stoned - American track music group Tool.
Rosetta - a spacecraft with a lander named after the island of Philae
BBC: Ancient Egypt. Great discovery. Part 5: The Mystery of the Rosetta Stone - documentary (Russian version)
Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone is a video game for a number of gaming platforms

source https://masterok.livejournal.com/4420812.html