Ancient Egypt - Rosetta Stone- ( Rasheed stone )

Ancient Egypt (Rosetta Stone)

 ? What is this stone 

One of the most important relics through which we learned about deciphering the talismans and symbols of the language of our ancestors, the Pharaohs, is a stone

Rasheed that stone found by an officer of the French campaign in 1799 near his town

Rasheed

In view of the importance and grandeur of this discovery a great dispute occurred between the French and the English to obtain

On this stone. In the end, it became the property of the British, according to the Treaty of Arish in 1501, and the Rosetta Stone arrived at the British Museum in 1802 AD

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The Rosetta Stone is a block of basalt, about 113 cm long and 3 cm wide

Its thickness is 2/5 cm, and it is shattered in the sides. This shattering is most apparent in the semicircular top

For this stone

 On the face of the smooth stone he wrote an inscription of books in both ancient Egyptian   and Greek languages, and the text written in hieroglyphs was recorded in two lines

They are the hieroglyphic line, which is the sacred line of the ancient Egyptians, or what is known as the words of the gods

It consists of 14 lines in the upper section of the stone. And the demotic line, which is the popular vernacular line used by the Egyptians in later times, and it includes 32 lines located in the middle section of the stone

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As for the part written in the Greek language, which was the official court language while writing this text, it includes 54 lines located in the lower part of the stone

They began by translating the Greek text, and through it it turned out to be a copy of a decree approved by the General Assembly of Egyptian Priests to celebrate the first anniversary of the coronation of "Ptolemy V" as king of Egypt in 196 BC.

Many scholars have been studying this stone, but the greatest merit in revealing the ancient Egyptian language to the French scientist «Jean-Francois Champollion» and since that time scientists began to translate ancient Egyptian texts, which were previously like talismans that are difficult to understand, all thanks to the Rosetta Stone, which there is A copy of it is in the Egyptian Museum in the ground floor, and the Egyptian Museum was more entitled to the presence of the original stone in it

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The first important steps in the field of hieroglyphic script came at the hands of the English scientist "Thomas Young" who obtained a copy of the Rosetta Stone in 1814 and who assumed that the cartouches in the hieroglyphic text contain royal names. It relied on other similar texts, such as the obelisk found in Philae in 1815 CE, which includes a Greek text and another in hieroglyphs

Despite all previous efforts to decipher the Rosetta Stone, the great credit goes to the French scientist, "Jean-Francois Champollion" (1790-1832)

 

 : Champollion had to face a set of assumptions

Firstly: Do the three lines (hieroglyphs - demotic - Greek) represent three different texts in terms of content, or do they represent one topic, but it was written in the official script (hieroglyphic), and the daily life line prevailing in this period (demotic), then in the language of the Greeks who used to rule Egypt 

Second: Is it related to the structure of the Egyptian language? Is it based on the alphabet of any group of letters, such as living languages, for example? Or was it written in marks  whose phonemic value ranged between two letters, three letters, or maybe more

Third: Did this writing define the vowels? Are the signs graphic or audio? What are the tools used by the Egyptian to determine the meaning of the vocabulary? And did you use provisions and explanatory signs? !! ​​... etc

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These assumptions and questions must have been going on in the mind of "Champollion" when he deals with stone, and he must have drawn his attention that there is more than one line of the ancient Egyptian language, as well as questions such as: Is there a linear relationship between hieroglyphs, hieratic and demotic? Is there a linguistic relationship in the field of grammar and morphology ... etc .. Then these cylindrical signs in the hieroglyphic text surrounding some of the hieroglyphic signs - which we later knew as cartouche - what do they mean

 

Champollion had read the Greek text, understood its content and read the name of the king, Ptolemy, and it was clear that he adopted the method of relying on the names of the names that are not subject to change, and he moved from the assumption that this decree was issued during the reign of King Ptolemy V in 196 BC. It must have been written alongside Greek in two lines of the national language. The name Ptolemy in Greek must be repeated in the hieroglyphic and demotic script. In light of the awareness of "Champollion" that the consonants of proper names do not change no matter how many languages ​​they are written in, in Arabic we find a name such as "Majdi", the first three letters cannot fall off, and also "Hassan" and if some letters are faded, turned over or changed, except The difficulty will be represented in the vowels that determine the pronunciation of the sukun as fatha, dhamma, or kasra. Because the ancient Egyptian language is devoid of vowels, there is a difference in the pronunciation of the consonants, but the Coptic, in which the vowels appeared, decided the matter to a large extent

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Within the Rosetta Stone was a cartouche that was repeated six times, including the name of the king, "Ptolemy," which is the name on the obelisk of "Elephant", in addition to the name "Cleopatra"

"Champollion" recorded the marks contained in the "Ptolemy" cartridge and its number, and did the same for the "Cleopatra" cartridge contained on the stele of Philae, due to the fact that the two names shared the phonemic value of some signs such as Ba, Ta and Lam. He recorded the same two names in Greek and the number of each letter thereof and corresponded to the first mark of the name "Ptolemy" in hieroglyphs and its equivalent in his name in Greek. "Champollion" was able to identify the phonemic value of some hieroglyphic signs depending on their phonemic value in Greek

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And with more comparative studies, it was possible for "Champollion" to identify the phonemic value of many signs. In 1822, "Champollion" announced to the world that he had been able to decipher the ancient Egyptian language codes, and that the word structure in the Egyptian language is not based on an alphabet only, but is based on On signs that give the value to one letter, the other to two, and the third to three, and emphasized the use of the  expressions at the end of the vocabulary to determine the meaning of the word