Fall Asleep While Learning About The Rosetta Stone

In this episode of the I Can’t Sleep Podcast, fall asleep while learning about the Rosetta Stone. This episode explores the rich history of where the Rosetta Stone was found and how it eventually came to be in the British Museum. I won’t spoil anything, but hopefully, you’ll learn a little more about this fascinating topic before the dulcet tones of my voice lull you to sleep. Happy sleeping!

Transcript

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast,

Where I read random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice.

I'm your host Benjamin Boster,

And today's episode is from a Wikipedia article titled Rosetta Stone.

The Rosetta Stone is a stele or granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt on behalf of King Ptolemy V's epiphanies.

The top and middle texts are in ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts respectively,

While the bottom is in ancient Greek.

The decree has only minor differences across the three versions,

Making the Rosetta Stone key to deciphering the Egyptian scripts.

The stone was carved during the Hellenistic period and is believed to have originally been displayed within a temple,

Possibly at Sais.

It was probably moved in late antiquity or during the Mamluk period,

And was eventually used as building material in the construction of Fort Julian near the town of Rashid,

Rosetta,

In the Nile Delta.

It was found there in July 1799 by French officer Pierre-Francois Bouchard during the Napoleonic campaign in 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 hieroglyphic script.

Lithographic copies and plaster casts soon began circulating among European museums and scholars.

When the British defeated the French,

They took the stone to London under the terms of the Capitulation of Alexandria in 1801.

Since 1802 it has been on public display at the British Museum almost continuously,

And it is the most visited object there.

Study of the decree was already underway when the first complete translation of the Greek text was published in 1803.

Jean-François Chapagnon announced the transliteration of the Egyptian scripts 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,

1814,

And that phonetic characters were also used to spell native Egyptian words,

1822-1824.

Three other fragmentary copies of the same decree were discovered later,

And several similar Egyptian bilingual or trilingual inscriptions are now known,

Including three slightly earlier Ptolemaic decrees,

The Decree of Alexandria in 243 B.

C.

,

The Decree of Canopus in 238 B.

C.

,

And the Memphis Decree of Ptolemy IV,

Circa 218 B.

C.

Though the Rosetta Stone is known to be no longer unique,

It was the essential key to the modern understanding of ancient Egyptian literature and civilization.

The term Rosetta Stone is now used to refer to the essential clue to a new field of knowledge.

The Rosetta Stone is listed as a stone of black granodiorite bearing three inscriptions,

Found at Rosetta in a contemporary catalogue of the artifacts discovered by the French expedition and surrendered to British troops in 1801.

At some period after its arrival in London,

The inscriptions were colored in white chalk to make them more legible,

And the remaining surface was covered with a layer of carnauba wax designed to protect it from visitors' fingers.

This gave a dark color to the stone that led to its mistaken identification as black basalt.

These additions were removed when the stone was cleaned in 1999,

Revealing the original dark gray tint of the rock,

A sparkle of its crystalline structure,

And a pink vein running across the top left corner.

Comparisons with the Clem Collection of Egyptian rock samples showed a close resemblance to rock from a small granodiorite quarry at Gebel Tengar on the west bank of the Nile,

West of the Elephantine in the region of Aswan.

The pink vein is typical of granodiorite from this region.

The Rosetta Stone is 1,

123 mm high at its highest point,

757 mm wide,

And 284 mm thick.

It weighs approximately 760 kg.

It bears three inscriptions,

The top register in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs,

The second in the Egyptian Demotic script,

And the third in Ancient Greek.

These three scripts are not three different languages,

As is commonly misunderstood.

The front surface is polished and the inscriptions lightly incised on it.

The sides of the stone are smoothed,

But the back has only roughly worked,

Presumably because it would have not been visible when the stelae was erected.

The Rosetta Stone is a fragment of a larger stelae.

No additional fragments were found in later searches of the Rosetta side.

Owing to its damaged state,

None of the three texts is complete.

The top register composed of Egyptian hieroglyphs suffered the most damage.

Only the last 14 lines of the hieroglyphic texts can be seen.

All of them are broken on the right side,

And 12 of them on the left.

Below it,

The middle register of Demotic text has survived best.

It has 32 lines,

Of which the first 14 are slightly damaged on the right side.

The bottom register of Greek text contains 54 lines,

Of which the first 27 survive in full.

The rest are increasingly fragmentary due to a diagonal break at the bottom right of the stone.

The full length of the hieroglyphic text and the total size of the original stelae,

Of which the Rosetta Stone is a fragment,

Can be estimated based on comparable stelas that have survived,

Including other copies of the same order.

The slightly earlier Decree of Canopus,

Erected in 238 BC during the reign of Ptolemy III,

Is 2,

190 mm high and 820 mm wide,

And contains 36 lines of hieroglyphic text,

73 of Demotic text,

And 74 of Greek.

The texts are of similar length.

From such comparisons,

It can be estimated that an additional 14 or 15 lines of hieroglyphic inscription are missing from the top register of the Rosetta Stone,

Amounting to another 300 mm.

In addition to the inscriptions,

There would probably have been a scene depicting the king being presented to the gods,

Topped with a wing disk as on the Canopus stelae.

These parallels and a hieroglyphic sign for stela on the stone itself.

The stelae was erected after the coronation of King Ptolemy V,

And was inscribed with the decree that established the divine cult of the new ruler.

The decree was issued by a congress of priests who gathered at Memphis.

The date is given as 4 Xenikos in the Macedonian calendar,

And 18 Makir in the Egyptian calendar,

Which corresponds to the 27th of March,

196 BC.

The year is stated as the 9th year of Ptolemy V's reign,

Which is confirmed by naming four priests who officiated in that year.

Aetos,

Son of Aetos,

Was priest of the divine cults of Alexander the Great,

And the five Ptolemies,

Down to Ptolemy V himself.

The other three priests named in turn in the inscription are those who led the worship of Berenike Eurydice,

Wife of Ptolemy III,

Arsinoe Philadelphos,

Wife and sister of Ptolemy II,

And Arsinoe Philopator,

Mother of Ptolemy V.

However,

A second date is also given in the Greek and hieroglyphic texts,

Corresponding to the 27th of November,

197 BC,

The official anniversary of Ptolemy's coronation.

The Demotic text conflicts with this,

Listing consecutive days in March for the decree and the anniversary.

It is uncertain why this discrepancy exists,

But it is clear that the decree was issued in 196 BC,

And that it was designed to re-establish the rule of the Ptolemaic kings over Egypt.

The decree was issued during a turbulent period in Egyptian history.

Ptolemy V Epiphanes,

The son of Ptolemy IV Philopator and his wife and sister Arsinoe,

Reigned from 204 to 181 BC.

Political forces beyond the borders of Egypt exacerbated the internal problems of the Ptolemaic kingdom.

Antiochus III,

The Great,

And Philip V,

The Macedon,

Had made a pact to divide Egypt's overseas possessions.

Philip had seized several islands and cities in Caria and Thrace,

While the Battle of Panium,

198 BC,

Had resulted in the transfer of Cilice Syria,

Including Judea,

From the Ptolemies to the Seleucids.

Meanwhile,

In the south of Egypt,

There was a long-standing revolt that had begun during the reign of Ptolemy IV,

Led by Horwennifer and by his successor Anquennifer.

Both the war and the internal revolt were still ongoing when the young Ptolemy V was officially crowned at Memphis at the age of twelve,

Seven years after the start of his reign,

And when,

Just over a year later,

The Memphis Decree was issued.

Stele of this kind,

Which were established on the initiative of the temples rather than that of the king,

Are unique to Ptolemaic Egypt.

In the preceding pharaonic period,

It would have been unheard of for anyone but the divine rulers themselves to make national decisions.

By contrast,

This way of honoring a king was a feature of Greek cities.

Rather than making his eulogy himself,

The king had himself glorified and deified by his subjects,

Or representative groups of his subjects.

The decree records that Ptolemy V gave a gift of silver and grain to the temples.

It also records that there was particularly high flooding of the Nile in the eighth year of his reign,

And he had the excess waters dammed for the benefit of the farmers.

In return,

The priesthood pledged that the king's birthday and coronation days would be celebrated annually,

And that all the priests of Egypt would serve him alongside the other gods.

The decree concludes with the instruction that a copy was to be placed in every temple,

Inscribed in the language of the gods,

Egyptian hieroglyphs,

The language of documents,

Demotic,

And the language of the Greeks,

As used by the Ptolemaic government.

Securing the favor of the priesthood was essential for the Ptolemaic kings to retain effective rule over the populace.

The high priests of Memphis,

Where the king was crowned,

Were particularly important,

As they were the highest religious authorities of the time and had influence throughout the kingdom.

Given that the decree was issued at Memphis,

The ancient capital of Egypt rather than Alexandria,

The center of government of the ruling Ptolemies,

It is evident that the young king was anxious to gain their active support.

Thus,

Although the government of Egypt had been Greek-speaking ever since the conquests of Alexander the Great,

The Memphis decree,

Like the three similar earlier decrees,

Included texts in Egyptian to show its connection to the general populace by way of the literate Egyptian priesthood.

There can be no one definitive English translation of the decree,

Not only because modern understanding of the ancient languages continues to develop,

But also because of the minor differences between the three original texts.

Older translations by E.

A.

Wallace Budge,

1904 and 1913,

And Edwin R.

Bevan,

1927,

Are easily available but are now outdated,

As can be seen by comparing them with the recent translation by R.

S.

Simpson,

Which is based on the Demotic text and can be found online,

Or with the modern translations of all three texts,

With introduction and facsimile drawing,

That were published by Kirk and Andrews in 1989.

The stele was almost certainly not originally placed at Rashid,

Rosetta,

Where it was found,

But more likely came from a temple site farther inland,

Possibly the royal town of Sice.

The temple from which it originally came was probably closed around A.

D.

392,

When Roman Emperor Theodosius I ordered the closing of all non-Christian temples of worship.

The original stele broke at some point,

Its largest piece becoming what we now know as the Rosetta Stone.

Ancient Egyptian temples were later used as quarries for new construction,

And the Rosetta Stone probably was reused in this manner.

Later it was incorporated in the foundations of a fortress constructed by the Mamluk Sultan Khaytbey to defend the Bolbatayn branch of the Nile at Rashid.

There it lay at least another three centuries until its rediscovery.

Three other inscriptions relevant to the same Memphis decree have been found since the discovery of the Rosetta Stone.

The Nubayra stele,

A stele found in Elephantine and Nub-Taha,

And an inscription found at the Temple of Philae,

On the Philae obelisk.

Unlike the Rosetta Stone,

The hieroglyphic texts of these inscriptions were relatively intact.

The Rosetta Stone had been deciphered long before they were found,

But later Egyptologists have used them to refine the reconstruction of the hieroglyphs that must have been used in the lost portions of the hieroglyphic texts on the Rosetta Stone.

French forces under Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt in 1791,

Accompanied by a corps of 151 technical experts.

On the 15th of July 1799,

French soldiers were strengthening the defenses of Fort Julian,

A couple of miles northeast of the Egyptian port city of Rosetta,

Modern-day Rashid.

Lieutenant Pierre-François Bouchard spotted a slab with inscriptions on one side that the soldiers had uncovered when demolishing a wall within the fort.

He and De Paule saw at once that it might be important and informed General Jacques-François Meunier,

Who happened to be at Rosetta.

The find was announced to Napoleon's newly founded Scientific Association in Cairo,

In a report noting that it contained three inscriptions,

The first in hieroglyphs and the third in Greek,

And rightly suggesting that the three inscriptions were versions of the same text.

The report,

Dated the 19th of July 1799,

Was read to a meeting of the Institute soon after 25th of July.

Bouchard,

Meanwhile,

Transported the stone to Cairo for examination by scholars.

The discovery was reported in September in Courrier de l'Egypte,

The official newspaper of the French expedition.

The anonymous reporter expressed a hope that the stone might one day be the key to deciphering hieroglyphs.

In 1800,

Three of the commission's technical experts devised ways to make copies of the texts on the stone.

One of these experts was Jean-Joseph Marcelle,

A printer and gifted linguist,

Who was credited as the first to recognize that the middle text was written in the Egyptian Demotic script,

Rarely used for stone inscriptions and seldom seen by scholars at that time,

Rather than Syriac,

As had originally been thought.

It was artist and inventor Nicolas Jacques Conte who found a way to use the stone itself as a printing block to reproduce the inscription.

A slightly different method was adopted by Antoine Galland.

The prints that resulted were taken to Paris by General Charles Dugas.

Scholars in Europe were now able to see the inscriptions and attempt to read them.

After Napoleon's departure,

French troops held off British and Ottoman attacks for another 18 months.

In March 1801,

The British landed at Aboukir Bay.

Manu was now in command of the French expedition.

His troops,

Including the commission,

Marched north towards the Mediterranean coast to meet the enemy,

Transporting the stone along with many other antiquities.

He was defeated in battle,

And the remnant of his army retreated to Alexandria,

Where they were surrounded and besieged,

With the stone now inside the city.

Manu surrendered on the 30th of August.

After the surrender,

A dispute arose over the fate of the French archaeological and scientific discoveries in Egypt,

Including the artifacts,

Biological specimens,

Notes,

Plans,

And drawings collected by the members of the commission.

Manu refused to hand them over,

Claiming that they belonged to the Institute.

British General John Helley Hutchinson refused to end the siege until Manu gave in.

Scholars Edward Daniel Clarke and William Richard Hamilton,

Newly arrived from England,

Agreed to examine the collections in Alexandria and said they had found many artifacts that the French had not revealed.

In a letter home,

Clarke said that we found much more in their possession than was represented or imagined.

Hutchinson claimed that all materials were property of the British crown,

But the French told Clarke and Hamilton that the French would rather burn all their discoveries than turn them over,

Referring ominously to the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.

Clarke and Hamilton pleaded the French scholars' case to Hutchinson,

Who finally agreed that items such as natural history specimens would be considered the scholars' private property.

Manu quickly claimed the stone,

Too,

As his private property.

Hutchinson was equally aware of the stone's unique value and rejected Manu's claim.

Eventually,

An agreement was reached,

And the transfer of the objects was incorporated into the Capitulation of Alexandria,

Signed by representatives of the British,

French,

And Ottoman forces.

It is not clear exactly how the stone was transferred into British hands,

As contemporary accounts differ.

Colonel Tompkins Hillgrove Turner,

Who was to escort it to England,

Claimed later that he had personally seized it from Manu and carried it away on a gun carriage.

In a much more detailed account,

Edward Daniel Clarke stated that a French officer,

A member of the Institute,

Had taken him,

His student John Cribbs,

And Hamilton secretly into the back streets behind Manu's residence and revealed the stone hidden under the protective carpets among Manu's baggage.

According to Clarke,

Their informant feared that the stone might be stolen if French soldiers saw it.

Hutchinson was informed at once and the stone was taken away,

Possibly by Turner and his gun carriage.

Turner brought the stone to England aboard the captured French frigate HMS Egyptine,

Landing in Portsmouth in February 1802.

His orders were to present it and the other antiquities to King George III.

The King,

Represented by War Secretary Lord Hobart,

Directed that it should be placed in the British Museum.

According to Turner's narrative,

He and Hobart agreed that the stone should be presented to scholars at the Society of Antiquaries of London,

Of which Turner was a member,

Before its final deposit in the museum.

It was first seen and discussed there at a meeting on 11 March 1802.

In 1802,

The Society created four plaster casts of the inscriptions,

Which were given to the universities of Oxford,

Cambridge,

And Edinburgh,

And to Trinity College,

Dublin.

Soon afterwards,

Prints of the inscriptions were made and circulated to European scholars.

Before the end of 1802,

The stone was transferred to the British Museum,

Where it is located today.

New inscriptions,

Painted in white on the left and right edges of the slab,

Stated that it was captured in Egypt by the British Army in 1801 and presented by King George III.

The stone has been exhibited almost continuously in the British Museum since June 1802.

During the middle of the 19th century,

It was given the inventory number EA24.

EA standing for Egyptian Antiquities.

It was part of a collection of ancient Egyptian monuments captured from the French expedition,

Including a sarcophagus of Nectanebo II,

EA10,

A statue of a high priest of Amun,

EA81,

And a large granite fist,

EA9.

The objects were soon discovered to be too heavy for the floors of the Montague House,

The original building of the British Museum,

And they were transferred to a new extension that was added to the mansion.

The Rosetta Stone was transferred to the Sculpture Gallery in 1834,

Shortly after Montague House was demolished and replaced by the building that now houses the British Museum.

According to the Museum's records,

The Rosetta Stone is its most visited single object.

A simple image of it was the Museum's best-selling postcard for several decades,

And a wide variety of merchandise bearing the text from the Rosetta Stone or replicating its distinctive shape is sold in the Museum's shops.

The Rosetta Stone was originally displayed at a slight angle from the horizontal and rested within a metal cradle that was made for it,

Which involved shaving off very small portions of its sides to ensure that the cradle fitted securely.

It originally had no protective covering,

And it was found necessary by 1847 to place it in a protective frame,

Despite the presence of attendants to ensure that it was not touched by visitors.

Since 2004,

The conserved stone has been on display in a specially built case in the center of the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery.

A replica of the Rosetta Stone is now available in the King's Library of the British Museum without a case and free to touch,

As it would have appeared to early 19th-century visitors.

The Museum was concerned about heavy bombing in London towards the end of the First World War in 1917,

And the Rosetta Stone was moved to safety along with other portable objects of value.

The stone spent the next two years 15 meters below ground level in a station of the Postal Tube Railway at Mount Pleasant near Holborn.

Other than during wartime,

The Rosetta Stone has left the British Museum only once,

For one month in October 1972 to be displayed alongside Champollion's Letter of the Louvre in Paris on the 150th anniversary of the letter's publication.

Even when the Rosetta Stone was undergoing conservation measures in 1999,

The work was done in the gallery so that it could remain visible to the public.

Prior to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and its eventual decipherment,

The ancient Egyptian language and script had not been understood since shortly before the fall of the Roman Empire.

The usage of the hieroglyphic script had become increasingly specialized even in the later pharaonic period.

By the 4th century AD,

New Egyptians were capable of reading them.

Monumental use of hieroglyphs ceased as temple priesthoods died out and Egypt was converted to Christianity.

The last known inscription is dated to 24th of August 394,

Found at Philae and known as the Graffito of Esmad Akom.

The last Demotic text,

Also from Philae,

Was written in 452.

Hieroglyphs retained their pictorial appearance and classical authors emphasized this aspect in sharp contrast to the Greek and Roman alphabets.

In the 5th century AD,

The priest Toropalo wrote Hieroglyphica,

An explanation of almost 200 glyphs.

His work was believed to be authoritative,

Yet it was misleading in many ways,

And this and other works were a lasting impediment to the understanding of Egyptian writing.

Later attempts at decipherment were made by Arab historians in medieval Egypt during the 9th and 10th centuries.

The study of hieroglyphs continued with fruitless attempts at decipherment by European scholars.

The discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799 provided critical missing information.

Gradually revealed by a succession of scholars,

It eventually allowed Jean-François Champollion to solve the puzzle that Kircher had called the Riddle of the Sphinx.

Reviews

Oh thank you. Nothing was working but this did. 🙏

Interesting but dull if that makes sense! I was still thinking about Dancing With the Stars 😂😂 so I heard more than usual, but never heard the end, thankfully. I didn’t know how Rosetta Stone (language tutorial) got its name (I assume) and now I know. Useful information for Trivia or Jeopardy perhaps? 😁
Thank you!! 🤗🤗🤗

Who would of thought a story about a rock would make you so sleepy....truly effective Ben. Well done!

It was a K.O. in the first round. I didn't even remember the topic this morning.

It was so good at putting me asleep, I’m going to listen to you reading it again! Thank you Ben!