Before 1300: Ancient and Medieval History
Ptolemaic: Rosetta Stone Rosetta Stone, 196 B.C.E., granite, 114.4 cm x 72.3 x 27.9 cm or 45 x 28.5 x 11 inches, Ptolemaic Period (British Museum, London). Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker
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- We're in the British Museum, and we're looking at
- one of the most important objects in the collection --
- The Rosetta Stone.
- It's in a glass case, surrounded by people
- who are taking pictures of it...
- People love it!
- They do. There's gifts in the gift shop about it...
- You can get your own little Rosetta Stone,
- You can get Rosetta Stone posters, on a mug,
- I think you can get a doormat Rosetta Stone.
- But, the story itself is historically incredibly important.
- It allowed us for the first time to be able to understand,
- to be able to read, to be able to translate hieroglyphics.
- Hieroglyphics was the written language of the Ancient Egyptians.
- And, until the mid-ninteenth century,
- we really didn't know what it said.
- The language itself is pictorial,
- and actually that led to one of the real confusions,
- because I think that early archaeologists believed,
- and linguists believed that the pictures they could see,
- you can make out birds and snakes,
- and various different kinds of forms,
- actually referred in some way to a specific thing in the world.
- Right, so if you saw a bird, it somehow referred to a bird.
- And, in fact, that's not the case.
- This is a far more sophisticated language.
- And the Rosetta Stone was really what helped them
- to understand that Egyptian hieroglyphics are not pictorial,
- they're not pictographs.
- They're actually phonetic.
- So, all those things that look like pictures actually represent sounds,
- and that's how they were able to finally figure out
- and translate ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.
- And the reason we were able to do that was because this stone
- said that same statement three times in three different languages.
- So, the three languages are: Ancient Greek, which is down at the bottom.
- Now, that was the language of the administration,
- that was the language of government.
- And the reason for that is because
- Alexander the Great had conquered Egypt,
- and had set up this Greek rule in this Hellenistic era,
- and that maintained itself in Ancient Egypt.
- Let's remember we're talking around 200 B.C. here.
- Which is actually getting close to the end of the life of hieroglyphics, as well.
- It would last for another few hundred years before it died out completely.
- So, this is really the tail end of this 3000 year long language.
- So, the middle section is Demotic,
- which actually means the Language of the People,
- and it was this common language used by the Egyptians.
- And the top, of course, was the sacred writing.
- This was hieroglyphics.
- And that was the language that we really couldn't read
- until we had the Rosetta Stone.
- And we could see within the writing of the Rosetta Stone,
- cartouches, which held the names of the rulers.
- Cartouches are a kind of oblong shape
- that contains the name of the ruler.
- In this case that would be Ptolemy the Fifth.
- And by recognizing that ruler's name, in these three different languages,
- we found a way to begin to unlock hieroglyphics.
- Now, that would take decades. It was an incredibly difficult task.
- And we haven't even talked yet about how this was found!
- Napoleon has his army in Egypt,
- and Napoleon's brought with him some,
- I guess we would call, sort of, archaeologist types.
- And, one of those people who accompanied Napoleon,
- found, or came across, the Rosetta Stone.
- It was being used as a part of a foundation of a fort, in fact.
- And of course, it would originally have been erected in a temple,
- or near an ancient Egyptian temple.
- And, I suppose it's important to say that
- this is the bottom portion of a much larger stele,
- or a sort of stone tablet, that would have been quite tall.
- So, Napoleon took it back...
- Except, hold on a second, because we're not in the Louvre,
- we're in London , in the British Museum.
- So, how does that work?
- Well, the British defeated Napoleon, and brought back the Stone,
- and a year or two later, either 1801 or 1802,
- it's brought to the British Museum and it's been here ever since.
- Well, it's clearly still extremely popular.
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