[MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER 1: We're in
the British Museum, and we're looking at one of
the most important objects in the collection,
the Rosetta Stone. SPEAKER 2: It's in a
glass case, surrounded by people who are
taking pictures of it. SPEAKER 1: People love it. SPEAKER 2: They do. And there's gifts in
the gift shop about it. SPEAKER 1: You can get your
own little Rosetta Stone. SPEAKER 2: Exactly! SPEAKER 1: You can get
Rosetta Stone posters. SPEAKER 2: On a mug. SPEAKER 1: I think you can
get a doormat Rosetta Stone. SPEAKER 2: Yeah. SPEAKER 1: But the stone
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. SPEAKER 2: Hieroglyphics
was the written language of the ancient Egyptians. And until the mid 19th
century, we really didn't know what it said. SPEAKER 1: The language
itself is pictorial. And actually that led to
one of the real confusions, because they think that
early archaeologists believed and linguists believed
that the pictures they could see--
you can make out birds and snakes in various
different kinds of forms-- actually referred in some way to
a specific thing in the world. SPEAKER 2: Right. So if you saw a bird, it
somehow referred to a bird. SPEAKER 1: And in fact,
that's not the case. SPEAKER 2: Right. SPEAKER 1: This is a far
more sophisticated language. SPEAKER 2: 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. SPEAKER 1: And the reason
we were able to do that is because this stone said
the 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 sort of Greek rule in this Hellenistic era,
and that maintained itself in ancient Egypt. SPEAKER 2: Let's remember,
we're talking about 200 BC here. SPEAKER 1: 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 3,000-year-long language. SPEAKER 2: So the
middle section is Demotic, which actually means
the language of the people. And it was this common
language used by the Egyptians. SPEAKER 1: And the top, of
course, was the sacred writing. This was hieroglyphs. SPEAKER 2: Right. SPEAKER 1: And that
was the language that we really couldn't read. SPEAKER 2: Until we
had the Rosetta Stone, and we could see within the
writings 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. SPEAKER 1: In this case,
that would be Ptolemy V. SPEAKER 2: And by
recognizing that ruler's name in these three
different languages, we found a way to begin
to unlock hieroglyphics. SPEAKER 1: Now, that
would take decades. It was an incredibly
difficult task. SPEAKER 2: 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 what I guess
what we would call sort of archaeologist types. And one of those people
who accompanied Napoleon found or came across
the Rosetta Stone. SPEAKER 1: It was
being used as a part of the foundation
of a fort, in fact. SPEAKER 2: And of course,
it would have originally been erected in a temple or
near an ancient Egyptian temple. SPEAKER 1: And I suppose it's
important to say that this is the bottom portion of a much
larger stele, or sort of stone tablet, that would
have been quite tall. SPEAKER 2: So Napoleon
took it back-- SPEAKER 1: Except hold on
a second, because we're not in the Louvre. We're in London in
a British Museum. So how does that work? SPEAKER 2: Well, the
British defeated Napoleon and brought back the stone. And a year or two later,
I think 1801 or 1802, it was brought to
the British Museum, and it's been here ever since. SPEAKER 1: Well, it's clearly
still extremely popular. [MUSIC PLAYING]