The Rosetta Stone and the race for the hieroglyphs

The Rosetta Stone - one of the most famous archaeological artifacts in the world. Shortly after it was uncovered by French Napoleonic troops in Egypt in 1799 (or 1798?), it was seized by the British and prominently displayed in the British Museum, where it has stood for 200 years. The stone itself is breathtaking, but its importance is more in its inscriptions. What is this stone about? Inscribed on it is the Third Memphis Decree, proclaiming the victory of King Ptolemy V against rebels in 196 B.C. Propaganda for a period ominously called “The Great Revolt“, a period that we knew little about, even less before a 2007 excavation in Tell Timai. To this day, the Rosetta Stone is still one of the most important sources on the Great Revolt. An important memento to be sure. Yet, the popularity of the piece wasn‘t about its content either. Rather, it was about the fact that the inscription was replicated three times - once in Ancient Greek, another in Egyptian Demotic and yet another in Egyptian hieroglyphs. Ancient Greek was well-known at the time but not the other two. This singular discovery led to a literal race to uncover and decipher the once-elusive hieroglyphs. Today, I want to take you through this fantastic race.

Although the stone attracted the interest of many eminent European scholars right from the get-go, the decipherment race quickly became an affair between two men.

Introducing…

Thomas Young was… something. English physician and polymath. One of the brightest of his generation. In a word: a genius. Name a research field. There‘s a good chance that Young not only worked on it but also made a major discovery in it. In the words of Andrew Robinson: “Not only did he make pioneering contributions to physics (the wave theory of light) and engineering (the modulus of elasticity), to physiology (the mechanism of vision) and to Egyptology (the decipherment of the hieroglyphs), but he was also a distinguished physician, a major scholar of ancient Greek, a phenomenal linguist, and an authoritative writer on all manner of other subjects, from carpentry and music to life insurance and ocean tides“. We are talking about someone who tackles the celestial mechanics of Laplace as vacation. Try to beat that resume. His groundbreaking theory of vision particularly deserves its own post but that is a matter for another day. In any case, our hero had his yearly research fads and, in 1814, that was scripts of ancient Egypt. He would learn about the Rosetta Stone that same year and almost immediately jump to working on that puzzle.

Our second competitor, Jean-François Champollion wasn‘t an ordinary man either. Also a child prodigy. Not as famous as Young, but still quite respected in his field of linguistics. For Champollion, Egypt wasn‘t a fad but an obsession. We have evidence of his interest from 1801 - when he was 12 years old. Champollion would learn about the existence of the Rosetta Stone quite early and begin work on and off on it from there. Sadly, he would make no significant progress… until Young‘s arrival.

A millennial puzzle

None of the two even knew at the start if what they needed to decipher was only a written language or a spoken one. Think about the implications of that. Did the characters denote syllables, sounds, words or simply ideas? Before Young and Champollion, it was generally accepted that hieroglyphs denoted ideas. As Diodorus Siculus wrote in the first century BC, Egyptian writing was “not built up from syllables to express the underlying meaning, but from the appearance of the things drawn and by their metaphorical meaning learned by heart.” As you can see, most ancient Greek scholars had no idea what hieroglyphs meant, even at the time the stone was inscribed. More contemporary scholars to Young and Champollion were in the same predicament, even in Egypt itself. Making sense of contradictory and erroneous sources must have been a colossal task for both men.

Young would do so and become the first of our two competitors to make progress in deciphering the script. For that, he used an ingenious trick. Since the name of king “Ptolemaios“ was often repeated in the Ancient Greek text, it was possible to identify with good accuracy what characters corresponded to it in the other two passages. Might seem mundane, but it proved that a singular hieroglyph could represent both a letter or a sound. That was a start. They could now recognize letters. The language itself was still far from their reach. Years away in fact.

I should point out that the competition was quite friendly in nature. Champollion and Young knew each other and knew that they were both working on the Rosetta Stone. In November 1814, Champollion would even request from Young some clarifications on the Rosetta inscription which wasn‘t always that clear in his French copy. Young would gladly oblige, even proposing to share his notes on the subject. Young would continue with a streak of discoveries. In three years, he would identify plural, numerical and feminine markers. In that time, Champollion‘s production would be very sparse. His notes show he was still a bit lost in his search.

The final piece

Sadly, Young would quickly join Champollion and also reach an impasse. The ever-busy Young would quickly focus his attention on a grand tour around Italy. Here was Champollion‘s chance and, by luck, he would capitalize on it. He would find a decisive shortcut in the race. Yes, ancient Egyptian wasn‘t around anymore. Yet, other Egyptian languages were. Maybe, just maybe, he could find a link between the two. He worked tirelessly on Egyptian Coptic (a rarely used language of Egyptian Christians) basing himself extensively on Young‘s work. It took years, but, at last, he would hit the jackpot and found such a link. He was now able to not only link hieroglyphs to ideas but part of hieroglyphs to letters themselves. After that, the decipherment was only a matter of time. From 1821, Champollion would publish progress year after year until 1824 when he released “Precis du Système Hiéroglyphique des Anciens Égyptiens“ - the final account of his decipherment and his crowning achievement. The work was done. Sadly for Young, Champollion would not recognize his contribution making Champollion himself the only father of Egyptology in social memory. That saddened Young very much from what we can gather.

Closing thoughts

In the end, the decipherment of hieroglyphs was a crowning achievement. Attributing it to only two men would be quite unfair to the years of work made by so many other researchers. That would include figures such as Claude Sicard, Ippolito Rosselini and, of course, the 160 scholars of Napoleon‘s Egyptian Expedition. Yet, this short story would have to suffice for today.

Until next time.

References

In the Time of the Rosetta Stone, Jason Urbanus, Archaeology, November/December 2017, Vol. 70, No. 6, pp. 50-55, Archaeological Institute of America.
Cracking Codes and Decipherement - The Rosetta Stone, Richard Parkinson, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1999.
The Last man Who Knew Everything, Andrew Robinson, Pi Press New York, 2006.