Rosette stone

The rosette stone in the British Museum . Along the upper left edge there is a light streak caused by an ore vein .

The stone of Rosette ( French la pierre de Rosette ) or the stone of Rosetta , also Rosetta stone for short ( English Rosetta Stone ), Arabic حجر رشيد, DMG Ḥaǧar Rašīd , is the fragment of a stone stele (tablet) with a priest decree , which is carved in three blocks of script ( hieroglyphs , demotic , ancient Greek ) with the same meaning. The trilingual inscription from 196 BC BC honors the Egyptian king Ptolemy V and praises him as a benefactor . The stone tablet, named after the place where it was found near the Mediterranean shore, or the body of text, called Inscriptio Rosettana in Latin, contributed significantly to the decoding of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, a picture script. The stone has been in the British Museum in London since 1802 and is still a major attraction in collections from across the British Empire.

State of the stone and the inscription

Possible appearance of the complete stele

The stone is a fragment of what was originally a higher stele made of dark gray granodiorite . The part obtained is 112.3 cm high, 75.7 cm wide and 28.4 cm deep and weighs 762 kg. Later investigations at the site of Fort St. Julien, a fortification near the town of Rašīd (in French Rosette) in the Nile Delta on the Nile branch named after the place east of Alexandria , no further fragments of this stone tablet were found. The original location and size of the entire stele remained unknown.

Due to the damage, none of the three texts has been completely preserved:

About two thirds of the upper text (hieroglyphs) are missing, only the last 14 lines are incomplete. All 14 lines are damaged on the right margin and an additional 12 lines on the left side.
The middle area ( demotic writing ) is best preserved. The upper 14 of the 32 lines are slightly damaged on the right margin.
A corner piece is missing from the lower text (Greek) on the right. Therefore only 27 of the 54 lines are completely legible.

Immediately after the discovery in 1799, French researchers in Egypt made numerous copies of the inscriptions. They colored the dark gray stone with, among other things, printer's ink and thus received mirror-inverted prints on paper. As a result, the stone surface was covered with new dark layers of paint. When the now black stone was opened to the public in the British Museum at the beginning of the 19th century, the surface was sealed with carnauba wax to protect it from the hands of curious visitors. Countless contacts resulted in additional deposits. In 1981, white paint was finally applied to the characters to make them more legible.

When preparing a major exhibition in 1999, it was decided to restore the stone and remove all protective and paint layers. Since then, the original dark gray color can be seen again. A small square area was temporarily left unrestored in the lower left corner with the darkened wax and white filling. At the exhibition in 1999, the stone stood upright again for the first time since ancient times; previously it had been presented lying down. In 2004 the lower left corner was also restored to its original state. The stone was then placed behind glass at its current location in the museum. In order to enable "glass-free" viewing - and to meet the visitor's need to feel the inscriptions - a replica of the stone was placed openly in the immediate vicinity.

The stone from Rosette in the British Museum in 1985.
The stone was still black at the time, the writing was traced in white in 1981. Until the restoration in 1999, the stone was presented lying down.
State from 1999 to 2004. The part of the former protective layer that was not removed at the time can be seen at the bottom left.

discovery

Monument to the Rosetta Stone near the site, Rashid

During Napoleon's Egyptian expedition , the stone was found on July 15, 1799 by a French officer named Pierre François Xavier Bouchard near Rašīd (Rosette) in the Nile Delta . There are two versions of the circumstances under which Bouchard found the stone: One says that his horse tripped over the Rosette stone because it was half sticking out of the ground. According to the second version, Bouchard found the stone when an old wall of the fortress there was demolished.

General Jacques-François Menou initially took him to his home in Alexandria . The stone was examined in detail by scientists who accompanied Napoleon on his campaign. After the defeat of the French, however, they had to hand it over to the British along with other antiquities in 1801. The following year it was first exhibited in the British Museum in London, where it is still today. Therefore, the English name is probably the most common name form today.

Translation of the Egyptian script

The stone contains the same relatively long text three times, and the Greek version is easy to read. That is why the stone - like other trilinguals later - offered a key to deciphering the Egyptian scriptures.

Demotic font
Hieroglyphic writing

Jean-François Champollion

Place des Écritures in Figeac

In 1822, Jean-François Champollion succeeded in deciphering the demotic script and deciphering the hieratic script and hieroglyphs using the stone and other sources . However, he was unable to work on the original, only on a copy of the stone. In memory of this, the sculptor Joseph Kosuth created a greatly enlarged replica of the Rosette stone on the Place des Écritures ("Square of the Scriptures") in Figeac , the French town of Champollion .

After his discovery was published, other hieroglyphs could be deciphered relatively quickly. This made it possible for archaeologists to decipher many more Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions. The Rosetta Stone was one of the triggers of modern Egyptology .

Other researchers

Experts consider the rosette stone

Champollion was not the only one who studied the Rosetta Stone. Some researchers had previously laid the foundations for Champollion's work:

Using the Rosette stone, Silvestre de Sacy tried to interpret the demotic text by graphically comparing it with the Greek part.

The Swede Johan David Åkerblad managed to read the demotic names in 1802, thus continuing Sacy's work.

Thomas Young studied the Rosette Stone for a year. Until the end of his life, he claimed to have deciphered the hieroglyphs and at the same time rejected the results of Champollion's research. In the demotic and hieroglyphic part, he deciphered royal names and terms that appeared several times in the text. However, he did not succeed in understanding the complex grammar of the ancient Egyptian script.

content

The Rosette stone:
hieroglyphics (14 lines) above,
demotic (32 lines) in the middle,
ancient Greek (54 lines) below. Black and white as before the restoration in 1999, but also with a stronger contrast.

Copy of the rosette stone in the King's Library in the British Museum. This was the color of the stone before the restoration in 1999.

The text was written in such a way that three sections of the population could read it: for the priests in Egyptian as God's words in hieroglyphics (14 lines preserved), for the officials in Egyptian in demotic letters (32 lines) and for the Greek rulers over Egypt in ancient Greek in Greek capital letters (54 lines).

The translation of the content always follows the hieroglyphic template whenever possible. There are sometimes slight deviations from the Greek inscription, as certain formulations in the hieroglyphic text have been avoided. For example, the hieroglyphic text has no title " Pharaoh ", but only the usual title "King of Upper and Lower Egypt ". Missing text passages in the hieroglyphic version have been supplemented with the translations of the other versions that have been preserved.

Dating and introduction

" ¹ In 9 am 4. Xanthikos , which is be the month of the Egyptians 18. Peret II (23 March 196 v. Chr.) , The youth who as King of Upper and Lower Egypt on the seat of his father appeared . He is the living image of Amun and the son of Re ; chosen by Ptah . ² As Aetos , son of Aetos, priests of Alexander , Ptolemy I and Berenike I , Ptolemy II and Arsinoë II , Ptolemy III. and Berenike II and the brilliant benevolent god Ptolemy V ; as ³Pyrra , daughter of Philinios , who bore the victory gift of Berenike I and Areia , daughter of Diogenes, ⁴ the carrier of the basket of Arsinoë I and Irene, daughter of Ptolemy, priestess of Arsinoë I, the father-lover, on this day the decree was given to which the Lesonis priests and the other priests who came from the temples of Egypt for Feast ^{5 came} to Memphis . It is the feast of the day when Ptolemy V received the office of prince from his father's hand. All these priests announced the decree. "