Great River

  

"The Nile" in Hieroglyphics 

   Back in the day there were four  centers of civilization, all of them along great rivers: the Nile, the Indus, the Tigris and Euphrates (count as one) and the Yellow River in China. If I had to live in one, I'd choose the Nile. Every spring the Nile would flood and fertilize my fields.  When the water retreated I'd plant my crops.

   After the harvest, my buddies and I would go off and work on the monuments. At night there would be beer. Not bad. I might even have done some hieroglyphics carving. Not that I could read them. That was for the priests.

   The last person who could read hieroglyphics died about the same time the Roman Empire expired. The Arabs later tried to translate them, as did scholars in medieval Europe. That last Egyptian priest had left a dictionary behind but it was full of errors which slowed things down. 

   The big breakthrough came when Napoleon invaded Egypt. It was on this day in 1799 that French soldiers looking for materials to build a fort discovered a stone near the village of Rosetta. The stone was covered with writing on one side. The soldiers' officer realized the stone was important and had it moved to Cairo.

   The stone had three different scripts. The first two looked like different styles of hieroglyphics and the third was an ancient Greek script. Copies of the inscriptions were made and distributed to scholars all over Europe, and the race was on to translate the lost hieroglyphic scripts.

   Two years later the British defeated the French army in Egypt and confiscated the stone. It was placed in the British Museum after the floor was reinforced. The stone weighs almost 1,700 lbs. In the early days, a visitor could touch the stone. Now it's behind a barrier.

     It took many brilliant brains coming at the stone from varying angles to figure out what the stone was saying. The British scientist Thomas Young and the French linguist Jean-François Champollion made the ultimate breakthroughs in 1822. These two initially collaborated, but later a dispute arose among them over who had done the most.

   The writing on the stone was a decree written in 196 BCE announcing the coronation of King Ptolemy V and establishing his divine cult. The stone would have been part of a stele or stone pillar and several would have been placed in temples around the country. The top set of hieroglyphics were for the gods. The second, a speedier hieroglyphic script, was for the priests, and the Greek script was for the commoners, if they could read.

   In 2003 Egypt asked Britain to return the stone. The head of Egyptian antiquities said the stone was an "icon of Egyptian identity," which is ironic since the Ptolemys were descendants of the Greek general who took over Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great. In response to Egypt’s request, the British sent a replica of the stone, along with a note saying that they were taking care of the stone not just for themselves, but for the world.

  In the room at the British Museum where the Rosetta Stone is displayed, there are portraits of Young and Champollion. French visitors complain that the portrait of Young is larger than that of Champollion.  British visitors complain that no, Champollion's portrait is larger than Young's. It turns out the portraits are the same size.

Pedestrian friendly Rosetta Stone at Champollion's birthplace