How the discovery of the Rosetta Stone finally helped us crack the riddle of the hieroglyphs

The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele, inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BCE, during the reign of Ptolemy V Epiphanes.

It was originally part of a larger stele placed in a temple near the ancient town of Sais, in the Nile Delta region.

The decree is written in three scripts: ancient Greek, Demotic, and hieroglyphs.

Ptolemy V Epiphanes, the ruler responsible for the decree inscribed on the stone, was a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, which had been ruling Egypt since the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE.

The Ptolemies were Greeks who ruled over an Egyptian population, and as such, they adopted many Egyptian customs and practices.

They also had to contend with the constant threat of invasion by foreign powers, including the Seleucids and the Romans.

The decree inscribed on the Rosetta Stone is a royal edict that was issued in Memphis, an important city in Egypt, in 196 BCE.

It was written in three scripts, as mentioned earlier, to ensure that all sections of Egyptian society could read and understand it.

Typically, the ancient Greek script was used for the ruling class, the Demotic script was used in common writing and legal documents, and the hieroglyphs were used for the priesthood and the educated elite.

The decree itself is not particularly significant from a historical perspective, as it deals mainly with the issue of tax exemptions for the priesthood.

However, it is the fact that the decree is written in three different scripts that makes it so important.

The ancient Greek script was already known and understood, but the Demotic and hieroglyphic scripts were not.

This meant that the Rosetta Stone provided scholars with the key to unlocking the secrets of ancient Egyptian writing.

The use of hieroglyphs declined in Egypt during the 4th century CE, as the country was gradually Christianized and the use of Greek and Coptic scripts became more widespread.

By the end of the 4th century, hieroglyphs were no longer being used as a written language.

Over the centuries that followed, knowledge of how to read hieroglyphs was gradually lost, and the script became shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding.

By the medieval period, hieroglyphs were seen as magical symbols with mystical powers, rather than a system of writing with a clear meaning and purpose.

Interest in hieroglyphs was revived during the Renaissance, as European scholars began to study the ancient civilizations of Greece, Rome, and Egypt. 

This would all change when the French general, Napoleon, invaded Egypt in 1798.

He led the republican forces there in an attempt to establish a French presence in the Middle East and undermine British trade interests in the region.

He saw the campaign as an opportunity to extend French influence, open up new trade routes, and establish a base from which he could attack British-controlled India.

Napoleon's invasion was also driven by his interest in Egypt's ancient culture and civilization.

He hoped that the campaign would lead to important archaeological discoveries and establish France as a center of learning and scholarship. 

The Rosetta Stone was rediscovered in 1799 by a French army officer named Pierre-Francois Bouchard, during Napoleon's campaign in Egypt.

Bouchard was part of a group of soldiers who were repairing a fort near the town of Rosetta (now called Rashid) when they discovered the stone, which had been repurposed as part of a wall.

At the time, the significance of the stone was not fully appreciated, and it was treated as just another antiquity.

After the defeat of the French in Egypt, the Rosetta Stone was seized by British forces in 1801 and transported to England.

It was not until a few years later, when scholars began to study the stone in detail, that its true importance was realized.

One of the first scholars to take an interest in the Rosetta Stone was the British polymath Thomas Young.

In 1814, Young published a paper in which he compared the hieroglyphs on the stone with the Greek and Demotic scripts, and he made some important observations.

He noticed that some of the hieroglyphs seemed to be surrounded by a cartouche, or oval shape, and he hypothesized that these cartouches might contain the names of rulers.

Young's work was followed by that of the French scholar Jean-Francois Champollion, who is now considered the father of Egyptology.

Champollion was fascinated by the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone, and he spent years studying them in detail.

He was particularly interested in the cartouches, and he eventually discovered that they did indeed contain the names of rulers.

This allowed him to identify some of the kings and queens of ancient Egypt, and to begin to decipher the hieroglyphic script.

Champollion's breakthrough came in 1822 when he was able to decode the hieroglyphs for the first time.

He used the cartouches on the Rosetta Stone, along with other texts, to identify the names of some of the rulers and then work out the sounds of some of the hieroglyphs.

From there, he was able to piece together the meanings of other hieroglyphs and decipher more texts.

Champollion's decipherment of the hieroglyphs opened up a whole new world of knowledge about ancient Egypt.

For centuries, the hieroglyphs remained a mystery, and scholars had been unable to read them.

Now, for the first time, they could understand the written language of one of the world's oldest and most fascinating civilizations.

Today, the Rosetta Stone is housed in the British Museum in London, and remains an important historical artifact, providing valuable insights into the politics, religion, and culture of ancient Egypt.

Since the early 2000s, Egypt has repeatedly called for the Rosetta Stone’s return, citing its cultural and historical significance to the Egyptian people.