preview

Rosetta Stone Research Paper

Decent Essays

For hundreds of years, the history of Ancient Egypt remained a mystery to the world. Besides the pyramids, the most baffling secret was unlocking the code of the Rosetta Stone. The finding of this stone proved the key to deciphering the mystery to the Egyptian hieroglyphs. At the time of this discovery, they never imagined it would be one of the greatest discoveries in history.
The Rosetta Stone was an amazing discovery made by a man in Napoleon’s army, back in 1799. The discovery was an ancient basalt slab, carved in 196 BC and bore a decree praising the Egyptian king Ptolemy V. This secret writing consisted of dichoptic, hieroglyphics, and Greek writings. This piece of stone was discovered in Rosetta, a port on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast. The actual stone was part of a wall in a fort. It enabled the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics and currently resides in the British Museum. The translation of the Rosetta Stone was first started by an English polymath Thomas ‘Phenomenon’ Young. A polymath is a person who has a wide range of knowledge and learning. The second breakthrough was achieved by a French linguist Jean-Francois Champollion. These two were able to break the code of the Rosetta Stone. This break-through took many years after the discovery was …show more content…

He came away from this study with thirty-six names and words that were able to be connected to each other. After connecting and comparing the Greek and the demotic script, it was a groundbreaking discovery and soon another man would be able to decipher the hieroglyphic part of the stone. No one knows why he lost interest in the study of Egyptology. It’s said that his interest in so many different studies may have sent him in another direction after his work in the demotic script. (Ray

Get Access