How Did We Really Crack The Rosetta Stone?

[Music] 2022 marks 200 years since Jean Francois champagne famously cracked the code he deciphered ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs now to mark this huge anniversary the British museum have opened a new exhibition taking you through the story of this significant breakthrough and today I received special access to come and have a look at it [Music] earlier this year I visited Egypt to see some of its most stunning ancient sites up close looking at individual hieroglyphs and the amazing information they have revealed about this land's distant past ever since I've been Keen to learn more about how these symbols were deciphered it's an incredible story that the British museum tells in their newest exhibition from ancient papyri to Medieval Arab manuscripts the exhibition is filled with wonderful objects that each have their own story to tell and right at its heart is one of the world's most famous artifacts the Rosetta Stone the great Keystone of it all curator Dr Elona Rogowski is going to tell me more Elona first off it's absolutely wonderful to be here and to see such an incredible object so well up close in your new exhibition but first off we've all heard the name Rosetta Stone but what exactly is it the Rosetta Stone is estila that was probably set up in the temple the text described on it is a Priestly decree that was issued in on the set on the 27th of March 196 BC by a council of priests who come together in the city of Memphis and the King following me the fifth comes to Memphis to join the priests on this occasion Ptolemy V was a Greco Macedonian king who ruled Egypt between 204 and 180bc although his Reign would be plagued by conflict both inside and outside of Egypt his subjects honored him as the beneficient it tells us basically in three different scripts two languages that the king should be treated as a God because he did so many good deeds for the country and the end of every text of every of the word of each version tells us that it had to be carved in Hearthstone which apparently happened and it had to be set up in all the important temples of Egypt and to Alona we've got these three different texts here what languages are these at the bottom we have ancient Greek which is a language that was known at the time of Discovery in 1799 and so that's why the Hope immediately rose that perhaps this could be used to decipher the two Egyptian scripts in the middle we have domotic which was the language and the script of the time the Daily Language and at the top we have hieroglyphs which is basically reflecting the same language as the motive the early 2nd Century BC was an extraordinary time in Egypt's long and fascinating ancient history this was when Egypt was ruled by the so-called ptolemaic Dynasty Greco Macedonian rulers who reigned over this land in the wake of Alexander the Great's death ruling from the rich and vibrant city of Alexandria the ptolemy's reigned over a land where both Greek and Egyptian was spoken all along the River Nile during the second century BC Egypt was very much a multicultural and a bilingual country so those who could read and write would probably have been able so it to do so in in Egyptian and in Greek and especially the officials who were working in the centralized Administration they would probably have worked in Greek but could have been speaking Egyptian at home so we have this very interesting interesting interaction between these languages we think that the text probably originally is a Greek text because to honor the Pharaoh as a God was is not something very Egyptian we don't find this kind of decree in earlier periods so we think that the type of text was imported from Greece and then translated into two Egyptian language to give it a local veneer if you want this is a good example of Hellenistic rule accounts coming to ptolemaic Egypt isn't it yes yeah the wording of the Rosetta Stone gives us an invaluable insight into how the ptolemies ruled Egypt but another great part of this object's story is how it was found so how was this Stone discovered the stone was discovered in the foundations of a building of a fort in present-day Rashid a city that the French called rosette little Rose and it was reused as a building block in a way we don't know when this happens so the original place where the stone would have been set up is unknown to us we we have we can make suggestions but it was really Rashid present day Rashid where the stone was found and immediately upon Discovery it was realized that this could potentially be the key to the settlement so it was immediately assumed that the stone was an important object the stone was initially discovered by the French but following the defeat of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt it was handed over to the British as part of the capitulation of Alexandria transported to Britain by sea the stone was placed in the fledgling British museum in 1802. crowds quickly flocked to see it could this be the object that would finally allow people to crack the mysterious hieroglyphs the challenge ahead was a huge one but so were the potential Rewards and many would pick up the gauntlet so it was immediately a very exciting object so as I mentioned it was realized that it could be the key to decipherments so immediately the French took copies of the Rosetta Stone and sent them across Europe in many countries in the world actually Scholars started to work simultaneously on the Rosetta Stone and gradually we have Jean Francois Jean Pollo and Thomas Young from England leading that race Thomas Young was a British polymath a master of many academic trades and the last man who knew everything according to his biographer based the other side of the English Channel in France was an expert linguist these two figures would be the titans of the great race to decipher hieroglyphs a race which began with the Rosetta Stone we started with the royal names the names of the Pharaoh which is written in this elongated awful that cartoon yes so that's the name of the king Ptolemy told me the fifth and the ancient Egyptians wrote foreign names phonetically which means one sound one letter in in a way alphabetically so the scholars could start with those letters and create a kind of alphabet of about 20 26 letters that could then be used to read other parts of the text and so in the whole race to decipher hieroglyphs how significant is this particular object is the Rosetta Stone well it's it's extremely significant because it accelerated the race um it finally gave the scholars the bilingual text that they needed already towards the end of the 17th century many scholars sat if only we had a longer bilingual text in a language that was known we could then understand at least the content of of hieroglyphs so because we have the Greek we can understand at least the content of the text the difficulty was that Greek is an alphabetic language and ancient Egyptian is not it has alphabetic letters but it also has many more signs many more hieroglyphs that cannot be read alphabetic and it's it's a mixed hybrid system and it took 22 years for Scholars to really understand that of course the scholars used a lot of other objects which aren't on show some of them are on show in the exhibition but Rosetta Stone really was was the starting point of everything once the Rosetta Stone was discovered and copies of its bilingual inscription were shared across Europe the great race to decipher hieroglyphs was on so Elona the Rosetta Stone that's the starting gun and the race to decipherment is on and we have this incredible object right in front of us here what exactly is this it's part of a long Papyrus it's book of breathing as we now know so it's one of the guides to the afterlife champagne of course didn't know that at the time he studies this Papyrus because he wants to look at other objects in addition to the Rosetta Stone he finds Rosetta Stone very difficult he says to his brother I cannot make sense of any of it so I'm going to try to look at other objects and this Papyrus was brought to Paris by vivandanol who's one of the scholars who had joined Napoleon's Army and what you can see is in addition to some colorful vignettes is the text that of course was of prime importance to champagne and it's written in hierarchic which is also a handwritten version of hieroglyphs but it's not demotic and so he made the mistake of comparing this text with the middle part of the Rosetta Stone which of course also didn't work because they're basically two different scripts used for two very different purposes at this point heretic was used for religious man manuscripts whereas the multi was used for day-to-day speech so he couldn't really match the two for champoglio the lack of progress he made with this object was gut wrenching unable to make sense of either this Papyrus or the Rosetta Stone the great scholar rapidly started to lose hope how does this affect champagne he was devastated in a way he writes to his brother that he wants to give up he's not going to bother with hieroglyphs or demotic anymore he wants to learn Coptic which is the later phase of Egyptian language but written in a in an alphabetic script and at the time Coptic was still spoken and was still used in the Coptic church and he becomes friends with Coptic monks in Paris and so he says here we have the language still living so if I learn Coptic I will at least have the vocabulary to understand perhaps the words that are behind the hieroglyphs so that's the next step as it were it is yes and this will allowed him to understand the older manuscripts which were written Arabic Coptic because he was already fluent in Arabic so he had access to certain manuscripts that's most of the scholars before him didn't have champollion's decision to learn Coptic would ultimately give him the edge in the great disciplement race against the likes of Thomas Young one object that he had very limited access to was the Rosetta Stone itself with the Napoleonic Wars raging in the early 1810s British and French relations were at a dismal low but nevertheless cross-channel communication between the likes of young and champollion continued evidenced through an extraordinary letter now Elona this is absolutely incredible here you've got correspondence between these two Titans of the disciplement race yes so champoyo actually never saw the real Rosetta Stone we think and he's working from copies that were circulating in in Paris and he complains quite a lot about the quality of those copies and at a certain point in 1814 he writes to the Royal Society and he asks for a new copy of the Rosetta Stone the letter is passed on to Thomas Young who's the Secretary of the Royal Society shampooyo didn't know that at the time but Thomas Young receives the letter and tries to answer as as good as possible and he drafts this answer on the same letter that champagne sent him how interesting is that's young so that's champollignon's original letter there I can see words like rosette Elona and also uh kiaf laplude a difficulty I'm guessing that's emphasizing that he's having difficulties at the moment with his copies of the Rosetta Stone yes so he's again uh not sure whether his copies are accurate enough whether they are good enough that he's that he's reading the text well so he's saying that he has two copies one is a facsimile um that was part of an engraving and the other one was actually the engraving um that later appears in the description so that's engraving of the Rosetta Stone was already circulating before the description of Egypt was published and he asked specifically in this letter yeah to to check a few words because perhaps they are not very clear in the in the copy that he's working with and so how does young respond to this letter this is a draft of a letter that was eventually sense which we don't have anymore that's why this is so valuable to have this draft and also you can see that Thomas Young writes a few of the words that champagne is asking for in the multic in the draft so he is checking um the words that champagne is asking for and yeah this is a kind of friendly correspondence between the two because so often we associate champaleon and young as being these great rivals in this hardly race but here they're helping each other out with the Rosetta Stone yes so it will take a few years before Champion really gets a new copy of the Rosetta Stone but at least he tries to help at this point in 1814 we're still early in the race later they get into contact more often and there is a bit of tension between them later on but at this early point in time not yet and learning what's also so interesting is that letter there it's dated to 1814. this is before Waterloo it's still the time in Napoleonic Wars and still you have this correspondence between the British and the French in academic circles yes this was the case from from the very beginning when the Rosetta Stone was discovered when France and Britain were not in on the best terms but on a scholarly level um yeah Scholars were communicating with each other and regardless of political developments that's also why this is really beautiful is that there's always so many different parts to the story it's fascinating to see first hand friendly correspondence written by Young and champoglio more than 200 years ago as the Napoleonic Wars raged bringing you so much closer to the Geniuses themselves over the following eight years both young and shampolio would strive to crack the hieroglyphic code slowly but surely more information came to light copies of more inscriptions were shared papers were published breakthroughs were made on the Rosetta Stone Thomas Young correctly presumed that each symbol within the Cartouche of King Ptolemy had a phonetic value basically that each symbol had a different sound but young didn't quite translate the correct sound value for each of the symbols the spotlights thus turned to a reinvigorated champoglio who taking advantage of his Newfound understanding of Coptic worked tirelessly to put in place the final pieces of this great linguistic puzzle finally on the 14th of September 1822 champagne cracked the hieroglyphic code he got up from his desk ran down the corridor according to the story and burst into his brother's office shouting jitian lafair look I've got it and then he fainted when he came round a little while later he published this the letter A monsieur dakier had done it he had finally deciphered the ancient Egyptian language controversially opting not to acknowledge Thomas Young and his work in the letter Sean paulion took the glory he had made the ultimate breakthrough he would be remembered as the man who deciphered hieroglyphs and this Great quest to crack the code had all started just over 20 years earlier with the discovery of the Rosetta Stone or had it now Elona it's important to highlight isn't it although the Rosetta Stone is incredibly significant that's not year zero in the disciplement story is it there are people who are fascinating in deciphering this ancient language for centuries before the stone well it starts in Egypt itself in the first place of course because Egyptians and and other Arab Travelers in the medieval periods who went to Egypt were intrigued and inspired by the hieroglyphs they saw on Temple walls and on the walls of tombs and on objects that were just standing around and they tried to give their own interpretations to hieroglyphs they started to decipher themselves they started to identify individual signs as you can see in some of the manuscripts so actually Elona looking at all of these objects the story of deciphering hieroglyphs it's not just 20 years long it's more than a thousand years long yes in a way this is true it started already of course in Egypt itself and um Arab medieval Scholars and and Coptic monks also made huge contributions on which later Scholars will build and one of the very important contributions is that they acknowledge that Coptic contained the remnants of ancient Egyptians and as Arabic becomes more widespread in Egypt these Coptic monks feel are afraid that they're losing their language and they start to copy manuscripts from Arabic into Coptic and thereby preserving some of the knowledge of of these texts and we can see a Papyrus here that is one of the few examples we still have it's on loan from the bootlein library and it's one of those magical Arabic manuscript translated into into Coptic one of the very important contributions of the Arab Scholars is that they made that connection between ancient Egyptian and Coptic it's it's the Arab medieval Scholars who were the first to acknowledge that and to say that the 14th of September 1822 was the day that champollion made the ultimate breakthrough but this was only part of a much larger story that spanned centuries a story that stretched back before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone with the work of these Arab Scholars and one that continued after champollyon cracked the code as he and his contemporaries reacted to the Breakthrough and began to unravel the enigmatic world of ancient Egypt 200 years on from jitian lafair the British Museum's new exhibition is shining more light on the people and objects behind this seismic breakthrough how the decoding of these small symbols oh opened up the wondrous world of ancient Egypt to us all thanks for watching this video on the history Hit YouTube channel you can subscribe right here to make sure you don't miss any of our great films that are coming out or if you are a true history fan check out our special dedicated History Channel History hit dot TV you're gonna love it

Channel: History Hit

Views: 137,777

Keywords: history hit, history hit youtube, ancient egypt, ancient egyptian, ancient egyptian language, egyptian language, ancient history, old egyptian, rosetta stone, hieroglyphics alphabet, egyptian hieroglyphics, egyptian writing system, ancient language, how to read hieroglyphics, ancient egypt history, ancient egypt language, british museum london, british museum egyptian collection, tristan hughes the ancients, tristan hughes history hit, history hits, history hits youtube

Id: Namm1EClooM

Length: 20min 3sec (1203 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 11 2022