The Rosetta Stone: A Key to Unlocking Egyptian History

Anything has the power to change the course of history, even a stone. In this case, I am talking about the Rosetta Stone, discovered in 1799 during Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt. The stone was found in the Egyptian town of Rosetta, hence the name. Lieutenant Pierre-François Bouchard, a French military engineer, was the first to notice the significance of the engravings on the stone—the same decree was written in three different scripts: ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Demotic script (cursive form of Egyptian writing), and ancient Greek. 

Originally created to serve as a royal decree to honor the young Egyptian King Ptolemy V, the stone highlighted his religious devotion, rebuilding of the economy, and reduction of taxes. The reason why the Rosetta Stone was inscribed with three different scripts was to ensure its widespread comprehension across Egypt. Little did the Egyptians know that this act of honoring their king would centuries later serve as a path to re-enliven their history.

“Rosetta Stone in the British Museum.” ARCE. (2023, February 11). The Rosetta Stone: Unlocking the Ancient Egyptian Language - ARCE. https://arce.org/resource/rosetta-stone-unlocking-ancient-egyptian-language/

I would argue that our understanding of Egyptian culture would have been limited had it not been for the Rosetta stone. 

Several attempts at deciphering Hieroglyphs had been made prior to the discovery of the Stone. As explained by Britannica: “The first attempt to decipher hieroglyphics, based on the assumption that they were indeed phonetic symbols, was made by the German scholar Athanasius Kircher in the mid-1600s.” (https://www.britannica.com/topic/hieroglyph). This attempt took place 200 years before the Rosetta Stone’s discovery, and he was only able to identify one symbol. 

 The Rosetta Stone served as the final piece of the puzzle to the centuries-long quest of deciphering Hieroglyphs. The Stone unlocked Egyptian history, heritage, and language that had been lost over time due to the influence of foreign rule after the fall of the Egyptian empire. While we would have still discovered Egyptian artifacts, I do not think we would have been able to fully understand their sophistication and advancements of Egyptian civilization without the Rosetta Stone. Until the discovery of the stone, ancient Egyptian writing was a complete mystery to the world. The Stone provided the first practical method to understand it. It allowed historians and archaeologists to gain access to Egyptians texts, records and beliefs that had remained hidden for centuries.