A Stone That Solved a Mystery

In the British Museum in London, you will often find people in the Egyptian Gallery, staring at a black basalt slab. Why does it intrigue so many? For centuries, experts were baffled by the complex picture writing (hieroglyphics) they had found in Egyptian tombs and on monuments. That slab became the key to understanding those writings and inscriptions. It came to be known as the Rosetta Stone (from Rashid in Egypt, translated Rosetta).

The stone has the same text in three different scripts. One of them is Greek and could be translated. Another is ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the third, a cursive form of the same. It took Frenchman Jean François Champollion 23 years to decipher the inscriptions. And what does the stone say?

Dated to the ninth year of Ptolemy V (about 196 B.C.E.), it is yet another inscription glorifying a ruler. Among other things, it proclaims the piety of Ptolemy V toward the gods, praises him for restoring “the temples of the Apis and Mnevis Bulls, and of the other sacred animals,” and describes him as “Ptolemy, the ever-living god.”​—The Rosetta Stone, Trustees of the British Museum.

The decipherment of the ancient hieroglyphs, “writing of the speech of the god,” helped to expose more fully the animal worship that was rampant in Egypt. As the British Museum catalogue states: “Almost all sculpture was produced for religious purposes, to promote the worship of deities, to glorify the power of specific kings,” as well as for funerary reasons. And most of the sculptures and monuments include hieroglyphs, which, thanks to the Rosetta Stone, can now be understood.

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Above: Example of hieroglyphic writing

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Courtesy of the Superintendence of the Museo Egizio, Turin

Right: Horus, Egyptian god of light

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Courtesy of the British Museum

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Courtesy of the British Museum