I recently finished a book about this-Champollion’s great discovery of how to translate the ancient egyptian hieroglyphs was fascinating. My question: why was this stone carved? Was it because the priests of the time knew that hieroglyphic writing was dying out? And, they wished that the people of the future would have such a tool? Did the Greek rulers of past-pharaonic egypt want to preserve hieroglyphic writing?
Lastly, how do we know that the famous stone is NOT a fake?
No; it was to all appearances written that way for the same reason as any other multi-language message – there were enough people speaking each of the different languages that writing the same text multiple times was considered necessarily so that everybody (well, everybody who could read to begin with) got the message.
Huh? How on earth could anybody write fake hieroglyphics that were consistent with the real thing when nobody at the time knew the hieroglyphic language?
Why are there billboards around here in Spanish? Why are there Filipino TV stations?
So I can keep up with the latest wedding receptions?
For one thing, it’s not the only example, just the first found. The Ptolemaic Dynasty put up many of these bilingual, tri-script decrees.
Few people know this, but the stone actually says “In order to validate your parking, please leave this stone under the dashboard of your camel. Lock all saddlebags and tie your camel securely. Management is not responsible for damage or loss of property. Camels parks for more than 72 hours will be towed at owner’s expense.”
Because we have a large population of people who speak/read Spanish or Filipino better then they speak English. But were their really people in Egypt who could read hieroglyphs but couldn’t also read Demotic as well or better?
I suspect that the use of hieroglyphs on the Stone were more because they look cool and suggested that the current Greek rulers were connected to the ancient pharaohs of Egypt then to increase readability. But IANAhistorian, so its just a guess.
Definitely some kind of multi-lingual government announcement. I’ve seen similar things. In Weber Park, near the Stockton Channel, there are signs that say you shouldn’t eat fish caught in these waters, in six languages. I saw one downtown fisherman lean his pole up against it. Pity I didn’t have a camera.
Does anyone know what the text of the Rosetta Stone says?
eta - Ok. Off to look up Ptolemaic Decrees.
That’s conceivable. I think Egyptian or Coptic was on the way out, and Greek was the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean until it was in turn displaced by Arabic with the rise of Islam in much of the region. However, it probably was the prestigious official language, just as Latin was for many centuries in western Europe in spite of being replaced by many local languages.
Found an interesting link
You obviously don’t understand the point of fishing. 
Reading through the translation of the Rosetta Stone, I wonder at something:
What’s up with the way people used to write? Why was the language so overburdened with pointless baggage? In a modern language version I could probably bring all the same information across to the reader in a short paragraph or two. Is it because it was government legalese? In other words, is the text better compared to say a modern huge, wordy legal deposition as opposed to the local bulletin board notice?
A related question would be who was meant to read the rosetta stone? I’d guess only the well educated… priests only?
Yep. If you want to eat the fish you have to clean them and cook them and, well, forget about it. Hell, catching fish at all destroys the meditative aspects of fishing.
Champollion deserves credit for the first complete understanding of hieroglyphics. But don’t short Thomas Young. Young was the first to realize the importance of cartouches, and he transliterated names and started the translation of the hieroglyphics. His work was published before Champollion even started his work, but Egyptologusts still don’t give the man enough credit.
wrong thread
My brother caught a couple of river trout last week and cooked them up. I had a taste and it was the foulest meat I’ve ever tasted. Ewwww…it was like across between cow and fish, with the texture of beef, albeit more rubbery, and the smell of fish. Never again! :eek:
This one’s got to be even wronger then. Sorry, guys. :smack:
Oh, they were definitely going to eat them. Most of the folks out fishing in the park are after catfish or carp, both of which are excellent at concentrating contamination from sediments. (Don’t ask the catfishers about the carpfishers. There are strong opinions.)
Seasonally, striped bass will come through. I’d consider eating a bass caught in the channel. Might try panfish. Eating catfish caught a mile and a quarter from a capped superfund tank. . . not so eager for that experience.
(eta - it was the right thread, I just got distracted. Sorry to confuse.)
- It was legalese.
- It was propaganda.
- Nothing ever reads clearly via a literal translation–especially a text as loaded with cultural baggage as this one.
Anyone who could read, which in those days would be only well-educated people. For others, though, it was a nice decoration–a big impressive stele, obviously approved by the priests and government (else it wouldn’t be there), demonstrating by its mere existence that care was being lavished on the temples and all was in order.
It was the opposite–Greek was the language of the rulers, but Coptic was the language of the masses. Perhaps an analogy woule be, if after the British conquest of Quebec, they posted a decree outside a Catholic Church in English, French, and French written in fancy old-fashioned calligraphy.
A fascinating and highly readable biography of the man in question. It’s not a comprehensive survey of his accomplishments; nor is it a technical analysis. It’s more of a summary of his work, and an introductory sketch of his life. Amazing, amazing man.
I own it and have read it. I wrote a piece on the man myself, using the Rosetta Stone thing as a lead-in to his explanation of the rainbow, and why Young’s (possible) reputation for mediocrity in both cases isn’t deserved.