Cracking the Code of Rosetta Stone
Cracking the Code of Rosetta Stone
According to BBC’s documentary ‘Ancient Egypt - The Mystery of the Rosetta Stone,’ the Rosetta Stone was found by French soldiers after invading Egypt in 1798. This stone was unique because it had carved writings in three different scripts: Hieroglyphic, Demotic, and Greek. The oldest writings were the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. No one understood these mysterious writings. Were they were just symbols, letters, or words? Finding this stone; while a great discovery, was only the beginning of years of mystery, confusion, and conflict.
Shortly after the French obtained the mystical stone, the British Empire attacked the French during ‘The Battle of the Nile.’ After three years of bloodshed, the British took control of Egypt along with the Rosetta Stone. Unbeknownst to the British, the French already made several copies of the writings and sent them to France to be transcribed by the greatest minds available. After several years of failed attempts, the code could not be broken. The British then assigned Thomas Young, a brilliant scientist to the task. At that same time a poor French man, Jean-Francois Champollion, was fascinated with the discovery of the stone’s writings and began researching the hieroglyphic symbols. Jean was amazed by Ancient Civilization, so much so, that he was fluent in 6 different ancient languages by the time he was just thirteen years old. Jean’s brother; who was extremely invested in Jean’s studies, provided Jean with his life-savings to travel to a Paris University to further his studies in hieroglyphics. Even though the British had possession of the stone all these years, the French still hadn’t given up on the quest for ancient knowledge.
The British man Thomas Young thought of a method to cracking the code. He used his knowledge in mathematics and the Greek language to meticulously count how many times each symbol in the hieroglyphs were repeated. He then compared this to how many times the
According to BBC’s documentary ‘Ancient Egypt - The Mystery of the Rosetta Stone,’ the Rosetta Stone was found by French soldiers after invading Egypt in 1798. This stone was unique because it had carved writings in three different scripts: Hieroglyphic, Demotic, and Greek. The oldest writings were the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. No one understood these mysterious writings. Were they were just symbols, letters, or words? Finding this stone; while a great discovery, was only the beginning of years of mystery, confusion, and conflict.
Shortly after the French obtained the mystical stone, the British Empire attacked the French during ‘The Battle of the Nile.’ After three years of bloodshed, the British took control of Egypt along with the Rosetta Stone. Unbeknownst to the British, the French already made several copies of the writings and sent them to France to be transcribed by the greatest minds available. After several years of failed attempts, the code could not be broken. The British then assigned Thomas Young, a brilliant scientist to the task. At that same time a poor French man, Jean-Francois Champollion, was fascinated with the discovery of the stone’s writings and began researching the hieroglyphic symbols. Jean was amazed by Ancient Civilization, so much so, that he was fluent in 6 different ancient languages by the time he was just thirteen years old. Jean’s brother; who was extremely invested in Jean’s studies, provided Jean with his life-savings to travel to a Paris University to further his studies in hieroglyphics. Even though the British had possession of the stone all these years, the French still hadn’t given up on the quest for ancient knowledge.
The British man Thomas Young thought of a method to cracking the code. He used his knowledge in mathematics and the Greek language to meticulously count how many times each symbol in the hieroglyphs were repeated. He then compared this to how many times the