Famously, an ecstatic Champollion rushed into his brother’s office shouting “ Je tiens mon affair!” (“I’ve got it!”). He figured out that the demotic script-the third writing system on the stele-conveyed syllables and that the hieroglyphs represented Coptic sounds. Where Young had no experience with the Egyptian language, Champollion was fluent in Coptic and had extensive knowledge about Egypt.
JUST CAUSE 3 UNBLOCKED CODE
Illustration by by Jean-Francois Champollion via Bridgeman Imagesīut it was Jean-François Champollion, a Frenchman known as the founder of Egyptology, who would ultimately crack the code in 1822. These included Ra, the sun god (left), and his daughter, the goddess Saté (right). ( Read more about hieroglyphics with your kids.)Īfter cracking the code of the Rosetta Stone, Jean-François Champollion published a compilation of the mythological figures who were featured prominently in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Young was able to identify the phonetic sounds some glyphs represented, figure out some of the characters, and piece together how words were pluralized. He also compared the glyphs to those on other statues. After translating the ancient Greek, he took extensive notes on the hieroglyphs and systematically attempted to match each one to its translation. Thomas Young, a British polymath best known for his scientific contributions, treated the mystery as a mathematical problem. Though a variety of scholars across Europe would contribute to the work, the two most important contributions came from England and France.
Scholars raced to translate the Rosetta Stone. Since it contained identical content in three languages, scholars thought the Rosetta Stone might be able to help crack the historic mystery. Scholars had long puzzled over the meaning of the picture-like markings, known as hieroglyphs, made on ancient Egyptian slabs. The Rosetta Stone’s codeīut the stone had more than aesthetic value. ( Here's why Napoleon's military defeat in Egypt yielded a victory for history.) So in 1802 the Rosetta Stone made its way to London, where it was put on display at the British Museum almost immediately upon arriving. The French were allowed to evacuate, but the British demanded they hand over the antiquities collection before leaving. The Egyptologists gathered a large number of ancient artifacts they wanted to take back to France, including the Rosetta Stone.īut the British wanted Egypt, too, and in 1801 they prevailed over French forces. Scientists and historians were part of the conquering force, and streamed into the country to document what they found there. Conquering scholarsįast-forward to 1798, when Napoleon led French forces to take over Egypt, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. But what was its lasting impact? Learn how Ancient Egypt contributed to society with its many cultural developments, particularly in language and mathematics. The Ancient Egyptian civilization, famous for its pyramids, pharaohs, mummies, and tombs, flourished for thousands of years.
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