Rosetta Stone

TheRosetta Stoneis asteleofgranodioriteinscribed with three versions of adecree issued in 196 BCduring thePtolemaic dynastyofEgypt, on behalf of KingPtolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts are inAncient EgyptianusinghieroglyphicandDemoticscripts, respectively, while the bottom is inAncient Greek. The decree has only minor differences across the three versions, making the Rosetta Stone key todeciphering the Egyptian scripts.
The stone was carved during theHellenistic periodand is believed to have originally been displayed within a temple, possibly atSais. It was probably moved in late antiquity or during theMamluk period, and was eventually used as building material in the construction ofFort Juliennear the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in theNile Delta. It was found there in July 1799 by French officerPierre-François Bouchardduring the Napoleoniccampaign in Egypt. It was the first Ancient Egyptian bilingual text recovered in modern times, and it aroused widespread public interest with its potential to decipher this previously untranslated hieroglyphic script. Lithographic copies and plaster casts soon began circulating among European museums and scholars. When the British defeated the French, they took the stone to London under the terms of theCapitulation of Alexandriain 1801. Since 1802, it has been on public display at theBritish Museumalmost continuously and it is the most visited object there.
Study of the decree was already underway when the first complete translation of the Greek text was published in 1803.Jean-François Champollionannounced thetransliterationof the Egyptian scripts in Paris in 1822; it took longer still before scholars were able to read Ancient Egyptian inscriptions and literature confidently. Major advances in the decoding were recognition that the stone offered three versions of the same text (1799); that the Demotic text used phonetic characters to spell foreign names (1802); that the hieroglyphic text did so as well, and had pervasive similarities to the Demotic (1814); and that phonetic characters were also used to spell native Egyptian words (1822–1824).
Three other fragmentary copies of the same decree were discovered later, and several similar Egyptianbilingual or trilingual inscriptionsare now known, including three slightly earlierPtolemaic decrees: the Decree of Alexandria in 243 BC, theDecree of Canopusin 238 BC, and theMemphis decree of Ptolemy IV, c. 218 BC. Though the Rosetta Stone is now known to not be unique, it was the essential key to the modern understanding of ancient Egyptian literature and civilisation. The term "Rosetta Stone" is now used to refer to the essential clue to a new field of knowledge.
The Rosetta Stone is listed as "a stone of blackgranodiorite, bearing three inscriptions ... found at Rosetta" in a contemporary catalogue of the artefacts discovered by the French expedition and surrendered to British troops in 1801.At some period after its arrival in London, the inscriptions were coloured in whitechalkto make them more legible, and the remaining surface was covered with a layer ofcarnauba waxdesigned to protect it from visitors' fingers.This gave a dark colour to the stone that led to its mistaken identification asblack basalt.These additions were removed when the stone was cleaned in 1999, revealing the original dark grey tint of the rock, the sparkle of its crystalline structure, and a pinkveinrunning across the top left corner.Comparisons with theKlemm collectionof Egyptian rock samples showed a close resemblance to rock from a small granodiorite quarry atGebel Tingaron the west bank of theNile, west ofElephantinein the region ofAswan; the pink vein is typical of granodiorite from this region.
The Rosetta Stone is 112.3 cm (3 ft 8 in) high at its highest point, 75.7 cm (2 ft 5.8 in) wide, and 28.4 cm (11 in) thick. It weighs approximately 760 kilograms (1,680 lb).It bears three inscriptions: the top register in Ancient Egyptianhieroglyphs, the second in the EgyptianDemoticscript, and the third inAncient Greek.These three scripts are not three different languages, as is commonly misunderstood.The front surface is polished and the inscriptions lightlyincisedon it; the sides of the stone are smoothed, but the back is only roughly worked, presumably because it would have not been visible when the stele was erected.
The Rosetta Stone is a fragment of a larger stele. No additional fragments were found in later searches of the Rosetta site.Owing to its damaged state, none of the three texts is complete. The top register, composed of Egyptian hieroglyphs, suffered the most damage. Only the last 14 lines of the hieroglyphic text can be seen; all of them are broken on the right side, and 12 of them on the left. Below it, the middle register of demotic text has survived best; it has 32 lines, of which the first 14 are slightly damaged on the right side. The bottom register of Greek text contains 54 lines, of which the first 27 survive in full; the rest are increasingly fragmentary due to a diagonal break at the bottom right of the stone.
The stele was erected after thecoronationof KingPtolemy Vand was inscribed with a decree that established the divine cult of the new ruler.The decree was issued by a congress of priests who gathered atMemphis. The date is given as "4 Xandikos" in theMacedonian calendarand "18Mekhir" in theEgyptian calendar, which corresponds to27 March196 BC. The year is stated as the ninth year of Ptolemy V's reign (equated with 197/196 BC), which is confirmed by naming four priests who officiated in that year:Aetos son of Aetoswas priest of the divine cults ofAlexander the Greatand the fivePtolemiesdown to Ptolemy V himself;  the other three priests named in turn in the inscription are those who led the worship ofBerenice Euergetis(wife ofPtolemy III),Arsinoe Philadelphos(wife and sister ofPtolemy II), andArsinoe Philopator, mother of Ptolemy V.However, a second date is also given in the Greek and hieroglyphic texts, corresponding to27 November 197 BC, the official anniversary of Ptolemy's coronation.The demotic text conflicts with this, listing consecutive days in March for the decree and the anniversary.It is uncertain why this discrepancy exists, but it is clear that the decree was issued in 196 BC and that it was designed to re-establish the rule of the Ptolemaic kings over Egypt.
The decree was issued during a turbulent period in Egyptian history. Ptolemy V Epiphanes, the son ofPtolemy IV Philopatorand his wife and sister Arsinoe, reigned from 204 to 181 BC. He had become ruler at the age of five after the sudden death of both of his parents, who were murdered in a conspiracy that involved Ptolemy IV's mistressAgathoclea, according to contemporary sources. The conspirators effectively ruled Egypt as Ptolemy V's guardiansuntil a revolt broke out two years later under generalTlepolemus, when Agathoclea and her family werelynchedby a mob in Alexandria. Tlepolemus, in turn, was replaced as guardian in 201 BC byAristomenes of Alyzia, who was chief minister at the time of the Memphis decree.
Political forces beyond the borders of Egypt exacerbated the internal problems of the Ptolemaic kingdom.Antiochus III the GreatandPhilip V of Macedonhad made a pact to divide Egypt's overseas possessions. Philip had seized several islands and cities inCariaandThrace, while theBattle of Panium(198 BC) had resulted in the transfer ofCoele-Syria, includingJudaea, from the Ptolemies to theSeleucids. Meanwhile, in the south of Egypt, there was a long-standing revolt that had begun during the reign of Ptolemy IV,led byHorwenneferand by his successorAnkhwennefer.Both the war and the internal revolt were still ongoing when the young Ptolemy V was officially crowned at Memphis at the age of 12 (seven years after the start of his reign) and when, just over a year later, the Memphis decree was issued.
Stelae of this kind, which were established on the initiative of the temples rather than that of the king, are unique to Ptolemaic Egypt. In the preceding Pharaonic period it would have been unheard of for anyone but the divine rulers themselves to make national decisions: by contrast, this way of honouring a king was a feature of Greek cities. Rather than making his eulogy himself, the king had himself glorified and deified by his subjects or representative groups of his subjects.The decree records that Ptolemy V gave a gift of silver and grain to thetemples.It also records that there was particularly highflooding of the Nilein the eighth year of his reign, and he had the excess waters dammed for the benefit of the farmers.In return the priesthood pledged that the king's birthday and coronation days would be celebrated annually and that all the priests of Egypt would serve him alongside the other gods. The decree concludes with the instruction that a copy was to be placed in every temple, inscribed in the "language of the gods" (Egyptian hieroglyphs), the "language of documents" (Demotic), and the "language of the Greeks" as used by the Ptolemaic government.
Securing the favour of the priesthood was essential for the Ptolemaic kings to retain effective rule over the populace. TheHigh PriestsofMemphis—where the king was crowned—were particularly important, as they were the highest religious authorities of the time and had influence throughout the kingdom.Given that the decree was issued at Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt, rather than Alexandria, the centre of government of the ruling Ptolemies, it is evident that the young king was anxious to gain their active support.Thus, although the government of Egypt had been Greek-speaking ever since theconquestsofAlexander the Great, the Memphis decree, like the three similarearlier decrees, included texts in Egyptian to show its connection to the general populace by way of the literate Egyptian priesthood.
There can be no one definitive English translation of the decree, not only because modern understanding of the ancient languages continues to develop, but also because of the minor differences between the three original texts. Older translations byE. A. Wallis Budge(1904, 1913)andEdwyn R. Bevan(1927)are easily available but are now outdated, as can be seen by comparing them with the recent translation by R. S. Simpson, which is based on the demotic text and can be found online,or with the modern translations of all three texts, with introduction and facsimile drawing, that were published by Quirke and Andrews in 1989.
The stele was almost certainly not originally placed atRashid(Rosetta) where it was found, but more likely came from a temple site farther inland, possibly the royal town ofSais.The temple from which it originally came was probably closed around AD 392 whenRoman emperorTheodosius Iordered the closing of all non-Christian temples of worship.The original stele broke at some point, its largest piece becoming what we now know as the Rosetta Stone. Ancient Egyptian temples were later used as quarries for new construction, and the Rosetta Stone probably was re-used in this manner. Later it was incorporated in the foundations of a fortress constructed by theMamelukeSultanQaitbay(c.1416/18–1496) to defend theBolbitine branchof the Nile at Rashid. There it lay for at least another three centuries until its rediscovery.
Three other inscriptions relevant to the same Memphis decree have been found since the discovery of the Rosetta Stone: theNubayrah Stele, a stele found inElephantineand Noub Taha, and an inscription found at theTemple of Philae(on thePhilae obelisk).Unlike the Rosetta Stone, the hieroglyphic texts of these inscriptions were relatively intact. The Rosetta Stone had been deciphered long before they were found, but later Egyptologists have used them to refine the reconstruction of the hieroglyphs that must have been used in the lost portions of the hieroglyphic text on the Rosetta Stone.
French forcesunderNapoleon Bonaparteinvaded Egyptin 1798, accompanied by a corps of 151 technical experts (savants), known as theCommission des Sciences et des Arts. On15 July1799, French soldiers under the command of Colonel d'Hautpoul were strengthening the defences ofFort Julien, a couple of miles north-east of the Egyptian port city of Rosetta (modern-day Rashid). LieutenantPierre-François Bouchardspotted a slab with inscriptions on one side that the soldiers had uncovered when demolishing a wall within the fort. He and d'Hautpoul saw at once that it might be important and informed GeneralJacques-François Menou, who happened to be at Rosetta.The find was announced to Napoleon's newly founded scientific association in Cairo, theInstitut d'Égypte, in a report by Commission memberMichel Ange Lancretnoting that it contained three inscriptions, the first in hieroglyphs and the third in Greek, and rightly suggesting that the three inscriptions were versions of the same text. Lancret's report, dated19 July1799, was read to a meeting of the Institute soon after25 July. Bouchard, meanwhile, transported the stone to Cairo for examination by scholars.
The discovery was reported in September inCourrier de l'Égypte, the official newspaper of the French expedition. The anonymous reporter expressed a hope that the stone might one day be the key to deciphering hieroglyphs.In 1800 three of the commission's technical experts devised ways to make copies of the texts on the stone. One of these experts wasJean-Joseph Marcel, a printer and gifted linguist, who is credited as the first to recognise that the middle text was written in the Egyptiandemoticscript, rarely used for stone inscriptions and seldom seen by scholars at that time, rather thanSyriacas had originally been thought.It was artist and inventorNicolas-Jacques Contéwho found a way to use the stone itself as aprinting blockto reproduce the inscription.A slightly different method was adopted byAntoine Galland. The prints that resulted were taken to Paris by GeneralCharles Dugua. Scholars in Europe were now able to see the inscriptions and attempt to read them.
After Napoleon's departure, French troops held off British andOttomanattacks for another 18 months. In March 1801, the British landed atAboukir Bay. Menou was now in command of the French expedition. His troops, including the commission, marched north towards the Mediterranean coast to meet the enemy, transporting the stone along with many other antiquities. He was defeated in battle, and the remnant of his army retreated to Alexandria where they weresurrounded and besieged, with the stone now inside the city.Menou surrenderedon 30 August.
After the surrender, a dispute arose over the fate of the French archaeological and scientific discoveries in Egypt, including the artefacts, biological specimens, notes, plans, and drawings collected by the members of the commission. Menou refused to hand them over, claiming that they belonged to the institute. British GeneralJohn Hely-Hutchinsonrefused to end the siege until Menou gave in. ScholarsEdward Daniel ClarkeandWilliam Richard Hamilton, newly arrived from England, agreed to examine the collections in Alexandria and said they had found many artefacts that the French had not revealed. In a letter home, Clarke said that "we found much more in their possession than was represented or imagined".
Hutchinson claimed that all materials were property of theBritish Crown, but French scholarÉtienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilairetold Clarke and Hamilton that the French would rather burn all their discoveries than turn them over, referring ominously to the destruction of theLibrary of Alexandria. Clarke and Hamilton pleaded the French scholars' case to Hutchinson, who finally agreed that items such as natural history specimens would be considered the scholars' private property.Menou quickly claimed the stone, too, as his private property.Hutchinson was equally aware of the stone's unique value and rejected Menou's claim. Eventually an agreement was reached, and the transfer of the objects was incorporated into theCapitulation of Alexandriasigned by representatives of theBritish,French, andOttomanforces.
It is not clear exactly how the stone was transferred into British hands, as contemporary accounts differ. ColonelTomkyns Hilgrove Turner, who was to escort it to England, claimed later that he had personally seized it from Menou and carried it away on agun-carriage. In a much more detailed account, Edward Daniel Clarke stated that a French "officer and member of the Institute" had taken him, his student John Cripps, and Hamilton secretly into the back streets behind Menou's residence and revealed the stone hidden under protective carpets among Menou's baggage. According to Clarke, their informant feared that the stone might be stolen if French soldiers saw it. Hutchinson was informed at once and the stone was taken away—possibly by Turner and his gun-carriage.
Turner brought the stone to England aboard the captured French frigateHMSÉgyptienne, landing inPortsmouthin February 1802.His orders were to present it and the other antiquities to KingGeorge III. The King, represented byWar SecretaryLord Hobart, directed that it should be placed in theBritish Museum. According to Turner's narrative, he and Hobart agreed that the stone should be presented to scholars at theSociety of Antiquaries of London, of which Turner was a member, before its final deposit in the museum. It was first seen and discussed there at a meeting on11 March1802.
In 1802, the Society created four plaster casts of the inscriptions, which were given to the universities ofOxford,CambridgeandEdinburghand toTrinity College Dublin. Soon afterwards, prints of the inscriptions were made and circulated to European scholars.Before the end of 1802, the stone was transferred to the British Museum, where it is located today.New inscriptions painted in white on the left and right edges of the slab stated that it was "Captured in Egypt by theBritish Armyin 1801" and "Presented by King George III".
The stone has been exhibited almost continuously in the British Museum since June 1802.During the middle of the 19th century, it was given the inventory number "EA 24", "EA" standing for "Egyptian Antiquities". It was part of a collection of ancient Egyptian monuments captured from the French expedition, including asarcophagusofNectanebo II(EA 10), the statue of ahigh priest of Amun(EA 81), and a large granite fist (EA 9).The objects were soon discovered to be too heavy for the floors ofMontagu House(the original building of The British Museum), and they were transferred to a new extension that was added to the mansion. The Rosetta Stone was transferred to the sculpture gallery in 1834 shortly after Montagu House was demolished and replaced by the building that now houses the British Museum.According to the museum's records, the Rosetta Stone is its most-visited single object,a simple image of it was the museum's best selling postcard for several decades,and a wide variety of merchandise bearing the text from the Rosetta Stone (or replicating its distinctive shape) is sold in the museum shops.
The Rosetta Stone was originally displayed at a slight angle from the horizontal, and rested within a metal cradle that was made for it, which involved shaving off very small portions of its sides to ensure that the cradle fitted securely.It originally had no protective covering, and it was found necessary by 1847 to place it in a protective frame, despite the presence of attendants to ensure that it was not touched by visitors.Since 2004 the conserved stone has been on display in a specially built case in the centre of the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery. A replica of the Rosetta Stone is now available in theKing's Libraryof the British Museum, without a case and free to touch, as it would have appeared to early 19th-century visitors.
The museum was concerned aboutheavy bombing in Londontowards the end of theFirst World Warin 1917, and the Rosetta Stone was moved to safety, along with other portable objects of value. The stone spent the next two years 15 m (50 ft) below ground level in a station of thePostal Tube RailwayatMount PleasantnearHolborn.Other than during wartime, the Rosetta Stone has left the British Museum only once: for one month in October 1972, to be displayed alongside Champollion'sLettreat theLouvrein Paris on the 150th anniversary of the letter's publication.Even when the Rosetta Stone was undergoing conservation measures in 1999, the work was done in the gallery so that it could remain visible to the public.
Prior to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and its eventual decipherment, the ancientEgyptian languageand script had not been understood since shortly before thefall of the Roman Empire. The usage of thehieroglyphic scripthad become increasingly specialised even in the laterPharaonic period; by the4th centuryAD, few Egyptians were capable of reading them. Monumental use of hieroglyphs ceased astemple priesthoods died out and Egypt was converted to Christianity; the last known inscription is dated to24 August 394, found atPhilaeand known as theGraffito of Esmet-Akhom.The last demotic text, also from Philae, was written in 452.
Hieroglyphs retained their pictorial appearance, and classical authors emphasised this aspect, in sharp contrast to theGreekandRoman alphabets. In the5th century, the priestHorapollowroteHieroglyphica, an explanation of almost 200glyphs. His work was believed to be authoritative, yet it was misleading in many ways, and this and other works were a lasting impediment to the understanding of Egyptian writing.Later attempts at decipherment were made byArab historiansinmedieval Egyptduring the 9th and 10th centuries.Dhul-Nun al-MisriandIbn Wahshiyyawere the first historians to study hieroglyphs, by comparing them to the contemporaryCoptic languageused byCopticpriests in their time.The study of hieroglyphs continued with fruitless attempts at decipherment by European scholars, notablyPierius Valerianusin the 16th centuryandAthanasius Kircherin the 17th.The discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799 provided critical missing information, gradually revealed by a succession of scholars, that eventually allowedJean-François Champollionto solve the puzzle thatKircherhad called theriddle of the Sphinx.
TheGreektext on the Rosetta Stone provided the starting point. Ancient Greek was widely known to scholars, but they were not familiar with details of its use in theHellenisticperiod as a government language in Ptolemaic Egypt; large-scale discoveries of Greekpapyriwere a long way in the future. Thus, the earliest translations of the Greek text of the stone show the translators still struggling with the historical context and with administrative and religious jargon.Stephen Westonverbally presented an English translation of the Greek text at aSociety of Antiquariesmeeting in April 1802.
Meanwhile, two of the lithographic copies made in Egypt had reached theInstitut de Francein Paris in 1801. There, librarian and antiquarianGabriel de La Porte du Theilset to work on a translation of the Greek, but he was dispatched elsewhere on Napoleon's orders almost immediately, and he left his unfinished work in the hands of colleagueHubert-Pascal Ameilhon. Ameilhon produced the first published translations of the Greek text in 1803, in bothLatinand French to ensure that they would circulate widely.AtCambridge,Richard Porsonworked on the missing lower right corner of the Greek text. He produced a skilful suggested reconstruction, which was soon being circulated by the Society of Antiquaries alongside its prints of the inscription. At almost the same moment,Christian Gottlob HeyneinGöttingenwas making a new Latin translation of the Greek text that was more reliable than Ameilhon's and was first published in 1803.It was reprinted by the Society of Antiquaries in a special issue of its journalArchaeologiain 1811, alongside Weston's previously unpublished English translation,Colonel Turner'snarrative, and other documents.
At the time of the stone's discovery, Swedish diplomat and scholarJohan David Åkerbladwas working on a little-known script of which some examples had recently been found in Egypt, which came to be known asDemotic. He called it "cursive Coptic" because he was convinced that it was used to record some form of theCoptic language(the direct descendant of Ancient Egyptian), although it had few similarities with the laterCoptic script. French OrientalistAntoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacyhad been discussing this work with Åkerblad when, in 1801, he received one of the early lithographic prints of the Rosetta Stone, fromJean-Antoine Chaptal, French minister of the interior. He realised that the middle text was in this same script. He and Åkerblad set to work, both focusing on the middle text and assuming that the script was alphabetical. They attempted to identify the points where Greek names ought to occur within this unknown text, by comparing it with the Greek. In 1802, Silvestre de Sacy reported to Chaptal that he had successfully identified five names ("Alexandros", "Alexandreia", "Ptolemaios", "Arsinoe", and Ptolemy's title "Epiphanes"),while Åkerblad published an alphabet of 29 letters (more than half of which were correct) that he had identified from the Greek names in the Demotic text.They could not, however, identify the remaining characters in the Demotic text, which, as is now known, includedideographicand other symbols alongside the phonetic ones.
Silvestre de Sacy eventually gave up work on the stone, but he was to make another contribution. In 1811, prompted by discussions with a Chinese student aboutChinese script, Silvestre de Sacy considered a suggestion made byGeorg Zoëgain 1797 that the foreign names in Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions might be written phonetically; he also recalled that as early as 1761,Jean-Jacques Barthélemyhad suggested that the characters enclosed incartouchesin hieroglyphic inscriptions were proper names. Thus, whenThomas Young, foreign secretary of theRoyal Society of London, wrote to him about the stone in 1814, Silvestre de Sacy suggested in reply that in attempting to read the hieroglyphic text, Young might look for cartouches that ought to contain Greek names and try to identify phonetic characters in them.
Young did so, with two results that together paved the way for the final decipherment. In the hieroglyphic text, he discovered the phonetic characters "p t o l m e s" (in today's transliteration "p t w l m y s") that were used to write the Greek name "Ptolemaios". He also noticed that these characters resembled the equivalent ones in the demotic script, and went on to note as many as 80 similarities between the hieroglyphic and demotic texts on the stone, an important discovery because the two scripts were previously thought to be entirely different from one another. This led him to deduce correctly that the demotic script was only partly phonetic, also consisting of ideographic characters derived from hieroglyphs.Young's new insights were prominent in the long article "Egypt" that he contributed to theEncyclopædia Britannicain 1819.He could make no further progress, however.
In 1814, Young first exchanged correspondence about the stone withJean-François Champollion, a teacher atGrenoblewho had produced a scholarly work on ancient Egypt. Champollion saw copies of the brief hieroglyphic and Greek inscriptions of thePhilae obeliskin 1822, on whichWilliam John Bankeshad tentatively noted the names "Ptolemaios" and "Kleopatra" in both languages.From this, Champollion identified the phonetic charactersk l e o p a t r a(in today's transliterationq l i҆ w p 3 d r 3.t).On the basis of this and the foreign names on the Rosetta Stone, he quickly constructed an alphabet of phonetic hieroglyphic characters, completing his work on 14 September and announcing it publicly on 27 September in a lecture to theAcadémie royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.On the same day he wrote the famous "Lettre à M. Dacier" toBon-Joseph Dacier, secretary of the Académie, detailing his discovery.In the postscript Champollion notes that similar phonetic characters seemed to occur in both Greek and Egyptian names, a hypothesis confirmed in 1823, when he identified the names of pharaohsRamessesandThutmosewritten in cartouches atAbu Simbel. These far older hieroglyphic inscriptions had been copied by Bankes and sent to Champollion byJean-Nicolas Huyot.From this point, the stories of the Rosetta Stone and thedecipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphsdiverge, as Champollion drew on many other texts to develop an Ancient Egyptian grammar and a hieroglyphic dictionary which were published after his death in 1832.
Work on the stone now focused on fuller understanding of the texts and their contexts by comparing the three versions with one another. In 1824 Classical scholarAntoine-Jean Letronnepromised to prepare a new literal translation of the Greek text for Champollion's use. Champollion in return promised an analysis of all the points at which the three texts seemed to differ. Following Champollion's sudden death in 1832, his draft of this analysis could not be found, and Letronne's work stalled.François Salvolini, Champollion's former student and assistant, died in 1838, and this analysis and other missing drafts were found among his papers. This discovery incidentally demonstrated that Salvolini's own publication on the stone, published in 1837, wasplagiarism.Letronne was at last able to complete his commentary on the Greek text and his new French translation of it, which appeared in 1841.During the early 1850s, German EgyptologistsHeinrich BrugschandMax Uhlemannproduced revised Latin translations based on the demotic and hieroglyphic texts.The first English translation followed in 1858, the work of three members of thePhilomathean Societyat theUniversity of Pennsylvania.
Whether one of the three texts was the standard version, from which the other two were originally translated, is a question that has remained controversial. Letronne attempted to show in 1841 that the Greek version, the product of the Egyptian government under the MacedonianPtolemies, was the original.Among recent authors, John Ray has stated that "the hieroglyphs were the most important of the scripts on the stone: they were there for the gods to read, and the more learned of their priesthood".Philippe Derchain and Heinz Josef Thissen have argued that all three versions were composed simultaneously, while Stephen Quirke sees in the decree "an intricate coalescence of three vital textual traditions".Richard Parkinsonpoints out that the hieroglyphic version strays from archaic formalism and occasionally lapses into language closer to that of the demotic register that the priests more commonly used in everyday life.The fact that the three versions cannot be matched word for word helps to explain why the decipherment has been more difficult than originally expected, especially for those original scholars who were expecting an exact bilingual key to Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Even before the Salvolini affair, disputes over precedence and plagiarism punctuated the decipherment story. Thomas Young's work is acknowledged in Champollion's 1822Lettre à M. Dacier, but incompletely, according to early British critics: for example,James Browne, a sub-editor on theEncyclopædia Britannica(which had published Young's 1819 article), anonymously contributed a series of review articles to theEdinburgh Reviewin 1823, praising Young's work highly and alleging that the "unscrupulous" Champollion plagiarised it.These articles were translated into French byJulius Klaprothand published in book form in 1827.Young's own 1823 publication reasserted the contribution that he had made.The early deaths of Young (1829) and Champollion (1832) did not put an end to these disputes. In his work on the stone in 1904E. A. Wallis Budgegave special emphasis to Young's contribution compared with Champollion's.In the early 1970s, French visitors complained that the portrait of Champollion was smaller than one of Young on an adjacent information panel; English visitors complained that the opposite was true. The portraits were in fact the same size.
Calls for the Rosetta Stone to be returned to Egypt were made in July 2003 byZahi Hawass, then Secretary-General of Egypt'sSupreme Council of Antiquities. These calls, expressed in the Egyptian and international media, asked that the stele berepatriatedto Egypt, commenting that it was the "icon of our Egyptian identity".He repeated the proposal two years later in Paris, listing the stone as one of several key items belonging to Egypt's cultural heritage, a list which also included: the iconicbust of Nefertitiin theEgyptian Museum of Berlin; a statue of theGreat PyramidarchitectHemiunuin theRoemer-und-Pelizaeus-MuseuminHildesheim, Germany; theDendera Temple Zodiacin theLouvrein Paris; and thebust of Ankhhafin theMuseum of Fine ArtsinBoston.In August 2022, Zahi Hawass reiterated his previous demands.
In 2005, the British Museum presented Egypt with a full-sized fibreglass colour-matched replica of the stele. This was initially displayed in the renovatedRashid National Museum, an Ottoman house in the town ofRashid(Rosetta), the closest city to the site where the stone was found.In November 2005, Hawass suggested a three-month loan of the Rosetta Stone, while reiterating the eventual goal of a permanent return.In December 2009, he proposed to drop his claim for the permanent return of the Rosetta Stone if the British Museum lent the stone to Egypt for three months for the opening of theGrand Egyptian MuseumatGizain 2013.
AsJohn Rayhas observed: "The day may come when the stone has spent longer in the British Museum than it ever did in Rosetta."
National museums typically express strong opposition to the repatriation of objects of international cultural significance such as the Rosetta Stone. In response to repeated Greek requests for return of theElgin Marblesfrom theParthenonand similar requests to other museums around the world, in 2002, over 30 of the world's leading museums—including the British Museum, the Louvre, thePergamon Museumin Berlin, and theMetropolitan Museumin New York City—issued a joint statement:
Various ancient bilingual or even trilingualepigraphicaldocuments have sometimes been described as "Rosetta stones", as they permitted the decipherment of ancient written scripts. For example, the bilingualGreek-Brahmicoins of theGreco-BactriankingAgathocleshave been described as "little Rosetta stones", allowingChristian Lassen's initial progress towards deciphering theBrahmi script, thus unlocking ancientIndian epigraphy.TheBehistun inscriptionhas also been compared to the Rosetta stone, as it links the translations of three ancientMiddle-Easternlanguages:Old Persian,Elamite, andAkkadian.
The termRosetta stonehas been also usedidiomaticallyto denote the first crucial key in the process of decryption of encoded information, especially when a small but representative sample is recognised as the clue to understanding a larger whole.According to theOxford English Dictionary, the first figurative use of the term appeared in the 1902 edition of theEncyclopædia Britannicarelating to an entry on the chemical analysis ofglucose.Another use of the phrase is found inH. G. Wells's 1933 novelThe Shape of Things to Come, where the protagonist finds a manuscript written inshorthandthat provides a key to understanding additional scattered material that is sketched out in bothlonghandand ontypewriter.
Since then, the term has been widely used in other contexts. For example,Nobel laureateTheodor W. Hänschin a 1979Scientific Americanarticle onspectroscopywrote that "the spectrum of the hydrogen atoms has proven to be the Rosetta Stone of modern physics: once this pattern of lines had been deciphered much else could also be understood".Fully understanding the key set of genes to thehuman leucocyte antigenhas been described as "the Rosetta Stone of immunology".The flowering plantArabidopsis thalianahas been called the "Rosetta Stone of flowering time".Agamma-ray burst(GRB) found in conjunction with asupernovahas been called a Rosetta Stone for understanding the origin of GRBs.The technique ofDoppler echocardiographyhas been called a Rosetta Stone for clinicians trying to understand the complex process by which theleft ventricleof thehuman heartcan be filled during various forms ofdiastolic dysfunction.TheEuropean Space Agency'sRosettaspacecraft, launched to study thecomet67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenkoin the hope that determining its composition will advance understanding of the origins of theSolar System.
The name is used for various forms oftranslation softwareand services. "Rosetta Stone" is a brand of language-learning software published by Rosetta Stone Inc., who are headquartered inArlington County, US. Additionally, "Rosetta", developed and maintained byCanonical(the Ubuntu Linux company) as part of theLaunchpadproject, is an online language translation tool to help with localisation of software. One program, billed as a "lightweight dynamic translator" that enables applications compiled forPowerPCprocessors to run onx86processorApple Inc.systems, is named "Rosetta". TheRosetta@homeendeavour is adistributed computing projectfor predicting protein structures from amino acid sequences (i.e.translatingsequence into structure).Rosetta Codeis a wiki-basedchrestomathywebsite with algorithm implementations in several programming languages. TheRosetta Projectbrings language specialists and native speakers together to develop a meaningful survey and near-permanent archive of 1,500 languages, in physical and digital form, with the intent of it remaining useful from AD 2000 to 12,000.