Much of our knowledge of ancient egyptian culture and language comes from our understanding of ancient egyptian art mainly thanks to the discovery of the rosetta stone. About this quiz worksheet. These greek rulers could neither speak the language of the people nor read hieroglyphs and this fueled resentment amongst the population.
Beginning with the conquest of alexander the great in 332 bc greek was the language of the governing elite in egypt. Without the rosetta stone we would know nothing of the ancient egyptians. However young figured out that the demotic script actually had developed from hieroglyphs and thus could not be a pure alphabet.
The other egyptian script on the rosetta stone demotic was assumed to be alphabetic unlike egyptian hieroglyphs. Alas it was a replica. Decades later while touring the rosicrucian museum in san jose california i finally set eyes on the rosetta stone.
Years later at the university of karachi i read about the rosetta stone and was intrigued how a single slab of granite had helped decipher the language of ancient egypt. An irregularly shaped stone of black granite 3 feet 9 inches 114 cm long and 2 feet 4 5 inches 72 cm wide and broken in antiquity it was found near the town of rosetta rashīd. Their decipherment led to the understanding of hieroglyphic writing.
Rosetta stone ancient egyptian stone bearing inscriptions in several languages and scripts. The rosetta stone is a granodiorite stele inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in memphis egypt in 196 bc during the ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of king ptolemy v epiphanes the top and middle texts are in ancient egyptian using hieroglyphic and demotic scripts respectively while the bottom is in ancient greek the decree has only minor differences between the three versions. It is a black basalt slab that provided the key to understanding hieroglyphics.
The rosetta stone was discovered in 1799 by one of napoleon s soldiers. Ancient egyptian hieroglyphics the rosetta stone.
