The Rosetta Stone - A Race to Ancient Secrets - World History - Extra History

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French Savant Pierre-François Bouchard finding the Rosetta Stone is just the beginning of unlocking the secret language of ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics. Along with the efforts of Thomas Young, a polymath, Jean-François Champollion a talented linguist, and the discovery of the Philae Obelisk, the code was finally broken!
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Artist: Ali R Thome I Writer: Robert Rath I Showrunner & Narrator: Matthew Krol I Editor: Aidan Strite & Mac Owens
#ExtraHistory #RosettaStone #History

[@extrahistory]

Decipher what you're having for dinner by using code EXTRACREDITS50 to get 50% off your first Factor box! Just go to bit.ly/3kHfe03 to keep your belly full, all while helping the show out in the process! Thanks for watching!

[@danielsantiagourtado3430]

Your videos and content are out of this world!🎉🎉🎉🎉

[@Texanprime]

Please do Texas revolution please extra history please

[@Cedar_Wolf]

Yay! We got a Zoey cameo! She's a good kitty.

[@triassiam9031]

How about getting more into the Greek revolution of 1821 against the ottoman empire

[@gyllenspetzfamily7993]

Subtle dig at the stupid TV show that lied about Cleopatra. Smooth!

[@DragoniteSpam]

The same Thomas Young who did the double slit experiment? Whoever called him "the last man who knew everything" wasn't messing around.

[@krupam0]

Also the same Young after whom Young's modulus was named, apparently.

[@DragoniteSpam]

@@krupam0 And here I thought I knew all the overachievers when I was in high school.

[@KeithBoehler]

If true i was wondering why the name and time period felt familiar.

[@robert-janthuis9927]

@@DragoniteSpam I'd suggest looking into Euler and Gauss. Basically, if there is some concept in math which got discovered between like 1800 and 2000, there is like a 50/50 chance that either one of those already discovered that same thing a few hundred years prior.

[@DragoniteSpam]

@@robert-janthuis9927 You expect Euler and Gauss to show up all over the place in math (and Newton in physics, and Turing and Shannon in computing...), the remarkable thing about people like Young are how many different domains they did important work in over a single lifetime.

[@thepbg8453]

As a individual who has worked the galleries of the British Museum, no item is more requested or sought after than the Rosetta Stone: or the most missed. People will ask where it is even while standing right next to it, and it is on everyone’s bucket tour. The biggest irony as to why people struggle to find it is the sea of people who envelop it’s case just to get a look: accidentally blocks it from view. In short its one of the few times you will see people excited to see a Tax Document

[@cebonvieuxjack]

That's cause its exposition is not ideal, it's a relatively small stone place at size height in the middle of a hallway between the Egyptian and Assyrian corridors, a place which is bound to be crowded. It sould be place at the end of the Egyptian Corridor, head-high up on a wall, facing down the alley filled with statues and sarcophagus. With the explanations and information placed next to it, on both sides... Ugh, Britons... NO SENSE OF PRESENTATION ! If we had brought it to the Louvre this would have NEVER happened!!! 🙄😤😤

[@thepbg8453]

I would graciously like to mock the Louvre in turn and undermine its layout… however I have never been so I will instead aggressively drink tea at you. *SIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPP!* *This is a joke :P*

[@cebonvieuxjack]

@@thepbg8453 I would have liked to answer by smoking loudly but I don't know how to phonetically put that into letters. I am shattered, and defeated.

[@SirV3nt]

​@cebonvieuxjack as an American, I would like to look down on both of you from some misguided sense of superiority, then proceed to throw the vast majority of my money into the defense budget. I chose to make the sound of an F-22 Raptor fly by, costing the taxpayer millions of dollars. *WOOOOOOOOOSH*

[@bobsickle2336]

​@@cebonvieuxjack Probably would have been stolen like the Mona Lisa.

[@Nyst2]

Imagine taking the actual Rosetta Stone from the French and still getting beaten by them at translating it.

[@v_cpt-phasma_v689]

after the English started it, champ couldnt have done it without young.

[@wikirexmax]

​@@v_cpt-phasma_v689 The English didn't started it, they almost tried from day one. Champolion's interest into coptic was also a core element for being able to decipher and speak the language.

[@cpj93070]

@@wikirexmax You French are still not getting it, it's staying in England end off. 😜

[@RazorsharpLT]

@@cpj93070 If it wasn't for the French you wouldn't even HAVE the Rosetta stone. The only thing you're good at is stealing. coming from a Lithuanian... man, i wish Napoleon would have won.

[@jordaneggerman4734]

​@@cpj93070 ...in the words of a true lover of history.... _"It belongs in a _*_museum!"_* ...Just...the one in Cairo, not the one in London...

[@grant.5345]

Imagine travelling across the world to somewhere you have never been before, and be surrounded by the ancient monuments of the past carved in a language only you know.

[@midshipman8654]

Thats a striking image to think about. Something few people will ever experience.

[@arc-sd8sk]

damn

[@BassOutcast]

Basically Robin from One Piece

[@scareantics]

that is what this “history” lesson/video was: only imagination. It never happened, none ever learned to read hieroglyphs….

[@zzzzzzzz6845]

@@scareanticsbro what are you on about

[@DavidJamesHenry]

This is way better of a story than I was led to believe as a child who was told "it's just unimportant tax information"

[@Jimera0]

They're not wrong, but it's the story around it and what they could do with it that made it a great story... if they left all that out, no wonder it was dull lol. It is rather amusing though that one of the most notable archaeological finds in human history is unimportant, dry tax law though.

[@DavidJamesHenry]

@@Jimera0 i think the story of Ptolemy V's power struggle is just as interesting, and provides important context. This stone was carved during the Punic Wars while Hannibal was invading Italy. That's a lot of historical juice that I was never told!

[@2MeterLP]

Its not even unimportant tax information! A sudden tax exemption for all priest say a great many things about the periods political climate!

[@DavidJamesHenry]

@@2MeterLP we are STILL talking about tax exemptions for religious institutions to this day!

[@zimriel]

@@DavidJamesHenry iirc there was a massive popular revolt against the Greeks (and their corrupt local priests) under Ptolemy IV, which actually reinstalled pharaohs in upper Egypt, southern Nile. But they lost.

[@albevanhanoy]

You should have mentioned that Egypt acknowledged Champollion's work and gifted an obelisk to France to thank them for deciphering hieroglyphs. I don't think there is a clearer way to say that he won and Young lost :P .

[@watcherzero5256]

They also gifted Britain Cleopatra's Needle at the same time as thanks for kicking the French out of Egypt. It was presented in 1819 but remained in Egypt until 1877 due to transport costs, only being finally moved when the Egyptians proposed demolishing it to make way for land development.

[@krankarvolund7771]

Egypt gave two obelisks to France. But the first one was so tedious to transport, we left the second one in Egypt and a century and a half later a french president officially renounced to the gift XD

[@albevanhanoy]

@Krankar Volund Oh yeah I remember that story! Turns out, moving kilotons of stone across an ocean isn't that easy x)

[@krankarvolund7771]

@@albevanhanoy That's why I prefer when people give me their gift at my home :p

[@22espec]

Although I would like to know what they think of Champollion statue in the College of France. Do they really have to put his foot over a Pharao's head?

[@sErgEantaEgis12]

8:45 "He uncovered kings who's names had not been spoken for millennia" I'm very embarrassed that I never really thought about this but it makes so much sense and it's so mind-blowing.

[@ecurewitz]

6:58 Belzoni was not just a circus strongman, but was also one of the most influential people involved n beginning the science of Egyptology

[@Boretheory]

No italians can’t be important h that doesn’t fit Germano-centric narrative

[@Kaiyanwang82]

@@Boretheory meanwhilem in the Belzoni english wikipedia: 1 portrait by the british, 1 by a dutchman, 1 medal depicting him in the british museum.

[@abcdef27669]

Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion arguing who deciphered Egyptian Language, and I'm here wanting to hug both, just to say: "You both did a great job, and we are grateful for it".

[@ndemers]

"I just want both teams to have a great time"

[@occam7382]

At the same time though, as an American, I really just want to watch them both duke it out while I enjoy my popcorn and fondly remember how we owned them during the Suez Crisis. Good times.

[@tygrenvoltaris4782]

English and frenchie rivalry never ends..

[@SpMile]

Also mention that working together would have been better

[@zimriel]

kind of like Alice Kober / Michael Ventris. Both died young. Alternate universe, they met, married, and had sex like rabbits

[@bud9133]

I'm so embarrassed my British ancestors wrote on the side of an important artefact what basically says "Brits Roolz, Frenchies Droolz!"

[@khosrowanushirwan7591]

Lol, no need to feel embarrassed those were the exploits of your ancestors not yours.

[@Tyork42]

@@khosrowanushirwan7591there are plenty of brits whod do that now😂

[@irenedeneb6188]

In all fairness, the Ptolemies themselves often did the same thing. The British were adding their own history to an ancient object, as has been done by conquerors since time immemorial.

[@watchm4ker]

​@@irenedeneb6188Not just the Ptolemies. One of the big hurdles of studying ancient Egyptian history is that over thousands of years, multiple Kingdoms and even more Dynasties, there was a LOT of historical revision to better fit the then-current rulers. Scratching out and re-carving names, claiming achievements that were proven older than the claimant's family, switching around gods as parts of the religion fell in and out of favour... It all builds up over the Millenia, until the Romans took over and ended much of the priesthood, consigning Hieroglyphics to the past.

[@RaffieFaffie]

I'm humoured by it, I wouldn't do it if I found an ancient artifact though.

[@BlackLabelExpat]

I can see it now. Solider:"The new bulding scrap for the fortresses just arrived." Commander: "Whoa wait wait wait. This one looks different."

[@bernardoheusi6146]

I can't. That sounds stupid.

[@andyjay729]

Good thing they noticed it, regardless of what their exact words were upon discovery. As was pointed out in the "Napoleon in Egypt" series, ancient steles were often repurposed as building blocks.

[@leonhardeuler7647]

For those of you interested in learning more I suggest checking of Native Lang's video on how Egyptian was deciphered.

[@ikeekieeki]

seconded

[@birdofclay9581]

Even though I always had an interest in ancient history, for the longest time I thought that the Rosetta stone was much ... smaller. Like, the size of a sheet of paper. It was only a couple years ago, when I saw an image of it with a person standing next to it and realized: "Wait, that thing is massive!"

[@carlosalbertofernandezvele7574]

Just think that Champollion, without the knowledge and resources of today's media did a better research on Ancient Egypt than 3 so-called Egyptologist for a certain network.

[@Ami-jc2oo]

He even read the name of said 'documentary'

[@buwitre1]

Who needs Champollion or the Rosetta Stone for that matter, when a grandmother knows everything about Egypt.

[@tecpaocelotl]

The next one should be about deciphering the Mayan writing.

[@Writer_Productions_Map]

Lol

[@tecpaocelotl]

@@Writer_Productions_Map what's so funny?

[@Writer_Productions_Map]

@@tecpaocelotl idk i forgot I even commented this 💀

[@LawrenceMK2]

“I also can’t eat the Rosetta Stone” is such a wonderful sentence.

[@CollinMcLean]

Not with that attitude!

[@Wallyworld30]

Rosetta Stone would be like in 2000 years from now and somebody finds an intact Alibaba instruction manual. It's written in 3 languages English/Chinese/Spanish. They already understand Chinese because this knowledge somehow survived 2000 years into the future but Spanish and English were lost to time along with all Romance languages. Using this Alibaba instruction manual they are able to also tap into some Greek and Latin because of the nature of Romance Languages. The Rosetta Stone itself is deciphered once again and read after studying the great Alibaba manual. The people of the future wonder who was this great Alibaba and why was he so important to have to have his important message read by so many different types of people?

[@WaterShowsProd]

Similarly ancient Khmer was decyphered when Etienne Aymonier discovered a stele at a small temple in present-day Sakaew, Thailand. The stone was inscribed in both Sanskrit and Khmer and told the story of the founding of the kingdom and a list of monarchs, unlocking two centuries of lost history. When France drew up borders for their new colony, the temple ended up on the Siamese side, so Aymonier attempted to steal the stele by hauling it with an elephant. He failed-it's not known for certain it was him, but he was annoyed that such an important find was on the "wrong" side of the arbitrary border France drew through Siamese controlled territory, and locals witnessed a European attempt to take the stone. The Siamese then fetched the stone and took it to Bangkok where it sat in The National Museum before being destroyed by a fire. The temple has been reconstructed and I've performed there twice, in shows telling the history of the temple, the discovery it provided, and the history of The Khmer Kingdom.

[@olivierb9716]

kmers civilisation is certainly one of the less know and the more fascinating civilisation.

[@thecaelspice]

"I also Can't eat the Rosetta Stone" Well not with That attitude you Can't Matt

[@alfrancisbuada2591]

I can wholeheartedly say. That this artifact has brought more understanding of the Egyptian culture than anywhere else

[@kala_asi]

As someone who likes to mess with reconstructions of European languages and later check my guesses, the section at 7:35 spoke to me on a personal level

[@AustrianEmpire415]

I like how there are three distinct animation styles, the one in the main series (examples:napoleon in Egypt, Crimean War, Siege of Vienna, & path to Pearl Harbor), the OG style of this video, Justinian, Bronze Age collapse, & Punic wars, and then the style in extra mythology

[@grdja83]

I got terrified for a second you would omit this from the "Napoleon in Egypt" story.

[@markadams7046]

I'm surprised Rosetta Stone didn't sponsor this episode.

[@AlbertaGeek]

Talk about a missed opportunity.

[@aldrinmilespartosa1578]

"I can't eat the Rosetta Stone" "Skill issue"

[@napoleonibonaparte7198]

"William John Banks was touring Egypt when he fell in love with a 22-foot tall, 6-ton obelisk." A better love story than Twilight.

[@sonofrivadin3684]

0:18 You hear this Netflix?

[@jakegarvin7634]

6:46 - the man was right, it really tied the front yard together

[@saidtoshimaru1832]

Caligula said the same thing. Now the Obelisc he brought to Rome is in the sentre of Sain Peter's Square.

[@jakegarvin7634]

@@saidtoshimaru1832 a pope or two as well. They've been fighting over that thing in particular for 2000 years at least

[@TheHorzabora]

The full history of the Rosetta Stone is just one of those amazing series of fascinating historical events and coincidences.

[@kloothommel6569]

Pharao's could change the hyrogliphic script based on their own personal preference. This also meant that all important carvings of tale's, laws, religious teksts were changed dozens of times because some random pharao liked certain symbols slightly different better. This also didnt help to translate ancient egyptian later.

[@Itsgay2read]

The only reason I know about the Rosetta Stone is because of Rick Riordans The Kane Chronicles (it's literally the first artifact we see in the trilogy). Also, just love how casually they desecrated it along the way before it wound up in a British Museum. Just encapsulating all the worst aspects of archeological history😂

[@digitalhistory8526]

We just wanted everyone to know that we beat the French to get it 😂

[@CollinMcLean]

Britain with artifacts invokes the image of the seagulls from Finding Nemo “MINE!”

[@occam7382]

@@CollinMcLean, now I'm imaginging a bunch of seagulls with monocles and top hats throwing down over a rock with some scribblings on it... and it is beautiful.

[@CollinMcLean]

@@occam7382 Someone needs to meme that now... Britain with artifacts and Britain with other countries.

[@cpj93070]

@@CollinMcLean Cry more, you lost French boy. 😜😜

[@enxman7697]

Those stories are amazing! Keep up your wonderful work!

[@glitterboy2098]

man, this would have been a perfect video for Rosetta Stone language Learning Software to have sponsored.

[@wikiuser92]

I read about this story in a history book when I was a kid, and it's always fascinated me. Thanks for providing me with more details.

[@iapetusmccool]

I grew up in Dorset. The estate with that obelisk was just outside my home town.

[@treeaboo]

Kingston Lacy, it has lovely gardens. Got dragged around there a lot as a kid because my parents liked those gardens, I always thought the giant obelisk sitting in the middle of the estate looked cool but I never realised it was so important in deciphering hieroglyphics.

[@Pavlos_Charalambous]

Interesting enough the word demotic is still being used as an expression in Greek for common people's dialect Yes back in the day languages had the everyday And elaborated snobbish versions As a matter of fact Greece kept using what they literally called the Katharevousa - the purist until the mid 80s!!!

[@krankarvolund7771]

Demotic just means popular, the complete name of the third script on the Rosetta stone is demotic egyptian. It's just that we really study demotic scripts only in egyptology so the egyptian is dropped ^^

[@Theraot]

The ostensibly preposterous proposition that the intricacies of sophisticated language yield an arcane nature to the populace is worthy of contemplation.

[@Pavlos_Charalambous]

@@krankarvolund7771" demos " the people in ancient Greek For example the ancient Athenian parliament was known as " I eklisia tou demou" the gathering of the people 😉 In Greek there is a entire family of words related to demos For example traditional " people's" songs are known as " demotica" popular people " demophilis" etc Basically almost everything having to do with popular or people's starts with demo- 😉

[@Pavlos_Charalambous]

@@Theraot exatly Dat 🙃😉

[@krankarvolund7771]

@@Pavlos_Charalambous Yes, demos means people. But demotica is not demos, it's demotica, which means "popular". It's the same root with a suffix, just like in english. People's song, how could we say that? Oh yeah, popular song :p Popular means "from the people" before meaning "famous", you know that right? A popular song now means a famous song, but originally it's a song from the people, we still use it in that sense for the popular class, another word for the working class. I don't really understand your answer ^^'

[@ivanwilliams7413]

Wow, I didn't know how much trouble it was to decipher hieroglyphics from the Stone. I thought it was like, "Oh, match the shapes to the other shapes that form words." And now, yeah, that sounds ridiculous considering how complex both civilizations were.

[@CollinMcLean]

Add to the fact it's not a perfect one for one because Egyptian writing doesn't have vowels meaning there are literal gaps to fill when translating. I learned to read Younger Futhark for fun and for art and design purposes and that took months. I can only imagine how much of a headache it was to decode Egyptian from essentially scratch.

[@theanglo-lithuanian1768]

Fascinating. Great video!

[@ikeekieeki]

what an amazing story, and well-told

[@thomasrinschler6783]

If you want to have some real fun, do a series on Ptolemy V's children and grandchildren, Ptolemy VI through X (although you can throw in the very short reign of Ptolemy XI before he was literally torn apart by an Alexandrian mob only a few days into his reign) and their sisters (some of whom were their wives, although the sisters would also marry into the Seleucids). It's a story of murder, incest, backstabbing, and civil wars in two kingdoms, Ptolemaic and Seleucid, that puts Game of Thrones to shame. The BBC did a series called "The Cleopatras" in the '80s that covers this period in its first few episodes (although they exaggerate quite a bit, and it's... um... *very* '80s in effects and soundtrack). Cleopatra VII, *the* Cleopatra, was actually a pale imitation of some the political maneuvering her ancestors were involved in... Heck, Cleopatra Selene I could support a whole series just on her own...

[@Oxtocoatl13]

I think the sole reason why Ptolemaic family intrigue isn't better known is that everyone was called either Ptolemy or Cleopatra, and their family tree is a Christmas wreath that would make the Targaryens puke.

[@onehitkill5816]

The Rosetta stone along with some other pieces on how to speak egyptian really did unlock our understanding of Egypt and its great past.

[@johnnybadboy3475]

SO GLAD to see this in my subscription feed!

[@ambroiseperret6460]

what a great episode thank you Extra History

[@cultuschoco]

Omg, literally saw it today and there’s a video now on KZbin, thank you so much Extra Credit!

[@bobs_toys]

It feels weird to actually see stuff like this.

[@KhakiLuckyLabbot]

Awesome content.

[@kamayomama3980]

Another great video

[@bartz0rt928]

8:48 pet peeve: "millennia" is plural. The singular form is "millennium". Like the Backstreet Boys album.

[@dosierchannel6387]

Now that’s the best way to do an ad! Good job! Quick and subtle not an entire five minutes of your video

[@TheCreepypro]

what a fascinating tale we do not hear enough about

[@jonmararbiter0721]

Yay I’m glad you post

[@danielsantiagourtado3430]

Love your videos guys! So imformativr!😊😊😊❤❤❤

[@GamerFromJump]

Congrats on Episode 150!

[@MauriceBear]

I would suggest a proper food plan in place for Extra History, nice to have sponsors like Factor but a food plan would help majorly. Also Napoleon himself had a foe waiting for him in the wings: Bnuuies.

[@thibs2837]

Bravo Champollion !

[@ursleiter5611]

Sometimes, a leap in understanding is solely due to blind luck. I wonder what else is locked under sand and rocks.

[@dalecooper9942]

Thanks for explaining how champollion deciphered the hieroglyphs, Greek, and the demoniac language

[@masterfarah4615]

Of course the Rosetta Stone was about taxes

[@fakjbf3129]

The other possibility was complaining about low quality copper ore.

[@Paludion]

And the Egyptians were obsessed with death. Fitting.

[@AlRoderick]

Most writing was about taxes for most of the history of writing.

[@AlbertaGeek]

@@fakjbf3129 "I understood that reference." - Capt. Steve Rogers, U.S. Army (retd.)

[@drallagon]

While linguistics was just barely born as a science at that time, the act of comparing languages described is work of its predecessor: Philology. It wasn't until Saussure in the early 1900's that the linguistics would pick up steam, as far as I remember.

[@Naiwaqp]

Thanks!

[@extrahistory]

Thank you so much for supporting the show!

[@davidwilliam9681]

They thought they'd find powerful lost knowledge, and they only found out about tax law from a defunct regime.

[@andyjay729]

Hey, 2000 years from now some future archaeologists will probably decipher the lost English language by reading the Spanish and Hmong translations of the "if you need a translation, please call this number" section of some random healthcare or financial documents.

[@_wayward_494]

Did you watch the video? The powerful lost knowledge of the hieroglyphs was regained thanks to this stone

[@davidwilliam9681]

@_wayward_494 And what good was it? Did it contain the secret to immortality or anti-gravity? No, just taxes. Not even useful because that regime stopped collecting taxes over a thousand years ago. Obsolete information about taxes.

[@naly202]

It goes like this with the British Museum: "One man's trash is another man's treasure", the second man sees the potential and takes it home. Then the first man realises that his discarded construction material was valuable and wants it back.... Not all item were like this, but many were... Instead of crying over what's been stolen, we should think how many more invaluable items were destroyed, discarded, neglected, etc because people didn't know what they were.

[@Richforce1]

You'd think people would now start calling it the Rashid Stone.

[@EllpaFox47]

“I also can’t eat the Rosetta Stone” Well you’re just not trying hard enough Matt!

[@ASpaceOstrich]

I *still* hear that heiroglyphics are pictograms and that never made any sense to me, because you can't make a language using only pictures of things. It just doesn't work. You can't draw a picture of so many complex concepts. Glad to know that thats not the case.

[@kingmink138]

10 minutes live and u got 2.4k already. Keep up the good work

[@shylockwesker5530]

How did Champollion know Coptic having never been to Egypt?

[@MrLantean]

Champollion is able to make an acquittance with a former Coptic priest of Syrian descent by the name of Anton Zakhūr Rafa'il or Raphaël de Monachis as he is known in France. Raphaël de Monachis teaches colloquial Arabic and Coptic languages at Grenoble and Champollion is one of the students attending his classes. Champollion is able connect the relation between Ancient Egyptian hieroglyph with Coptic language which is the key for deciphering them.

[@deniseeulert2503]

Oh this is a great story.

[@joshuaaddaeandcartoons]

Lesss gooo a new vid

[@flammamancer]

I learn something new in these videos. I always assumed the Rosetta stone was made in the bronze age and not the Ptolemy dynasty.

[@xboxplayer3788]

I love the original art style for extra history!

[@l3ete1geuse]

So much history I wish I had been told about in school.

[@sevenguardians7517]

I finally started hello fresh and yeah it’s worth it thanks for recommending it to me

[@aldbgbnkladg]

6:21, I didn't know Egyptians had a hieroglyph for the wifi icon... 🤔😉🤣

[@dawesome_sauce]

"...I also can't *eat* the Rosetta Stone." That's quitter talk right there!

[@Galistarwater]

We need at least one episode on the great Giovanni Belzoni and his contribution to early Egyptology.

[@silveryuno]

8:35 What a moment that must have been...

[@pdruiz2005]

At 4:19. Interestingly enough, that was also the problem with ancient Mayan hieroglyphs. Lots of linguists thought this was an ideographic script, and their findings held sway over Maya studies for centuries. But that made the script even more complex and incomprehensible. It was only in the 1970s that archeologists and linguists realized that the script was a mixture of ideograms and phonetic sounds. Adding to the seemingly insurmountable complexity, the Mayans also had the nasty habit of linking one common sound to four or five symbols, similar to the way modern Chinese does. Which just multiplied the ways you could get something wrong. Deciphering of a lot Mayan hieroglyphs continues to this day. But a good 80% to 85% has been deciphered. Yay!!!

[@jointhearumanati8574]

You know making the discovery of the century running to your siblings house and fainting is honestly not an overreaction like mood

[@Jayjay-qe6um]

The term 'Rosetta Stone' is now used to refer to the essential clue to a new field of knowledge.

[@hemberger91]

Can’t eat the Rosetta Stone? Not with that attitude!

[@mattiemathis9549]

Great video! I’ve heard of the Rosetta Stone but I thought it was something like a “Batman decoder” made out of rocks. I do realize how stupid that sounds now, but that is why content like this is so important. Thanks!

[@Koffee_Kake1941]

9:09 "I also can't eat the Rosetta Stone..." Not with that attitude. Jokes aside, excellent video. I love your channel's work.

[@darreljones8645]

Always fun to see footage of the real Zoey during the sponsor segment.

[@ThePkmage]

I had the pleasure of seeing this tablet in the British museum. it's bigger than I expected and is incredible

[@_resource-guy1878]

Can you do a Lawrence of Arabia series, he has a really interesting background with great knowledge and ability

[@kimyoonmisurnamefirst7061]

Kanji is an ideograph like a lot of Sino-Chinese, but kana are syllabary: So represent sound, but 2 sounds at the same time. か for example is "hiragana ka" 火- though is an ideograph for fire, which translates into Korean, Chinese and Japanese. (Korean and Japanese borrow Chinese ideographs, not sounds, but aren't related to Chinese. Like English is a Germanic language, but borrows heavily from Latin) Calling Chinese "symbols" is also off, but I suppose there isn't enough time for linguistic talk. 瀑 (waterfall) for example has the radical water which is taken from the character: 海(sea) such radicals can influence the meaning and the sound of the word. Making 瀑 a compound ideograph. (There's another one that has a dragon, (Eastern) and water in front that also means waterfall) But Chinese is more isolating than English in terms of grammar and more noun-based as well. Sorry, my inner linguist feels a bit irked. I get it was a throw away line, but still... I got this huge lecture from one of my professors about it, so I thought I would pass the knowledge down. BTW, there's a solid argument that all writing systems are ideographs, but that's way too far into linguistics and off topic of this video. Sorry to interrupt your regular programming.

[@timothystamm3200]

What because most alphabets are modified hieroglyphs?

[@geoffreyherrick298]

Seeing how Chinese ideograms evolved from pictographs really helped me to understand what I was reading. What's in a Chinese Character by Tan Huay Peng was my Rosetta Stone!

[@geoffreyherrick298]

There is also the onyomi for Chinese readings and kunyomi for Japanese readings. An example would be Kou for onyomi and Kuchi or Guchi for kunyomi.

[@kimyoonmisurnamefirst7061]

@@geoffreyherrick298 You should have recognized that 火 is read か as in the word for Tuesday in Japanese. ;) But the common reading is ひ. But technically my professor said to me that they are compound ideographs, and gave me a huge paper about it. Some of them look literal like "water dragon" or "person sitting" is a woman... but some of the compounds are made up of sound and pictures and various concepts and ideas put together, which can shift meaning from imported language as they interpret the meaning differently.

[@barbaros99]

It's stuff like this that makes me so glad Koreans decided to make their common written language syllabary instead of ideographic. It made it so much easier to learn (which was the whole point of Hangeul).

[@ambroiseperret6460]

The lesson of the day : -The French found -The British keep

[@ehssanmohamed1887]

good video

[@Nolaris3]

6:58 This Italian strongman (a.k.a. The Great Belzoni) probably deserves his own episode

[@joosepaivio7005]

Kiitos!

[@extrahistory]

Thank you for helping support the channel!

[@Nyst2]

I wonder what the Egyptian reaction to his visit was. There arrived a man from far away who could read a language no-one in your own country, not even your scholars, could read for centuries. Could you imagine? If a stranger arrived in your home state, being able to solve an ancient mystery that none of you could?

[@Darkgun231]

Awed but miffed would be my assumption.

[@joshuanishanthchristian5217]

@@Darkgun231 Apparently they gifted him, and France in general, an obelisk

[@KH-wm5yi]

this is simply not true. plenty of egyptian priests used to and still speak coptic and he in fact inlisted their help to translate but their story isnt included because it isnt useful to the narrative

[@KasumiRINA]

​@@KH-wm5yi Coptic priests still couldn't read hieroglyphics tho.

[@KasumiRINA]

Foreign scholars arriving in Minsk and uncovering the Belarusian language to few surviving locals, 2100, colorized.

[@chrishamilton7516]

British Write graffiti on priceless ancient artifact. Every Historian: BRING ME SOME TEA AND A HARBOR.

[@ewartsmith7490]

There's a Reading Street story based around this. I knew there was a Jean-François Ch- something involved somewhere. 😂

[@michelangelolamargese7032]

Could you do a serie about the italian wars?

[@christianbollore7677]

Japanese writing system also usues a mix of ideographic and phonetic, not just ideographic

[@chris7263]

Chinese does as well, actually, though the phonetic characters blend in better. And even the ideographic characters often have phonetic elements in them to differentiate from other similar characters…. I wonder if this is true of all ideographic writing systems that have to represent a full language.

[@hallamhal]

If you're covering Egyptology, is a video on The Great Belzoni on the cards?

[@generalnawaki]

9:01 And whole chapters of Human history were finally within or grasp.

[@ehssanmohamed1887]

good history

[@idle_weirdo]

You can't eat stones 😢. But you can eat mummy's. Any guess how many mummy's these guys ate?