The Rosetta Stone, Champollion and ancient languages

This discussion explores how and why, some 200 years ago, the exciting race developed between French scholar Jean-Francois Champollion and England's Thomas Young to decipher the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone.
Join exhibition curator Dr Ilona Regulski as she introduces this event - and the Rosetta Stone. Dr Irving Finkel, British Museum, will then chair other distinguished experts to consider the momentous discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799 and why it was so important in the decipherment of ancient languages.
The use of the three languages inscribed on the stone - hieroglyphs, demotic and Ancient Greek - suggested how the code of hieroglyphs and other ancient languages could be cracked through bi-lingualism. Author Andrew Robinson joins Prof Stephane Polis (University of Liege) to discuss the thrill of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, the realisation of its importance, the rivalry to crack the code of hieroglyphs and Champollion's ultimately successful ground-breaking methods.
This event is part of the public programme supporting Hieroglyphs: unlocking ancient Egypt (open until 19 February 2023). www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/hieroglyphs-unlocking-ancient-egypt
Read more about how Egyptian hieroglyphs were decoded, a timeline to decipherment. www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/hieroglyphs-unlocking-ancient-egypt/egyptian-hieroglyphs-decipherment-timeline
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Image credit: detail of hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone, Egypt, 196 BC. © The Trustees of the British Museum
Object on Collection online: www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA24

[@brodbobot]

A must see in the British Museum.

[@barbarahelgaker390]

Very interesting - this is essential watching for those of us who don`t get to the BM in person so often. Thanks!

[@Vandal_Savage]

The Egyptian House in London my be demolished but the Egyptian House in Penzance in Cornwall still stands....

[@bronteart]

excellent !!!

[@LSOP-]

The discussion starts at 10:23

[@tiffanyannhowe1712]

Thank you!

[@rhetoric5173]

The hand corresponding to T, shows how the entire decipherment is essentially muddled and inaccurate. First, why would you think the silly vowel based Greek phoneme inventory would correspond 1:1 to that of ancient Egypt? It's already well established how Greeks mumbled any name that had phonemes that don't have equivalence to their alphabet (Iesus for 3-I-S-A -> Jesus because the 3, ع, Ayin, is entirely absent and to fit the Greek *-sus name mold eg Hippasus\Euphraeus\Damascius) it is only by examining the "semitic" script (Cinatic, Musnad/"proto-semitic") and its only full correspondence (Arabic) that an accurate reading maybe reached, the aforementioned T for example, the hand is YaD (Y-D), Dal in Arabic, د, is the sound being portrayed; however it is neither D, no T but similar to both(similarity of the two letters is evident enough phonetically, sometimes lost entirely in certain accents like Australian). The reason why it refers to D and not Y in YaD, is something that I will not get into since it'll require more space than a comment, but can be illustrated by looking at (M-D,R-D,H-D etymo-ontological correspondence) at anyrate the same can be said about P, when it's in reality B. In conclusion, ancient Egyptian, while the meanings maybe correct, the phonetic value is all almost certainly wrong. Same can be said about the cuneiforms, which use Hebrew with its reducted phonemic inventory (22 vs 29 in "protosemitic"/Arabic) as a scaffold, chiefly out of religious zeal, or european hubris, or an unholy mixture thereof.

[@zeeanemone6482]

you didn't watch the talk about coptic?

[@rhetoric5173]

@@zeeanemone6482 coptic is too corrupted by Greek to be of value

[@traceyolsen308]

Another lecture from the BM mentioned that the variety of Hieroglyphs became more numerous in later periods, could they have used the extra signs for something like musical notation etc so that the text can have more than one use? (+ of course it would be nice if the same function was also happening with the extra Cuneiform letters). Also, considering how flammable cloth and papyrus can be, did they ever back up their library collections on clay tablets? And are there Greek and Egyptian texts copied on Cuneiform tablets in various places in the Middle East? +very enjoyable discussion. Thank you.

[@soupdragon151]

Clay tablets was a uniquely mesopotamian (and later persian/parthian) method of recording text as was cuneiform writing it wasn't adopted outside of those areas and died out with mesopotamian culture. The majority of egyptian hieroglyphs are of course, carved on their (stone) monuments there are few odd papyrus most of which survive as mummy wrappings but its not the bulk of known writings (later coptic writings were preserved in christian monasteries such as the one on Mt Sinai the majority being religious texts)

[@natanbarreto5329]

Hi, Dr Ilona Regulski. Thanks for such a brilliant pannel. I have one question, though. You mentioned that 28 copies of the Rosetta stone have been found. However, the following line was displayed in the exhibition, "Three other copies of the Memphis decree have since been found". Could you please clarify. Many thanks, Natan Barreto.

[@llt8101]

I suspect that the locals believing that Champollion was a local is an exageration on his part. I'm sure that he learned the language really well but sounding like a local is another thing. He didn't even live in the land. My mother and uncle grew up in French-Canadian culture but began attending school in English at eleven years old. Both of them moved accross Canada to British Coloumbia in the 70s. She's a very socialable person and he was a University professor for a number of years but both still can not help but pronounce some words a little differently from most English speakers, drop a few Hs every here and there and every once in a while still pronounce a TH as a D.

[@SPQR748]

I once read that the hieroglyphs of the old kingdom have yet to be deciphered

[@soupdragon151]

....no.

[@zeeanemone6482]

once is past tense

[@green856w]

Dr Irving Finkel is an accomplished and interesting speaker, however it took almost 9 minutes to get the introduction done - I'd rather that time was used by the speakers.

[@notyourbiz235]

After ca. 20 minutes it was more informative including a native speaker

[@ansfridaeyowulfsdottir8095]

A great presentation, but whoever did the subtitles should be sacked! Not only was I shocked, nay! _Horrified_ to see Irving Finkel's sagaciously beatific face and magnificent beard being obscured by subtitles, they did not even synch with what he was saying! 🤣 They were so horribly bad and distracting, but I couldn't even turn them off! I never thought I'd ever say this, but YT's Closed Captions did a better job! {:o:O:}

[@jari2018]

Its much better than the chineese style of white text that flashes about so fast one must play movies at 0.75 sometimes 0.5 speed

[@soupdragon151]

Pretty sure they were captioned live and added to the what was a live stream. In another video some of the errors were amusing "ubiquitous" when what he actually said was "weetabix"

[@yvonne530]

Champollion couldn't decipher the hieroglyphs, because he didn't know the Albanian Language. There is only a way to decipher the hieroglyphs. You need two instruments: (1) the symbolic algorithm, found by Albanian Genie Mr. Petro Zheji and, (2) the Albanian Language. You just need to read the Book of Petro Zheji: "The mesianic role of the Albanian Language". Albanian is really the Cosmic Language, close to the symbols. She is the mother of all languages. Furthermore you have to read the Books: "Thoth spoke Albanian" by Giuseppe Catapano and "The Enigma" of Robert D'Angely. The old Sanskrit Language was in fact the Albanian Language. Sanskrit, old Greek and Latin are dead languages, from the old languages is alive only the Albanian Language, it has strong roots. The Greek Language is a new language, has no roots, it can be easy deciphered through Albanian Language too.

[@andrewwhelan7311]

Yes Greek is modern. I am with you with Albanian Yvonne. Just like the indigenous native Briton's language of the ancient Cymru. Why can't historian's do history using the ancient history of the root words that are still used today in the oldest languages still spoken today. It's not rocket science and it's better than the guess work used by the so called academics at the British Museum, which hide anything that's actually native indigenous British. Use Cymric for translation and they will see it works.. My 11 year old daughter can do it , so why can't historian's.

[@fromabove422]

It's because there's been a lot of lies about who is who

[@zeeanemone6482]

@@fromabove422 jebus was an albanian house wife

[@zeeanemone6482]

they are talking about old greek because it is actually on the fkn stone, albanian isn't :'D lmao hahah. and they talked about coptic.

[@harperwelch5147]

Poor video and sound quality! Terrible. I’m not watching this.

[@bloodgrss]

Good; its fine enough for most of us. Your loss...

[@zeeanemone6482]

terribly damaged rosetta stone *spits* I am not reading this, it must be garbage.