The Rosetta stone is a black slab of Basalt that measures 3 feet nine 9 in height, 2 feet 4.5 inches across and 11 inches thick and weighs approximately 346 pounds. The Rosetta stone was “…discovered in July 1799, in the foundations of Fort Julien, Rosetta, by Lieutenant Pierre Francois Xavier Bouchard.”  (Downs)

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The French were led to Egypt by Napoleon Bonaparte in the efforts to take over from the British and rediscover the lost civilization of the Nile.  The French set sail to Egypt in 1798, in a fleet larger than the Spanish Armada. (Downs)

Napoleon led his army to conquer Egypt in efforts to control trade and make France a power country. Napoleon’s expedition was not only a military one, but also an academic one.

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The preservation of the Stone is essential because it depicts the evolution of writing and reminding us of early civilization, which has beginnings in ancient Egypt.

“As early as 7500 B.C.E., people used token-pieces of clay molded into shapes to represent specific commodities: a cone for a unit of grain, an egg shape for a unit of oil and so on.” (Fiero) The tokens were essential in exporting. All the goods were accounted for with these tokens.

The inscription, written by a group of priests“…consists of a decree issued by he Egyptian priesthood on 27 March 196 BC, roughly six months after the coronation of King Ptolemy V in the old capital of Memphis.” (Downs 216)

The Stone is comprised of 3 bands and is carved in two languages, Egyptian and Greek. The Egyptian script was ancient hieroglyphs and Demotic. The top band is hieroglyphics, the middle band is Demotic and the lower band is Greek. The decree accounts for all the good deeds that Ptolemy did for the priesthood.

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Hieroglyphics is the most famous of the Egyptian scripts. Hieroglyphs was not only used on the Rosetta stone, but also used on temple walls and the tombs of royalty. Scribes used hieroglyphs to preserve history, beliefs and ideas on papyrus scrolls. The deciphering of the hieroglyphics code on the Rosetta stone is accredited to Jean-Francois Champillion. (Downs)

In summary, the decree is a depiction of the life of Ptolemy. It explains how he inherited the kingdom from his father and ruled for about 30 years. In regards to priests and temples, temples had annual contributions in the form of money and corn. He did not obligate priest to pay anything more than what they had been paying when he his father, Ptolemy IV was ruler.

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The Rosetta stone has been monumental for language. In current times, companies like Apple, Inc. use the Rosetta concept in the MacIntosh Operating system. This process allows some programs that were Power PC compatible to run on Intel based MacIntosh computers. (https://apple.com/support)

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Currently, the Stone is displayed in the British Museum, Society of Antiquaries of London.

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Works Cited

http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_image.aspx?image=an16456b.jpg&amp;retpage=15633

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http://www.umass.edu/wsp/philology/gallery/champollion.html

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<a href="http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/8496.html">http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/8496.html</a>

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Downs, Jonathan. <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Discovery at Rosetta.</span> New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2008

Fiero, Gloria K. <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Humanistic Tradition, Volume 1, Sixth Edition</span>. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011

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