December 1, 2008 • 16 mins
Prior to the modern discovery of the Rosetta stone, Ancient Egypt was an enigma. Even many pre-Napoleonic Egyptians had no concept of their forbearers' culture. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about the Rosetta Stone.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Key and Just Gibson joined my staff writer
Jane Grahams. Hey there, Jane. When you think of ancient Egypt,
what comes to mind? Mummies? Yeah, I think of Pyramid
(00:27):
and Cleopatra with her crazy black eyeliner. And I guess
everyone wore a black outline and it wasn't so crazy.
I think it actually helped deflect the sun, or it's
sort of some sort of very practical purpose. It wasn't
just cosmetic. I'm wearing mine day to look cool and
super goth, not to deflict this one, not to depose
it's you know, it's kind of wintry and hazy out
the other day. The point being that all that we
(00:50):
think about ancient Egypt, and all of the Egyptian lore
that we know, and everything you know about mummies and
farrows and tout and Clepatra and Ramsey's we take it
for grant in it, I think, but there was a
really long period of time that no one really knew
what ancient Egypt was all about. Like they could see
these things that their eyes, but they were mysteries to them. Yeah,
(01:10):
and they knew this was a huge civilization obviously, but
we didn't really know the secrets of what happened during
the time that it rained and was so powerful because, uh,
the language was sort of forgotten and the and so
the inscriptions that were written about it could not be
translated and language aside. It was almost like the fascination
(01:32):
we have today with with Mars and outer space and
imagining that there may be people out there. It's popular
culture to us because there's no scientific or historical basis,
and that's how Egypt wise, it was very much a
subject of popular culture. And well that may strike you
as funny if you're sitting in school today maybe and
you've got a thirty minute lecture about one of the pharaohs.
(01:55):
Um imagine that back during the time that Napoleon was
in power in France, people dabbled in Egypt. People collected
parts of Egypt, and they would they would buy, like
collectors for collectors, items from Egypt themselves, and like the
Egyptians who didn't quite know what they're worth, right exactly.
And that's the thing that we should mention too, is
(02:16):
that not even the Egyptians knew what their cultures about.
It was all just just fun in games really that
you could go into these pyramids and you could find gold,
or you could find mummies, or you could find artifacts
and and pawn it off and make some change. And
and that all changed once Napoleon invaded Egypt. That's so
funny to me that Egyptian France have such a strong
(02:37):
high as fire as deciphering their history. But that's kind
of how it went. Yeah, it's interesting. It's pretty cool. Actually,
look at when Napoleon did, when he was trying to
get power over the strategic position where Egypt was, he
gathered this he had. He took his soldiers, but he
also took a troop of academics basically scientists, chemists, even zoologists.
(02:59):
And he called him up and he's like this super
secret mission and just say that you're doing this really
good of France and we're gonna, you know, study the
culture and see what's going on. And I would just
love it if like the President called me up today
and was like, Jane, we need you for a secret
academic mission and leave you to come to this mysterious
land with this that hells this mysterious civilization and find
out what it's all about. It must have been amazing.
(03:21):
And Napoleon was nothing if not a shrewd leader, and
so he didn't just plan to invade Egypt. He planned
a very thorough infiltration. So this group of academics, it
was called the Institute of Egypt, they set up camp
alongside the soldiers, and unfortunately things went a little bad
military wise, and the French were essentially cut off. All
(03:41):
their ships were destroyed, they had no way out and
they were sort of stranded in Egypt for at eighteen years. Yeah,
it's true. It's interesting because he went. Napoleon landed with
his troops and stuff. He was successful for a little while.
He captured Alexandria, he won the Battle of the Pyramids.
But then um, sort of by accident, this British uh
general or admiral, I should say, Horatio Nelson saw his
(04:03):
ships off the coast and they didn't have Um Napoleon
in it, but he destroyed the ships themselves. So they
were stranded there. Um Napoleon and his troops and there's
a lot that you could accomplish in eighteen years, and
they really did. They ended up writing a multi volume
work all about Egypt. But before that ever happened, they
had to build reinforcements. They had to build forts, they
(04:25):
had to build strongholds. And when the soldiers were at work,
they were tearing down walls of an old temple, I think,
and starting to erect a new Fortnit's place, and a
soldier stumbled across this shiny piece of black basalt, and
it had all of these inscriptions in it, and there
were three distinct types of inscriptions, and he thought, I
(04:46):
don't know what this is, but it looks important. So
he took it over to the scholars, which was really handy,
and they couldn't quite tell what it was either for
a while. But they called this piece of basalt the
Rosetta stone because it was found in the town of Rozetta.
And it wasn't huge, but it wasn't small either. It
was sort of about the size of maybe a small
coffee table, and it was pretty happy because it was
(05:08):
done maybe like a medium sized L C D television
or something like that, if you think about it in
those terms. So they thought they knew it was really important,
even though they couldn't quite figure out why. Um. But
so they wanted to hang onto it um first and
foremost for Napoleon. But when the English obviously had their
hold over over France in that area of the English
(05:28):
were really adamant that they handed over. Yeah, I said,
by the Treaty of Capitulation, they had to give it
over to the British. But the French were pretty quick thinking,
so they made some copies that first of all, and
that was more really really smart. So the British had
the original rosettas down, the French had copies of it,
and both camps set to work trying to figure out
what it was. And this is pretty it was pretty hard.
(05:49):
Like when I when I learned about the Rosetta stom
back in school. I guess I just learned the basic
facts that it was the key to figuring out hieroglyphics.
But it's interesting to look at the history because it
actually took them quite a while to actually figure out
and crack the code. It really did, and it had
three different types of writing on it. That's radeed had Greek,
which was relatively well known a time by academics, and
(06:10):
Demotic and which is sort of a subset of hieroglyphics,
and hieroglyphix itself. So these three different strata of languages,
and we know from the Greek that was the easiest
to interpret because, like you said, scholars did no Greek,
and the Reverend Stephen Weston actually interpreted that. In April
eighteen o two, we realized that the stone was dated
(06:30):
from March b C. What scholars later found out is
that it was one in a series of stella, essentially
like a religious or governmental decree written on stone, and
these were very, very common in Egypt. It was almost
like the Ten Commandments being on a tablet. This was
what people did. I mean, the Egyptians later have a
(06:51):
pyr respect for the time being, you know, we're putting
their writing on stone. And there were so many that
this one there was that a stone really is not
that significant, and then rand scheme of things. The actual
message on it is not that the message on is
not that riveting. I think basically it talks about how
the pharaoh is a good person, the pharaoh respects the gods,
the pharaoh is humble ergo, let's all honor the pharaoh.
(07:12):
But it was the key to deciphering hieroglyphics that makes
it so memorable today. So here's what happened with hieroglyphics
back when Egypt was its own entity and I didn't
really have any other outside parties bothering it at years
the language of hieroglyphics, and this was a very spiritual
and reverend sort of way of writing. So yeah, no,
(07:33):
not everybody knew how to write hieroglyphics, Like it was
reserved to like um, the particular carvers and um it
had a specific purpose, like it was either for religious
writing or like governmental writing, right, and then they decided
they needed a more pedestrian language that everyone could use
and everyone could write in. So then we have Heiradic
and this was easier, right to to write on like papyrus,
(07:56):
you know, and it was smooth to like it was
sort of like a cursive version. There you go, and
the same process continued, and by then we have different
parties coming into Egypt and different cultures influencing them. We
have Demotic, which evolves next, and that's a simplification of Herradic,
simplification of hieroglyphics. And then finally when Christians start coming
into Egypt and the culture and religion drastically changed, we
(08:17):
have Coptic, and this uses Coptic uses a group of
Greek alphabet mostly, but then there were some things that
the Greek Greek alphabet had that Egyptian language didn't, so
they incorporated some sort of hieroglyphic like characters in it exactly.
So the reason that that Rosetta stone had three different
languages on it is because they wanted to make sure
everyone could read this stone. The decree was public for everyone,
(08:41):
and like we said, not that interesting to decree, but
very public nonetheless. So after west End translated the Greek,
the next step was trying to go ahead and do
the demotic, because that seems the next easiest to do.
And there were two men who did that relatively contemporary
of one another, and that was Johann David her Blood
and Antoine sylvest To say sye, that's right. And these
(09:05):
people sort of new Coptic relatively well, like they had
studied Coptic before, and so they had an easier time
translating the demonic exactly. But hieroglyphics was a very persistent mystery.
And one of the reasons for that was that a
fifth century scholar, a Greek scholar named Parapolo put out
the idea that hieroglyphics were characters representative of symbols or allegories.
(09:31):
And so, I mean, think about it. If someone told
you that, um, little white dogs were representative of all
things evil, it would be really, really hard for you
to shake the idea that little white dogs were bad. Like,
no matter how you tried to change your ideology in
your way of thinking, you would always have in the
back of your mind stay away from little white dogs.
And that's what scholars were encountering as they went through
(09:53):
this interpretation process was that hieroglyphics translated to symbols and allegories.
So they took this horror Apollo's idea and ran with it.
And they just assumed this was right, that that one
character represents an idea basically, and it's not. They assumed
that it was not like English, for instance, which had
an alphabet where letters have a sound attached to them.
(10:14):
But that's exactly what it was, and no one figured
that out until years later. So running with this idea
that hieroglyphics represents symbols that Thomas Young came along in
eighteen fourteen and he discovered the cartouche, which was essentially
a loop around a group of hieroglyphic letters. And he
realized that only proper names were the ones and a cartouche,
(10:35):
because he was able to discern the name Ptolemy, and
he knew that from you know, the Ptolemic grewers who
had rulers who would come in and he knew that
they would have you know, some help and signified and
mentioned in a governmental decree. So that's at the standard
for looking for cartouche's. But he was still working on
Hollapolo's um hypothesis, so he couldn't really go much further
(10:55):
than that, right, so he was very limited. Well along
time stant Pallion and he knew from a very very
young age that he was destined for something great. And
people knew what hieroglyphics were, and they knew that no
one had mastered them. Like it was very much a
challenge that I think people aspired to, sort of a
patriotic challenge to because, like you said, Thomas Young he
(11:16):
was he was actually British and so he was fighting
to translate the hieroglyphics first for for England, you know,
UM and Champoleion was was French and because they found it,
they really wanted to translate it. First two and he
was a very very serious scholar, almost like Albert Einstein
of of France. At this time, he was very withdrawn,
(11:37):
he was sort of erratic and his behavior. He was
considered sort of an unusual character. And even at birth
people said he looked like he was Egyptian because he had,
you know, a darker skin tone, and his eyes were
a little bit more and more yellowish looking. He didn't
look like a Frenchman. And so he was destined for me.
He was destined for this. And I think that there's
some sort of legend that even a fort and teller
(11:57):
came in during his childbirth and said he was going
to do something really great having to do with Egypt.
I don't know if that's true, but it's sort of
fun to think about. So his whole life he knew
that he was going to master hieroglyphics, and even to
the point that his older brother had to care for
him essentially because he wasn't feeding himself properly, he had
no money, he could barely sustain his own life. And
(12:19):
well that makes sense, no, because I heard um that
he fainted when he actually translated the first thing, and
he was now nourished that his brother actually was able
to keep him out of military service. He said that
Chimpallion was doing a greater service to his country by
trying to crack hyerglyphics than he would in the military.
And and good thing too, because I don't think he
would have been a very good soldier. I think he've
(12:40):
been pretty unhappy in that post. And if he's a fainter,
I don't think you lest, no, not that much. So
he's working off Thomas Young's cartouche and he starts to
see a couple of different hieroglyphics symbols that he is
parsing out, and he comes up with the idea, well,
what if each symbol relates to a sound, and he
(13:02):
discovers the name Ramsey's using just a couple of figures
trailing in the ladder, and one of the first his
first clues was seeing this circle with a dot in
the middle, and he was like, you know what that
could be the sun? It has you know, he made
this this sleep of faith that you know that maybe
that's the sun. And he knew that in a related
language that the sun uh, the word for sun was raw,
(13:24):
and so using the phonetic like the sound of it,
he was able to eventually find out that this name
was Ramsey's. And I think he saw two more characters
that were very clearly meant to be s s. He
had r a blank as blank ass and he knows
a proper name. He knews a proper name. Who else
would have been famous in Egypt at that time Ramsay's
(13:44):
And so that was it, and he fainted, commenced painting.
There you go. And that's not to say that after
Champoleon essentially translated that one name from higher glyphics, this
still was a very pain stanking and laborious process people
had to go through, and there were many, many things
to be translated. But I think that brought about a
lot of excitement because now Egypt and the field of
(14:06):
Egyptology that sprang from it, it was a sanctified field
and archaeology and history and science. It wasn't just a
matter of popular culture. It was kind of sad for
people who realized all of a sudden, oh my gosh,
I've been selling priceless mommies and here's what they mean,
and who knows who has it now. I think some
of them were even shipped off to Europe ground depth
(14:27):
and um, mom if I remained swallowed, that's right, like
the medieval times. Yeah, so all these these artifacts were
very far flung around the world. But now at last
people knew what the history was. And this you know,
like you said, it was both academic and sort of
a fed in social areas too, and so um, people
were like obsessed with the culture now and there were
(14:48):
fights with like the museum, Like obviously England had the
Rosetta stone, and they were also getting all this stuff
that that France had had gotten in Egypt, and so
there was this like academic fight sort of. And even
to this day people still debate who the real victor
is France or England, because clearly Chambolian was, you know,
the Frenchman who ultimately discovered hieroglyphics and the key behind
(15:12):
it with the sound corresponding to the word. But on
the other hand, Thomas Young, the Englishman, if he hadn't
discovered the meaning of the cartouche, where the Champoleon have
been without that? So um, I think they debate back
and forth today. And I think that the Rosetta stone
also went on display in France for a while for
a celebration of its discovery, and there were rumors at
the French were plotting to just steal it. And and
(15:35):
even today I think that Egypt is opening up a
museum in the not too distant future and they had
wanted to bring the Rosetta Stone home to display it.
That's right. I mean, it's understandable, like like you see
England and France or whatever fighting over this and they're like, hey,
it's kind of ours. It came from Egypt, stole it
from us. But because it is so heavy and frattle
(15:56):
and then will they would be very difficult to transport it.
So I think you have discussion is still in the
works and we shall see what happens in the interim.
You can find out more about Ancient Egypt, modern Egypt,
ancient civilizations in general, and there's other stone on how
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(16:20):
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works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Key and Just Gibson joined my staff writer
Jane Grahams. Hey there, Jane. When you think of ancient Egypt,
what comes to mind? Mummies? Yeah, I think of Pyramid
(00:27):
and Cleopatra with her crazy black eyeliner. And I guess
everyone wore a black outline and it wasn't so crazy.
I think it actually helped deflect the sun, or it's
sort of some sort of very practical purpose. It wasn't
just cosmetic. I'm wearing mine day to look cool and
super goth, not to deflict this one, not to depose
it's you know, it's kind of wintry and hazy out
the other day. The point being that all that we
(00:50):
think about ancient Egypt, and all of the Egyptian lore
that we know, and everything you know about mummies and
farrows and tout and Clepatra and Ramsey's we take it
for grant in it, I think, but there was a
really long period of time that no one really knew
what ancient Egypt was all about. Like they could see
these things that their eyes, but they were mysteries to them. Yeah,
(01:10):
and they knew this was a huge civilization obviously, but
we didn't really know the secrets of what happened during
the time that it rained and was so powerful because, uh,
the language was sort of forgotten and the and so
the inscriptions that were written about it could not be
translated and language aside. It was almost like the fascination
(01:32):
we have today with with Mars and outer space and
imagining that there may be people out there. It's popular
culture to us because there's no scientific or historical basis,
and that's how Egypt wise, it was very much a
subject of popular culture. And well that may strike you
as funny if you're sitting in school today maybe and
you've got a thirty minute lecture about one of the pharaohs.
(01:55):
Um imagine that back during the time that Napoleon was
in power in France, people dabbled in Egypt. People collected
parts of Egypt, and they would they would buy, like
collectors for collectors, items from Egypt themselves, and like the
Egyptians who didn't quite know what they're worth, right exactly.
And that's the thing that we should mention too, is
(02:16):
that not even the Egyptians knew what their cultures about.
It was all just just fun in games really that
you could go into these pyramids and you could find gold,
or you could find mummies, or you could find artifacts
and and pawn it off and make some change. And
and that all changed once Napoleon invaded Egypt. That's so
funny to me that Egyptian France have such a strong
(02:37):
high as fire as deciphering their history. But that's kind
of how it went. Yeah, it's interesting. It's pretty cool. Actually,
look at when Napoleon did, when he was trying to
get power over the strategic position where Egypt was, he
gathered this he had. He took his soldiers, but he
also took a troop of academics basically scientists, chemists, even zoologists.
(02:59):
And he called him up and he's like this super
secret mission and just say that you're doing this really
good of France and we're gonna, you know, study the
culture and see what's going on. And I would just
love it if like the President called me up today
and was like, Jane, we need you for a secret
academic mission and leave you to come to this mysterious
land with this that hells this mysterious civilization and find
out what it's all about. It must have been amazing.
(03:21):
And Napoleon was nothing if not a shrewd leader, and
so he didn't just plan to invade Egypt. He planned
a very thorough infiltration. So this group of academics, it
was called the Institute of Egypt, they set up camp
alongside the soldiers, and unfortunately things went a little bad
military wise, and the French were essentially cut off. All
(03:41):
their ships were destroyed, they had no way out and
they were sort of stranded in Egypt for at eighteen years. Yeah,
it's true. It's interesting because he went. Napoleon landed with
his troops and stuff. He was successful for a little while.
He captured Alexandria, he won the Battle of the Pyramids.
But then um, sort of by accident, this British uh
general or admiral, I should say, Horatio Nelson saw his
(04:03):
ships off the coast and they didn't have Um Napoleon
in it, but he destroyed the ships themselves. So they
were stranded there. Um Napoleon and his troops and there's
a lot that you could accomplish in eighteen years, and
they really did. They ended up writing a multi volume
work all about Egypt. But before that ever happened, they
had to build reinforcements. They had to build forts, they
(04:25):
had to build strongholds. And when the soldiers were at work,
they were tearing down walls of an old temple, I think,
and starting to erect a new Fortnit's place, and a
soldier stumbled across this shiny piece of black basalt, and
it had all of these inscriptions in it, and there
were three distinct types of inscriptions, and he thought, I
(04:46):
don't know what this is, but it looks important. So
he took it over to the scholars, which was really handy,
and they couldn't quite tell what it was either for
a while. But they called this piece of basalt the
Rosetta stone because it was found in the town of Rozetta.
And it wasn't huge, but it wasn't small either. It
was sort of about the size of maybe a small
coffee table, and it was pretty happy because it was
(05:08):
done maybe like a medium sized L C D television
or something like that, if you think about it in
those terms. So they thought they knew it was really important,
even though they couldn't quite figure out why. Um. But
so they wanted to hang onto it um first and
foremost for Napoleon. But when the English obviously had their
hold over over France in that area of the English
(05:28):
were really adamant that they handed over. Yeah, I said,
by the Treaty of Capitulation, they had to give it
over to the British. But the French were pretty quick thinking,
so they made some copies that first of all, and
that was more really really smart. So the British had
the original rosettas down, the French had copies of it,
and both camps set to work trying to figure out
what it was. And this is pretty it was pretty hard.
(05:49):
Like when I when I learned about the Rosetta stom
back in school. I guess I just learned the basic
facts that it was the key to figuring out hieroglyphics.
But it's interesting to look at the history because it
actually took them quite a while to actually figure out
and crack the code. It really did, and it had
three different types of writing on it. That's radeed had Greek,
which was relatively well known a time by academics, and
(06:10):
Demotic and which is sort of a subset of hieroglyphics,
and hieroglyphix itself. So these three different strata of languages,
and we know from the Greek that was the easiest
to interpret because, like you said, scholars did no Greek,
and the Reverend Stephen Weston actually interpreted that. In April
eighteen o two, we realized that the stone was dated
(06:30):
from March b C. What scholars later found out is
that it was one in a series of stella, essentially
like a religious or governmental decree written on stone, and
these were very, very common in Egypt. It was almost
like the Ten Commandments being on a tablet. This was
what people did. I mean, the Egyptians later have a
(06:51):
pyr respect for the time being, you know, we're putting
their writing on stone. And there were so many that
this one there was that a stone really is not
that significant, and then rand scheme of things. The actual
message on it is not that the message on is
not that riveting. I think basically it talks about how
the pharaoh is a good person, the pharaoh respects the gods,
the pharaoh is humble ergo, let's all honor the pharaoh.
(07:12):
But it was the key to deciphering hieroglyphics that makes
it so memorable today. So here's what happened with hieroglyphics
back when Egypt was its own entity and I didn't
really have any other outside parties bothering it at years
the language of hieroglyphics, and this was a very spiritual
and reverend sort of way of writing. So yeah, no,
(07:33):
not everybody knew how to write hieroglyphics, Like it was
reserved to like um, the particular carvers and um it
had a specific purpose, like it was either for religious
writing or like governmental writing, right, and then they decided
they needed a more pedestrian language that everyone could use
and everyone could write in. So then we have Heiradic
and this was easier, right to to write on like papyrus,
(07:56):
you know, and it was smooth to like it was
sort of like a cursive version. There you go, and
the same process continued, and by then we have different
parties coming into Egypt and different cultures influencing them. We
have Demotic, which evolves next, and that's a simplification of Herradic,
simplification of hieroglyphics. And then finally when Christians start coming
into Egypt and the culture and religion drastically changed, we
(08:17):
have Coptic, and this uses Coptic uses a group of
Greek alphabet mostly, but then there were some things that
the Greek Greek alphabet had that Egyptian language didn't, so
they incorporated some sort of hieroglyphic like characters in it exactly.
So the reason that that Rosetta stone had three different
languages on it is because they wanted to make sure
everyone could read this stone. The decree was public for everyone,
(08:41):
and like we said, not that interesting to decree, but
very public nonetheless. So after west End translated the Greek,
the next step was trying to go ahead and do
the demotic, because that seems the next easiest to do.
And there were two men who did that relatively contemporary
of one another, and that was Johann David her Blood
and Antoine sylvest To say sye, that's right. And these
(09:05):
people sort of new Coptic relatively well, like they had
studied Coptic before, and so they had an easier time
translating the demonic exactly. But hieroglyphics was a very persistent mystery.
And one of the reasons for that was that a
fifth century scholar, a Greek scholar named Parapolo put out
the idea that hieroglyphics were characters representative of symbols or allegories.
(09:31):
And so, I mean, think about it. If someone told
you that, um, little white dogs were representative of all
things evil, it would be really, really hard for you
to shake the idea that little white dogs were bad. Like,
no matter how you tried to change your ideology in
your way of thinking, you would always have in the
back of your mind stay away from little white dogs.
And that's what scholars were encountering as they went through
(09:53):
this interpretation process was that hieroglyphics translated to symbols and allegories.
So they took this horror Apollo's idea and ran with it.
And they just assumed this was right, that that one
character represents an idea basically, and it's not. They assumed
that it was not like English, for instance, which had
an alphabet where letters have a sound attached to them.
(10:14):
But that's exactly what it was, and no one figured
that out until years later. So running with this idea
that hieroglyphics represents symbols that Thomas Young came along in
eighteen fourteen and he discovered the cartouche, which was essentially
a loop around a group of hieroglyphic letters. And he
realized that only proper names were the ones and a cartouche,
(10:35):
because he was able to discern the name Ptolemy, and
he knew that from you know, the Ptolemic grewers who
had rulers who would come in and he knew that
they would have you know, some help and signified and
mentioned in a governmental decree. So that's at the standard
for looking for cartouche's. But he was still working on
Hollapolo's um hypothesis, so he couldn't really go much further
(10:55):
than that, right, so he was very limited. Well along
time stant Pallion and he knew from a very very
young age that he was destined for something great. And
people knew what hieroglyphics were, and they knew that no
one had mastered them. Like it was very much a
challenge that I think people aspired to, sort of a
patriotic challenge to because, like you said, Thomas Young he
(11:16):
was he was actually British and so he was fighting
to translate the hieroglyphics first for for England, you know,
UM and Champoleion was was French and because they found it,
they really wanted to translate it. First two and he
was a very very serious scholar, almost like Albert Einstein
of of France. At this time, he was very withdrawn,
(11:37):
he was sort of erratic and his behavior. He was
considered sort of an unusual character. And even at birth
people said he looked like he was Egyptian because he had,
you know, a darker skin tone, and his eyes were
a little bit more and more yellowish looking. He didn't
look like a Frenchman. And so he was destined for me.
He was destined for this. And I think that there's
some sort of legend that even a fort and teller
(11:57):
came in during his childbirth and said he was going
to do something really great having to do with Egypt.
I don't know if that's true, but it's sort of
fun to think about. So his whole life he knew
that he was going to master hieroglyphics, and even to
the point that his older brother had to care for
him essentially because he wasn't feeding himself properly, he had
no money, he could barely sustain his own life. And
(12:19):
well that makes sense, no, because I heard um that
he fainted when he actually translated the first thing, and
he was now nourished that his brother actually was able
to keep him out of military service. He said that
Chimpallion was doing a greater service to his country by
trying to crack hyerglyphics than he would in the military.
And and good thing too, because I don't think he
would have been a very good soldier. I think he've
(12:40):
been pretty unhappy in that post. And if he's a fainter,
I don't think you lest, no, not that much. So
he's working off Thomas Young's cartouche and he starts to
see a couple of different hieroglyphics symbols that he is
parsing out, and he comes up with the idea, well,
what if each symbol relates to a sound, and he
(13:02):
discovers the name Ramsey's using just a couple of figures
trailing in the ladder, and one of the first his
first clues was seeing this circle with a dot in
the middle, and he was like, you know what that
could be the sun? It has you know, he made
this this sleep of faith that you know that maybe
that's the sun. And he knew that in a related
language that the sun uh, the word for sun was raw,
(13:24):
and so using the phonetic like the sound of it,
he was able to eventually find out that this name
was Ramsey's. And I think he saw two more characters
that were very clearly meant to be s s. He
had r a blank as blank ass and he knows
a proper name. He knews a proper name. Who else
would have been famous in Egypt at that time Ramsay's
(13:44):
And so that was it, and he fainted, commenced painting.
There you go. And that's not to say that after
Champoleon essentially translated that one name from higher glyphics, this
still was a very pain stanking and laborious process people
had to go through, and there were many, many things
to be translated. But I think that brought about a
lot of excitement because now Egypt and the field of
(14:06):
Egyptology that sprang from it, it was a sanctified field
and archaeology and history and science. It wasn't just a
matter of popular culture. It was kind of sad for
people who realized all of a sudden, oh my gosh,
I've been selling priceless mommies and here's what they mean,
and who knows who has it now. I think some
of them were even shipped off to Europe ground depth
(14:27):
and um, mom if I remained swallowed, that's right, like
the medieval times. Yeah, so all these these artifacts were
very far flung around the world. But now at last
people knew what the history was. And this you know,
like you said, it was both academic and sort of
a fed in social areas too, and so um, people
were like obsessed with the culture now and there were
(14:48):
fights with like the museum, Like obviously England had the
Rosetta stone, and they were also getting all this stuff
that that France had had gotten in Egypt, and so
there was this like academic fight sort of. And even
to this day people still debate who the real victor
is France or England, because clearly Chambolian was, you know,
the Frenchman who ultimately discovered hieroglyphics and the key behind
(15:12):
it with the sound corresponding to the word. But on
the other hand, Thomas Young, the Englishman, if he hadn't
discovered the meaning of the cartouche, where the Champoleon have
been without that? So um, I think they debate back
and forth today. And I think that the Rosetta stone
also went on display in France for a while for
a celebration of its discovery, and there were rumors at
the French were plotting to just steal it. And and
(15:35):
even today I think that Egypt is opening up a
museum in the not too distant future and they had
wanted to bring the Rosetta Stone home to display it.
That's right. I mean, it's understandable, like like you see
England and France or whatever fighting over this and they're like, hey,
it's kind of ours. It came from Egypt, stole it
from us. But because it is so heavy and frattle
(15:56):
and then will they would be very difficult to transport it.
So I think you have discussion is still in the
works and we shall see what happens in the interim.
You can find out more about Ancient Egypt, modern Egypt,
ancient civilizations in general, and there's other stone on how
stuff Works dot com, and you can also find out
more about how encryption works and another house of works
podcasts called tech stuff you can find on iTunes today
(16:20):
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot Com? Let us know what
you think. Send an email to podcast at how stuff
works dot com.
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