SYSK Selects: How the Rosetta Stone Works

Sometimes providence smiles on historians. Thus is the case with the Rosetta stone, an ancient Egyptian tablet that served as the key for unlocking hieroglyphics, lost to time for a millennia. In this classic episode, learn about the international intrigue, rivalry to translate it and the luck that led to the founding of Egyptology.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey there everyone, it's me Josh and for this week's
s Y s K Selex, I've chosen a two thousand
thirteen episode, How the Rosetta Stone Works. It's kind of
amazing actually that had it not been for this one
government decree that happened to be written in a few
different languages, we may never have figured out what the
heck hieroglyphics mean, and they would have been lost forever,

(00:23):
including the culture that formed the basis of a significant
portion of Western civilization. So check it out. How the
Rosetta Stone Works. Coming at you right now. Welcome to
Stuff You Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

(00:48):
Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is
Stuff you Should Know, the Overly Hot Studio Edition. I
have a bit of a chill now, you don't, I do.
I'm not at all hawk. Yeah. You also said hurt
when our new coworker shook your hand. So what does
that say that it has a strong hand shape and

(01:11):
you're always cold? Yeah, it's all these lamps in here. Well,
Jerry's decorated. It's nice. It is nice. It's just like
an ikea cattalog. That's right. Um, chuck. How many times
have you been to Egypt? Um? Kying that trip in
high school? Zero? Same here. Yeah, And yet we know

(01:32):
an awful lot about Egypt. Yeah, it's popular, especially ancient Egypt.
Like I would wager that we probably know more about
ancient Egypt than modern Egypt. Yeah, most people in the West. Yeah.
Is there a modern Egypt? There is, and it's undergoing
quite a bit of turmoil right now. Um okay, I
just wanted to make sure that you knew that Egypt

(01:53):
was still around. Yes, okay. Um. Well, the reason that
you and I know a lot about Egypt is thing
to a soft science, one of the humanities. You would
call it, um called egyptology, pretty on the nose name
for the study of ancient Egypt. Yeah, it's a real
popular thing and has been for a while a while,

(02:15):
but not too terribly long, I would say, about the
beginning of the nineteenth century. Uh. And the reason that
all of it was foster than that all of it
came about and that we you and me know about
Egypt was because of the discovery of a tablet known
as the rosetta Stone's right, but you can also go

(02:38):
back even further and make the case that if it
wasn't for Napoleon Bonaparte, we may not understand Egypt to
this day. Yeah, that little guy, he wasn't that little though,
Is that right? Right? He was the average height? Why?
Why does why do people say that? Then? Where that
come from? Because some doctor wrote down I think upon
his death that he was five ft two. But what
a lot of people don't realize is that the doctor

(03:00):
was using the French inch, which is longer than the
British imperial inch. So when you translate five ft two
from the French inch to the imperial he was about
five six, which is average height. And uh. The other
reason why he was called like the little Emperor by

(03:20):
his armies was because compared to most of his bodyguards
and his people he had around them, he was shorter
than them. Yeah. I guess when you're five six, he
wants some six four dudes around you. So, but the
idea that he was a very short man is is
not correct. Yeah, I'd always heard that, but I didn't
know the story the French inch. There's your band name
for the day. Although I typically don't like rhyming names.

(03:45):
French inch doesn't rhyme, it's just it sounds similar. I
wouldn't call it a rhyme. French and inch. Yeah, French
of the e and the eye. Yeah, that's nipicky. Well, yeah,
it's the vowels that rhyme, that the content. Yeah, but
if you're Steve Maltmous and you put French at the
end of the line and an inch at the end
of another, it would be it would be rhymy, and

(04:06):
you'd sell a lot of records. That's right. Yeah. Um, yeah,
well there was our pavement reference episode. That's becoming a
daily thing too. So you want to get on with this, Yeah,
let's do it. We're gonna be talking Rosetta Stone, not
the language software, which neither one of us has ever used.

(04:27):
We're talking about the the real thing, which is actually
bigger than I thought. You know, many things are smaller
for me, like when you see him in person, Mona Lisa,
of course, Mona Lisa small. Like I went to England,
I was like big Ben, that ain't so big. Yeah,
I don't think I had the impression of big Bembo
just kind of underwhelmed. It definitely didn't seem big, whereas

(04:48):
the Eiffel Tower that was bigger than I thought. That
is where I developed a fear of heights that still
plagues me to this day. Like, it literally happened to
me on the Eiffel Tower on the way up. Never
had a few of heights in my entire life. On
the way down, I like was hanging on to the fence,
and it took me forever to get down because I
was suddenly deathly afraid of it just hit me just

(05:11):
my brain uh changed. How old were you? Uh? Seventeen? Is? Wow? Yeah,
I didn't go up to the top. I probably missed out.
I didn't either. It was the first level that got
me really man. Wow, alright, so um, anyway, where was
I going? Oh, it's bigger than I thought it was.
It is um black basalt, and it weighs about three

(05:33):
quarters of a ton um inches high point five wide
and twelve inches deep. And it's it's large, it's heavy,
it's um. You didn't write this, did you know? No? Um,
it's about the size of a heavy coffee table. Were
you about to make fun of something? No? I was
just gonna say. Whoever wrote this reference referenced an L

(05:54):
c D TV medium size. Yeah, a medium screen l
C D television. Oh, by the way, thank you Teresa
Dove fan request. That's who requested this one. Yeah. Okay, so, um,
it's larger than I thought. And I learned a lot
about this. I thought the Rosetta stone because I'm a dummy, Um,
was literally like, here's what our alphabet is, and here's

(06:17):
what everything means. And now that you found it, you
can decipher everything. Yeah. I think I had the same
impression as well. Until I read this, I thought it
was like created as a key to hieroglyphics. Not at all.
Not so it was a government document. Basically, it's a
stella stella. Stella is the plural. And uh, it's not

(06:38):
just the Egyptians that use stella stella. Um, the minds
have largely been figured out. Their language has from old stella. Yeah. Um,
well and that's it. Those are the two that use stella. Yeah.
In this case, it's an inscription carved in three different languages, Greek, hieroglyphics,

(06:58):
and demotic t not demonic. Yeah, demotic. But since I'm
from the South, I saw fen my tea, so it
might sound like I'm saying demonic um. And basically it
was in the three languages to ensure that everybody could
read it because it was an official government decree. Not
super exciting though. No, it wasn't basically what the Rosetta

(07:19):
stone says. And like you said, it's in three languages.
There's a decree that says um, essentially that Ptolemy the
fifth is a great ruler and he is a righteous
worshiper of all the right gods, so he's okay in
our book. And this decree was made by some priests
who gathered at Memphis, and they um inscribed the stoner

(07:41):
had and inscribed and dated March. And it's not It
doesn't actually say March. Hieroglyphics. It says eighteen must sure,
which on the Egyptian calendar translates to something like um
March uh. And then they got the because somewhere in

(08:03):
there the references the ninth year of Ptolemy the fifth reign,
which is about so that's where they got the date
from the what we would in the West equated to yeah,
so um, like we said, it doesn't say anything of
particular interest. At the time, it was an important message,
but it's not the Rosetta stone because of what is

(08:24):
transcribed upon that stone. No, it's the fact that it's
in three different languages exactly. Yeah. So there's, like you said,
hieroglyphics demotic and Greek, and hieroglyphics were a sacred um alphabet. Yeah,
they used that for really important stuff. So I didn't
know this either. I thought just any old thing they

(08:46):
wanted to write was a hieroglyph Now that's what they
had demiotic for or demotic that was kind of like
an abbreviated shorthand more vulgar version of hieroglyphics. Yeah. And
in between that was hieratic um, which was slightly more
complicated than demotic, but less complicated and not sacred like hieroglyphics. Yeah,

(09:10):
it was like a kind of a transition between um
demotic and hieroglyphics cursive, right, so you can um, so
you could use um hieratic for like a business transaction.
But if you were saying the king is a very
righteous ruler and you mentioned the gods, you're going to

(09:30):
use hieroglyphics, so to have it written in Greek uh demotic,
which was an offshoot of hieratic which was an off
shoot of hieroglyphics and um, hieroglyphics. These priests that gathered
and issued this decree that was written on the Rosetta Stone,

(09:51):
they made sure that everyone in Egypt two was literate,
could read this one way or another. Yeah, And it
was sort of not a stroke of luck. I mean,
it was just smart thinking at the time, but ended
up being a stroke of luck because the three languages,
I mean, without that, I don't think we we may
have never been able to figure out hieroglyphics. No, agreed,
and I've been lost forever exactly. Um. And that's that's

(10:12):
not the only way that the Rosetta Stone was kind
of a bit of fortune. But um. So the reason
that it was lost was up until the fourth century
a d any average Egyptian could have read the Rosetta
Stone one way or another. But after that the egypt
it left the pharonic stage. Cleopatro is the last pharaoh

(10:35):
of Egypt, and then it came to be ruled by
the Greeks. Later on the Romans, the Tlamites, um and
a bunch of different foreigners or different groups, and with
these groups came the introduction of new gods and the
suppression of old gods. And since hieroglyphics were um very

(10:58):
much religious nature. They're sacred or holy, but associated with
those old gods, hieroglyphics itself came to be cut off,
stop suppressed. Yeah, especially Christianity. Um. They tended to want
to get rid of other competing gods and languages that
are tied to those gods a right. But luckily we
still had Demotic, that's right. And Demotic wasn't taboo. Um.

(11:22):
That eventually became what's known as Coptic, and Coptic used
um some Greek um and then a little bit of
still of the hieroglyphic symbols. So there's still like this
is just a little bit, very tenuous link between Coptic
and hieroglyphics. But then Coptic is lost, it's pushed out
by Arabic. Yeah, and then that was like way gone,

(11:46):
goodbye hieroglyphics. That's it. That was like the hieroglyphics is
no longer understood by anyone walking planet Earth. And that
means that all of the ancient Egyptian civilization itself was lost. Yeah,
that and years aside from its structures. Um, the the
thought put into it, the reasoning behind it, all the explanations,

(12:07):
all of the inscriptions, all the writing all over these
ancient buildings are understood by no one now, and then
as a result of that, the buildings themselves, the last
vestiges of this ancient civilization, are deconstructed and used for
the next wave by new rulers, and so ancient Egyptian

(12:28):
culture is lost to to the mists of time. Yeah wow,
thanks very nice. Yeah, there was no love lost. They
were basically like, we don't need this language anymore, we
don't need these sacred buildings anymore. They're paying anyway, Let's
tear them all down, build up new ones. And oddly,
the Rosetta stone was actually used as a buttress in

(12:49):
a wall of a new building. Yes, so part of
the construction, right, that's how. This is another way that
this is all the stroke of luck after strokes of luck.
So the first stroke of luck, as you pointed out,
is that they just happen to decree that this thing
be written in three languages. Yeah, okay, same message in
three languages. Then it's used for a building a wall, right, Yeah.

(13:15):
Then it happens to be discovered by some French who
are marooned in Egypt because they got crushed by the
British right when they tried to invade. Yeah, I guess
let's talk about that person. The French thought, hey, we
need to we need to get a stronghold on India eventually,
and Napoleon said, I think a good way to do
that is to start a little further away, and let's

(13:39):
say Egypt. Let's cut off the the Brits access to
the Nile River and that will really help our cause. Unfortunately,
the Brits at a great navy and pretty much destroyed
all their ships and stranded them in Egypt for what
nineteen years? Yeah? Yeah, And so for the French, whose
ships were now at the bottom of Abu Here bay Um,

(14:01):
they decided that they really kind of needed to set
themselves to creating forts, like since we're here, right um.
And it wasn't just military that was there part of
this invasion, this um strategy that Napoleon had come up
with to take over Egypt, it was kind of a
hearts and mind strategy too, and so he created something

(14:25):
called the Institute of Egypt, also known as the Scientific
and Artistic Commission UH. Mineralogists mathematicians, art historians, of engineers, chemists,
all like all of these people from the letters and
sciences um brought together to understand and study Egypt. Yeah.
They were actually given military rank, but they weren't. I

(14:47):
think that was just more of a here, just so
we'll call you military, Like they weren't from military backgrounds,
so they're thinkers. But they were among this invading force
that was less ended in France, so as the real
military guys were billing the forts, the people from the
Institute Egypt starts studying Egypt. Yeah, I guess they were

(15:08):
the first Egyptologists. Yeah. Boy, it was close. Uh, they
definitely were. Uh, and it was very covert operation, Like
they weren't really allowed to talk about what they were
doing that much except to just say, hey, we're following
Napoleon's orders, acting on behalf of the good of the
French Republic. This is what we're doing. Don't ask any questions, Yeah,

(15:30):
that's what. Don't ask why I have this measuring tape
out or why I'm transcribing things from papyrus. But they did, um,
they did become I guess, embedded with the local population
as well to help learn as much as they could.
And so it's under this climate that French soldier one day,
UM finds this very polished black stone that's inscribed and

(15:53):
something about it told him that it was pretty important.
So we took it to these um early gyptologists, the French,
and said, you guys think this is important and they
said yes, yeah. That was Lieutenant Pierre Francois Bouchard, and uh,
he took it to his boss and they they said, okay,
this is weird that this is built into a wall,

(16:15):
but it's clearly something of note and maybe we should
take a closer look at it. And um, immediately they
started to get to work on trying to transcribe it.
Super difficult at the time, um, and would prove to
be difficult over the years. UM. It eventually ended up
in the hands of England, of course, but luckily these uh,

(16:37):
the Institute of Egypt people made copies of it. Yeah.
I think that like etchings or the plaster molds and things,
I'm sure, yeah, but they had readable copies of the
Rosetta stone, so when they did give it up to
the British, it wasn't entirely lost to them, that's right,
and give it up as in not here have this.

(16:58):
It was more like here, we're making this in the
Treaty of Alexandria. We're gonna take this in a bunch
of other stuff. So now basically you have the French
and the British both have the Rosetta stone. The one
group that doesn't are the Egyptians, but we'll get to
that later. Both of them recognize that this is a

(17:37):
very very important something. They know that it's some sort
of decree. They recognize that it's in three different languages,
and I think it becomes obvious to them that this
could be the key to understanding higher glyphs, which people
have tried to understand. This is not new people going
back to a fellow named um Hoopolo who was a

(18:03):
fifth century scholar. Supposedly he may not have actually existed.
Um he created basically what was a translation for hieroglyphics, right,
but it was a false translation, as we'll see. But
you know, dating back basically from the moment that hieroglyphics
were lost to history, people have tried to understand them.

(18:27):
So these this this was the British and the French
were aware of this, like this may be the key
to these mysterious hieroglyphics and this is important, so we're
going to try to translate it. Yeah. Well it became
a race really because they didn't like each other very
much and they both wanted to be the first ones
to to figure out what these hieroglyphics meant and how
to unlock this history and um, so they sent their best,

(18:51):
in their brightest. On the English side, the British side,
it was a scholar named Thomas Young, and then on
the French side we had Jean Francois show Polion, who
he was sort of born to do this. Apparently he
was way into Egypt as a kid even and as
a young child said I'm gonna I'm gonna figure out
hieroglyphics one day. Yeah. He was even called the Egyptian

(19:14):
because he had dark skin and dark hair. And um,
I think a magician like foretold his fame one day. Yeah,
when he was born. Supposedly a magician said this guy
is gonna be famous, and and he was and um, yeah,
he was a very talented linguist. He studied under a
guy named um Sylvester de Sassy. Yeah, Antoine Isaac Sylvester

(19:39):
de Sassy. Uh, he um, who would take a crack
at the Rosetta stone. But he trained Uh Shampolion. Is
that how we're saying it? Well, yeah, sure he trained him. Um,
but Champoleon quickly became went from student to master. He
applied for he applied to be a student at an

(20:00):
institute in Paris, and they were impressed enough with his
application that they said, how about you just skip the
school part and come beyond the faculty. That's pretty good. Yeah,
that's a talented linguist. Yeah. They said the same thing
when I applied to Georgia. Is that right? Like you
just want to go and be an English teacher? Yeah? Na,
oh really you turned down? Huh sure I wanted to
be a student. Oh gotcha. Um. So before all this happens, Um,

(20:24):
we we have the Greek inscription transcribed, which that was
Reverend Stephen Watson in eighteen o two. And I don't
want to say it was no big deal, but there
were quite a few people that could have done this.
It wasn't like unlocking hieroglyphics, but it was a necessary
part of the process. So we want to give him
his due. So we have a we have a translation

(20:44):
and accurate translation of what the says exactly. So that's
step one. And if you have one translated, then if
you're a linguist, I guess. I mean it sounds really
difficult to do too. I mean it's I can't imagine
the painstaking the process of figuring out and alphabet. Yeah,
I mean, I think about how hard it is to

(21:05):
translate a well known language in a language that you speak.
Imagine translating uh, language that's totally lost into something understandable. Um.
So we had the Greek and then eventually we had
the Demotic as well. Um. Yeah, thanks to Yeah Antoine Uh.

(21:25):
And that same year, at the same time, a Swedish
diplomat named Aker balade Um also translated the demotic um
and they both went about it two different ways. I
thought this was pretty interesting. Yeah, So do saucy Um
figured out that there were two proper names at least
in there, Ptolemy and Alexander, and he used those to

(21:47):
match up sounds and symbols. Um Aker Blade probably had
the bigger breakthrough. He used a different technique. He recognized
that there was something similar between Demotic and Coptic, and
he was well schooled and Coptic, which helped obviously. Yeah,
that that was his big breakthrough. He he figured out

(22:07):
what words spelled love, temple and Greek, and he used
that to form basically this rough uh structure for Demotic
based on his awareness of Coptic. Yeah, that's only eleven letters.
That's pretty impressive. Yeah, but I mean, if you've got
eleven letters, that's a decent I think they called it
a skeletal outline. I guess that's what you'd have. Well, yeah,
I mean, especially since Coptic was only what twenty two

(22:30):
plus a couple more from hieroglyphics, it's like a big
wheel of fortune game, yes to that, right. So the
thing is, though, this established connection now between coptic and
Demotic and then Demonic and hieroglyphics, since they're side by side,
that kind of opened up this mentality that would be
needed to finally crack the hieroglyphics for for um, the

(22:52):
Rosetta Stone. And Thomas Young was the first to really
try it. He was the British guy, and he got
somewhat far, but he gave up. Yeah, he in eighteen fourteen.
His big breakthrough was figuring out what a cartouche was,
and that is Um, it's they say oval, but it's
a little more squared away with round edges. But it's

(23:15):
a loop basically with hieroglyphic characters in it. And he
figured out that these are not only proper names, but
royal names. Anything containing containing a cartouche is a royal name,
which was a big breakthrough because he identified tolem Me
the pharaoh's name in one of the car cartouches cartouche cartouches,

(23:38):
and uh, his queen Baronica was in there as well,
So he said, you know what again, I've got these
two names now to work with. Um. But he was
still working on Haro Polo's false premise that hieroglyphics was
not phonetic in nature and that it was based just
on symbols. Right, That's what Harropolo's big contribution was to

(24:00):
confuse a centuries worth of scholars. It's not bad for
young because he was onto something. And if he wasn't
using that the fake or or not fake but just
the poor system, then he might have figured it out. Right.
So this is the thing, like everyone believed Popolo. Because
Roppolo claimed that his translation was a direct translation from hieroglyphic.

(24:22):
It was written in the fifth century a d. Right
around the time we lost hieroglyphics, so it was considered
to be a primary source and basically completely reasonable. But
it was wrong. It was wrong because it said that
hieroglyphics are symbolic. So like, if you see a cart

(24:46):
a picture that looks like a cart next to a
cat and then a lizard, what that should say under
Hiropolo's translation is cart, cat lizard. This kept throwing everybody
off because it didn't make sense, especially right, especially when
compared to the Greek translation. In the translation of Demotic,
it didn't make any sense whatsoever. So, like you said,

(25:09):
Young gave up, but he published his findings, and you
can really strongly make a case that had it not
been for Young's breakthrough, Uh, Champolion would not have cracked
the Rosetta Stone. No, which uh we should mention here
that like they should just accept each other as as
co workers and colleagues and get along. But there was

(25:30):
a competition that exists to this day of who what
country claims that they translated the Rosetta Stone. The French
still say that champaign was really the one. The Brits
obviously say, no, it was really young, and even when
they displayed it in nineteen seventy two with the one
of the few times it's left England or maybe the
only time they let France display it for like a year. Um,

(25:55):
they argued about the size of the photos of the
two on both sides of it, when in fact the
photos were the same size of Young and Champollion. Yeah,
not photos but portraits. Yeah, But the French were like, well, no,
Young's is bigger. The Brits were like, no, his is bigger,
and they were the same size. So they were really
just they never came to a common ground on who

(26:16):
did it, when in fact they both did. And there
were rumors apparently during that time that France was going
to to steal the Rosetta stone and keep it and
not turn it back to England. And this is in
the nineteen seventies, so it's not like a long time ago. Um.
So Champagnon picked up in eighteen fourteen where Young left
off and started to think, you know what, I need
to think more about this this simple thing that Harapolo like,

(26:39):
I don't know if he he was on base after all,
And that was actually the breakthrough he um he got
some old cartouches, and he figured out, um, that the
last two letters and one of them were identical. So
that's a good thing because you know that it's the
same letter. He figured out that it was the letter
S and um. Then the first character was a circle,

(27:01):
and he said, maybe that's the sun and in ancient Egypt,
the sun god was raw and Coptic. Yeah, and so
basically figured out that that name was Ramsey's. Yeah. Then
that was a huge breakthrough. He figured out the the
identical letters, the last two were sas first one was
raw and since he knew that it was in a
cartouche that it was a royal name from that era,

(27:25):
the only person it could have been was Ramsey. So
that's how we cracked the code, like you say ye
and cracked it in like, hey, this is a phonetic thing.
He was wrong the whole time, and apparently he fainted
on the spot, which is dramatic. Yeah, I'm kind of cute.
He was French. Sure. Um. So out of that moment,

(27:45):
Egyptology was fully born, Like now we had a way
to understand all this stuff that hadn't been destroyed and
reused as building material. Just took a long time though.
It wasn't like they could just read it. It still
took a lot of translating. Oh yeah, but they had
the basis. Um. Yeah, all they've done is transcribe one
single stella. They had millennia worth of things to like

(28:09):
papyruses and or papyri um and building inscriptions and sarcopha
guy and all the letters. Yeah, whatever you know. Um,
And so Egyptology is born, and now that it's understood
at that moment, there's also a great desire to protect
Egypt and all of its treasures. Yeah, and to get

(28:31):
things right because previous to that, in Napoleon and Gang
did a pretty good job. But they also speculated a lot. Yeah,
because they couldn't read hybrid glyphic. Yeah, so they ended
up correcting a lot of things about what they thought
about Egypt. And Um, like you said, they wanted to
protect things because Egypt at the time was I mean,
they were selling these things off to collectors left and

(28:52):
right because a they didn't know their true value and
be there was a market for it. Sure, doctors during
the Middle Ages who were just dummies would use mummies
from Egypt. Uh, they grind it up and use it
to cure disease, which didn't work, um, And so there
was this move to protect Egyptian antiquities from Egyptians. There

(29:17):
was kind of this patriarchal mentality, especially among the British,
that we need to get everything out of Egypt and
into museums and into like the hands of us, who
will preserve them and not sell them to Middle Age
or Middle Middle Ages doctors for cure alls. But to
his credit, in my opinion, Champoleon argued very strongly in

(29:40):
favor of keeping them, in founding a museum in Egypt
to store these, keeping them in Egypt. Yeah, I think
he was a little bit of a control freak, Like
he knew that he could care for things in the
proper way, and he I don't think he trusted even
other museums at the time to care for things in
the right way. And he was kind of right because
a lot of it was destroyed. Yeah, Like apparently to
preserve an ancient papyrus you have to store it in

(30:03):
a low humidity um area. Yeah, in a chamber, in
a in a bamboo box container. And they didn't know this,
and they shipped them by seed to the UK, and
they all like crumbled the nothingness on the way. Um. Yeah,
So the Rosettason still sits in the museum in London,

(30:26):
where it's been since eighteen o two, except for the
time it went to France briefly. Uh. And in two
thousand three, egypt I was like, you know what, I
want this thing back, not I, we want this thing
back and it's ours and it's I don't care who
found it, it's ours. And England said in two thousand five,
took him two years to build a replica and say, hey,

(30:49):
how about this, this is just like it. I guess
at least they didn't try to pass it off as
the real one. Well, yeah, that's true, um cinema replica
and they're like, I appreciate this, this is nice, but
we really would like the real thing. And England said no.
And not just England, but a lot of the big museums,
the Louvera and um, a bunch of the world museums

(31:12):
kind of all got together in support of one another
and said, you know what repaid repatriotation is. We're not
into it. We're just not gonna give things back anymore
because we can care for it best. It belongs to
the world now. And they just sort of banded together
and said, we're keeping our stuff. And that's I think

(31:32):
we're it's probably gonna stay. They are trying to get
it for a I think in two thousand twelve they
tried to get it for a the grand opening of
the Grand Egypt Museum. It sounds like it didn't happen,
But even then they said now they wanted for like
three weeks and they said nope, under the guys of
I don't know if it's guys, but they said, would
be too dangerous to transport it. That's the story they

(31:53):
have at least. Uh. So that's uh how museums work.
Pill and deny village and deny Um. You got anything else, No, sir.
That is the Rosetta stone, everybody. If you want to
learn more about it, you should type that word. Those
words are O S E T T A stone in

(32:13):
the search bar house to works uh and it will
bring up this article. And since I said search bar
means it's time for a message by m h uh, Now, chuck,

(32:35):
it's time for listener mail. Oh no, how about instead? Okay,
all right, for those of you don't know, this is
at the point where we read off the people who
were nice enough to send us little gifts and trinkets

(32:57):
and music and letters and all sorts to things, and um,
here we go. Go ahead, all right. Sarah send us
some cool graphic prints, one of which was you Can't
Take the Sky from Me from one of my favorite shows, Firefly. Yeah,
very cool prints. Amy sent us a lovely carved wooden

(33:18):
cicada from Timber Green Woods. Yeah, yeah, it's very cool. Uh.
And McDonough sent us a snoopy postcard and a handwritten
letter of thanks. Very nice. Uh. Liz from New Zealand
sent us a lot of stuff that's New Zealand candy,
New Zealand chocolate, New Zealand chips, surfboard, postcard, really lovely
frame photos from her dad, Rudy Goldstein photography that's on Facebook. Uh,

(33:43):
it's our Goldstein photography, so check it out. Yeah it's
very cool. I have those on my desk. Um. Sean
Antonia sent us some custom vinyls some stickers from eight
one one Graphics dot com. He and his brother. Yeah,
I had this company and that cool stuff like skater
style stuff. Right. Um, buy costumes dot com. It's buy
costumes dot Com sent us a full size adult gremlin costume,

(34:07):
which Ben Bowling wore all day yesterday in the office here. Yeah,
Ben Bowling from stuff they don't want you to know
and car stuff. He's weird. Did you see that? He
emailed me they did that? Did you actually see that?
I haven't seen a picture of them yet. I put
on the hand one day and try to creep out Strickland.
But he was like, that's not the first gremlin hand up.
Haddam my shoulder. Uh cat TP. Megan sent a cat

(34:29):
tpe my way because I have two cats and uh,
my big boy Lauren gets in it now. We call
it his spirit tent and he just hangs out in there,
and uh it's pretty neat. I mean it's what you think.
It's like a little small TP for your kiddie that
it's very cute. So if you have a cat, I
would suggest you buying one. Um, let's see, Susan sent
you a birthday card. It's a dog drinking beer. Yeah, yeah,

(34:51):
that was nice. Yeah it was Kellum Clark sent us
some T shirts. Um and he is a handyman in
Brooklyn and he gifted us two hours of handyman work
to give to someone. We know in Brooklyn. That's very
really cool. So I've actually texted our buddy Joe Randazzo said, Hey,
you need any work done? We have two three hours
of handyman work. So if you're in Brooklyn, you can

(35:13):
go to not just Handyman dot com and uh, give
kill him a call. He'll fix your sink or do
whatever what you need around the house. I guess what's
he gonna do for Joe. I don't know. Joe didn't respond.
What We'll go to Hodgeman next, I guess, and just
work our way down the lithu all the Hodgeman he
can afford to pay people, we should give it to
like some else. Okay, all right, I'll figure it out. Uh.

(35:34):
Clive Fantasy gave us some really cool Panama Canal postcards. Yeah,
that's her name, Rachel from Uber. Have you heard of Uber.
It's a it's sort of like a taxi cab service
now but it's town cars and they have an app
and you can like say just come get me now, right. Yeah,
he was telling me about that. Yeah, they sent us
Uber gift cards. Um, and I will send you your

(35:56):
gift code for us, like a hundred bucks and free
a lot. I know somebody's going to be going to
the airport for free. Yeah. Kristen Curran has been taking
us along with her on a tour of Europe. It
seems like we've got postcards from her from Edinburgh, Bruges, Amsterdam, Slovakia,
Berlin all over the place. Yeah, so thanks for those. Um.

(36:19):
We also got something from Threadless self designed t shirt
bigfoot cradling and alien lockness monsters in the background. Yeah.
There was also like men in black and an abduction
going on, all sorts of stuff. Very cool. Uh. And
then Kira Newron sent the wives some jewelry um and
you can visit her store. Thank you very much, Kira

(36:39):
at um Cariboo Classics dot Etsy dot com. So that's
that's our administrative details for now, right. Yeah, part one.
We'll have a part two, I guess on the next episode. Yes,
we will, where we'll cover music in books. Nice. If
you want to get in touch with us, you can
tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You
can join us on Facebook, dot com slah Stuff you

(37:00):
Should Know, and you can join us at our home
on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot Com. Stuff
you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or where ever you
listen to your favorite shows.