Junior Varsity
Speed & Accuracy – Passage 1
Rosetta Stone
A valuable key to the decipherment of hieroglyphs, the inscription on the Rosetta Stone is a decree passed by a council of priests. It is one of a series that affirm the royal cult of the 13-year-old Ptolemy V on the first anniversaryof his coronation.
In previous years the family of the Ptolemies had lost control of certain parts of the country. It had taken their armies some time to put down opposition in the Delta, and parts of southern Upper Egypt, particularly Thebes, were not yet back under the government's control.
Before the Ptolemaic era (that is before about 332 BC), decrees in hieroglyphs such as this were usually set up by the king. It shows how much things had changed from Pharaonic times that the priests, the only people who had kept the knowledge of writing hieroglyphs, were now issuing such decrees. The list of good deeds done by the king for the temples hints at the way in which the support of the priests was ensured.
The decree is inscribed on the stone three times, in hieroglyphic (suitable for a priestly decree), demotic (the native script used for daily purposes), and Greek (the language of the administration). The importance of this to Egyptology is immense.
Soon after the end of the fourth century AD, when hieroglyphs had gone out of use, the knowledge of how to read and write them disappeared. In the early years of the nineteenth century, some 1400 years later, scholars were able to use the Greek inscription on this stone as the key to decipher them.
Thomas Young, an English physicist, was the first to show that some of the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone wrote the sounds of a royal name, that of Ptolemy. The French scholar Jean-François Champollion then realized that hieroglyphs recorded the sound of the Egyptian language and laid the foundations of our knowledge of ancient Egyptian language and culture.
This excerpt was reprinted from the website of the British Museum,
Junior Varsity
Speed & Accuracy – Passage 2
Code
"Great, so what do those symbols mean?" asked Charlie, referring to the hieroglyphics written on the pyramid.
"Well, we could use the stele to try to decode the message," volunteered Alice, "that's what they did with the Rosetta stone."
"What's the Rosetta stone?" asked George.
"It's a slab of rock that people found a long time ago, and it helped them decode Egyptian hieroglyphics." Alice said. "The stone had carvings of the same text written in Egyptian hieroglyphics and Greek, and people knew Greek, so they could figure out Egyptian hieroglyphics."
"And do you know Greek?" asked George sarcastically.
"No, but the stele here isn't in Greek. And maybe we can figure out part of it," replied Alice curtly. "Do you have a better idea, George?"
George didn't answer her - he didn't have any ideas at all right now.
As they looked at the carvings on the pyramid, Charlie had an idea. He said, "Maybe the stele will let us translate from hieroglyphics to our letters. I'll go to the slab - you write the letters in the sand when they're translated."
After Charlie got to the slab, Alice called out, "A picture of a basket," and Charlie yelled back, "That's a K."Alice called out, "Two feathers," and Charlie called back, "That's a EE."
Next came a single feather, a zigzag, an upside-down "U" with uneven sides, a bird, another zigzag, and a hand. While he was there, Charlie took out a pencil and a piece of paper from his pocket. He drew a picture of the markings on the stele.
Alice called to Charlie, "That's it - we're done." Charlie returned to the pyramid and looked at what George had written in the sand. It read, "K EE I N S A N D."
"And how exactly is this going to get us into the pyramid?" asked George.
"I don't know," replied Charlie, but he was busy thinking. "This could be a code."
"Or it could be in Latin or Greek or some other language we don't know," said Alice.
"Wait," said Charlie, "The letters are K-EE-I-N-S-A-N-D."
George yelled, "KEY IN SAND - it says KEY IN SAND. It's so obvious."
They all started digging in the sand near the inscription. The sand was loose and moved quickly in their hands. After a few minutes, they had dug a large hole in front of the inscription, but there was nothing there. There was no key, and no mechanism to open the door.
"There's nothing here at all except sand," said Alice, "And we've gone down almost two feet. Maybe someone else already found whatever was buried here."
"Maybe," said George dejectedly. They all sat down at the edge of the hole. A hot wind was starting to blow the sand all around them.
Alice added, "And do we really want to go inside? It's only a tomb for some dead guy. If we go in, all we'll find is a mummy. They're fun in the movies, but I don't really need to see one up close."
"I want to go in," said Charlie, "how can you not want to?"
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