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Egyptian Hieroglyphs
and
the
Rosetta Stone
The most famous, and arguably the
most romantic, of all decipherments was the cracking of
Egyptian hieroglyphics. For centuries, hieroglyphics remained
a mystery, and hence archaeologists could merely speculate
about their meaning. However, as a result of a classic piece
of codebreaking, the hieroglyphs were eventually deciphered,
and ever since archaeologists have been able to read
first-hand accounts of the history, culture, and beliefs of
the ancient Egyptians. The decipherment of hieroglyphics has
bridged the millennia between ourselves and the civilisation
of the pharaohs.
The earliest hieroglyphics date
back to 3000 BC, and this form of ornate writing endured for
the next three and a half thousand years. Although the
elaborate symbols of hieroglyphics were ideal for the walls of
majestic temples (the Greek word hieroglyphica means
"sacred carvings"), they were overly complicated for keeping
track of mundane transactions. Hence, evolving in parallel
with hieroglyphics was hieratic, a day to day business
script in which each hieroglyphic symbol was replaced by a
stylised representation, which was quicker and easier to
write. In about 600 BC, hieratic was replaced by an even
simpler script known as demotic, the name being derived
from the Greek demotika meaning "popular", which
reflects its secular function. Hieroglyphics, hieratic and
demotic are essentially the same script, and one could almost
consider them to be merely different fonts.
All three forms of writing are
phonetic, which is to say that the characters largely
represent distinct sounds, just like the letters in the
English alphabet. For over three thousand years, the Ancient
Egyptians used these scripts in every aspect of their lives,
just as we use writing today. Then, towards the end of the
fourth century AD, within a generation, the Egyptian scripts
vanished. The last datable examples of ancient Egyptian
writing are to be found on the island of Philae. A
hieroglyphic temple inscription was carved in AD 394, and a
piece of demotic graffiti has been dated to 450 AD. The spread
of the Christian Church was responsible for the extinction of
the Egyptian scripts, outlawing its use in order to eradicate
any link with Egypt’s pagan past. The ancient scripts were
replaced with Coptic, a script consisting of 24 letters
from the Greek alphabet supplemented by six demotic characters
used for Egyptian sounds not expressed in Greek. The dominance
of Coptic was so complete that the ability to read
hieroglyphics, demotic and hieratic was extinguished. The
ancient Egyptian language continued to be spoken, and evolved
into what became known as the Coptic language, but in due
course both the Coptic language and script were displaced by
the spread of Arabic in the 11th century. The final linguistic link to Egypt’s
ancient kingdoms had been broken, and the knowledge needed to
read the tales of the pharaohs was lost.
Interest in hieroglyphics was
reawakened in the 17th century, when Pope Sixtus V reorganised
the city of Rome according to a new network of avenues,
erecting obelisks from Egypt at each intersection. Scholars
attempted to decipher the meaning of the hieroglyphs, but were
hindered by a false assumption. Nobody was prepared to accept
that the hieroglyphs could possibly represent phonetic
characters, or phonograms, mainly because the idea of
phonetic spelling seemed to be too complex for such an ancient
civilisation. Instead, 17th century scholars were convinced
that the hieroglyphs were semagrams. In other words,
they believed that the intricate characters represented whole
ideas, and were nothing more than primitive
picture-writing.
The belief that hieroglyphics is
merely picture-writing was even commonplace among foreigners
who visited Egypt while hieroglyphics was still a living
script. Diodorus Siculus, the 1st century BC Greek historian,
wrote: "Now it happens that the forms of the Egyptians’
letters take the shape of all kinds of living creatures and of
the extremities of the human body and of implements... For
their writing does not express the intended idea by a
combination of syllables, one with another, but by the outward
appearance of what has been copied and by the metaphorical
meaning impressed upon the memory by practice.... So the hawk
symbolises for them everything which happens quickly because
this creature is just about the fastest of winged animals. And
the idea is transferred, through the appropriate metaphorical
transfer, to all swift things and to those things to which
speed is appropriate."
With such accounts to rely on,
perhaps it is not so surprising that 17th century scholars
attempted to decipher the hieroglyphs by interpreting each one
as a whole idea. For example, in 1652, the German Jesuit
priest Athanasius Kircher published a dictionary of
allegorical interpretations entitled OEdipus
aegyptiacus, and used this to produce a series of weird
and wonderful translations. A handful of hieroglyphs, which we
now know merely represent the name of the pharaoh Apries, were
translated by Kircher as: "the benefits of the divine Osiris
are to be procured by means of sacred ceremonies and of the
chain of the Genii, in order that the benefits of the Nile may
be obtained". Today Kircher’s translations seem ludicrous, but
their impact on other would-be decipherers was immense. The
Jesuit priest was widely acknowledged to be the most respected
scholar of his age - he wrote a book on cryptography,
constructed a musical fountain, invented the magic lantern (a
precursor of cinema) and lowered himself into the crater of
Vesuvius earning himself the title of the Father of
Vulcanology - and consequently his ideas were to influence
generations of future Egyptologists.
A century and a half later, in the
summer of 1798, the antiquities of ancient Egypt were under
renewed scrutiny when Napoleon Bonaparte despatched a team of
historians, scientists and draughtsmen to follow in the wake
of his invading army. These academics, or ‘Pekinese dogs’ as
the soldiers called them, did a remarkable job of mapping,
drawing, transcribing, measuring and recording everything they
witnessed. In 1799, these French scholars encountered the
single most famous slab of stone in the history of
archaeology, found by a troop of French soldiers stationed at
Fort Julien in the town of Rosetta in the Nile Delta. The
soldiers had been given the task of demolishing an ancient
wall to clear the way for an extension to the fort, but built
into the wall was a stone bearing a remarkable set of
inscriptions. The same piece of text had been inscribed on the
stone three times, in Greek, demotic and hieroglyphics. The
Rosetta Stone, as it became known, appeared to be the
equivalent of a cryptanalytic crib, just like the cribs that
helped the codebreakers at Bletchley Park break into Enigma.
The Greek could easily be read, and so it was effectively a
piece of plaintext which could be compared with the demotic
and hieroglyphic ciphertexts. The Rosetta Stone was
potentially a means of unravelling the meaning of the ancient
Egyptian symbols.
The scholars immediately recognised
the stone’s significance and sent it to the National Institute
in Cairo for detailed study. However, before the institute
could embark on any serious research, it became clear that the
French army was on the verge of being defeated by the
advancing British forces. The French moved the Rosetta Stone
from Cairo to the relative safety of Alexandria, but,
ironically, when the French finally surrendered, Article XVI
of the Treaty of Capitulation handed all the antiquities in
Alexandria to the British, whereas those in Cairo were allowed
to return to France. In 1802, the priceless slab of black
basalt (measuring 118 cm in height, 77 cm in width and 30 cm
in thickness, and weighing three quarters of a tonne) was sent
to Portsmouth on board HMS L’Egyptienne, and later that
year it took up residence at the British Museum, where it has
remained ever since.
The translation of the Greek soon
revealed that the Rosetta Stone contained a decree from the
general council of Egyptian priests issued in 196 BC. The text
records the benefits that the Pharaoh Ptolemy had bestowed
upon the people of Egypt, and details the honours that the
priests had, in return, piled upon the pharaoh. For example,
they declared that "a festival shall be kept for King Ptolemy,
the ever-living, the beloved of Ptah, the god Epiphanes
Eucharistos, yearly in the temples throughout the land from
the 1st of Troth for five days, in which they shall wear
garlands and perform sacrifices and libations and the other
usual honours."
Assuming that the other two scripts
contained the identical text, then it might appear that
decipherment of hieroglyphics and demotic would be
straightforward. However, three significant hurdles remained.
First, the Rosetta Stone is seriously damaged, as shown in
figure 5.3. The Greek text consists of 54 lines, of which the
last 26 are damaged. The demotic consists of 32 lines, of
which the beginning of the first 14 lines are damaged (note
that demotic and hieroglyphics are written from right to
left). The hieroglyphic text is in the worst condition, with
half the lines missing completely, and the remaining 14 lines
(corresponding to the last 28 lines of the Greek text) partly
missing. The second barrier to decipherment is that the two
Egyptian scripts convey the ancient Egyptian language, which
nobody had spoken for at least eight centuries. It was
possible to find a set of Egyptian symbols which corresponded
to a set of Greek words, and therefore archaeologists could
work out the meaning of the Egyptian symbols, but it was
impossible to establish the sound of the Egyptian words.
Unless archaeologists knew how the Egyptian words were spoken,
they could not deduce the phonetics of the symbols. Finally,
the intellectual legacy of Kircher still encouraged
archaeologists to think of Egyptian writing in terms of
semagrams, rather than phonograms, and hence few people
attempted a phonetic decipherment of the Egyptian
scripts.
The story of how the
Rosetta Stone and the entire hieroglyphic script was
deciphered is too long to explain here, but fortunately there
are several places where you can find descriptions of varying
levels of detail.
On the website, the best
resource that I have found is the British Museum site devoted to
Egypt or more
specifically their Egyptian scripts
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