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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio,

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Speaker 1: Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a

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Speaker 1: show the d code's History One Day at a Time.

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Speaker 1: I'm Gabe Lucier and in this episode we're talking about

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Speaker 1: the accidental discovery that helped bring a long dead language

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Speaker 1: of ancient Egypt back to life. The day was July nineteenth,

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Speaker 1: seventeen ninety nine. French soldiers discovered a stone slab inscribed

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Speaker 1: with ancient writing near the town of Rosetta, Egypt. They

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Speaker 1: didn't know it at the time, but the relic they

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Speaker 1: uncovered would turn out to be the key to solving

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Speaker 1: a mystery that had puzzled scholars for a millennia how

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Speaker 1: to read the picture like markings known as hieroglyphs. The

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Speaker 1: mysterious stone was likely situated at one point inside an

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Speaker 1: ancient Egyptian temple that once stood in the coastal town

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Speaker 1: of Rosetta. However, in the fourth century AD, many of

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Speaker 1: Egypt's temples were destroyed by Roman conquerors, and the usage

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Speaker 1: and understanding of hieroglyphics went down with them. In the

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Speaker 1: centuries that followed, the ruins of those temples were used

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Speaker 1: as quarries by the country's various occupiers, first the Roman Empire,

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Speaker 1: then the Byzantine Empire, and finally the Ottoman Empire. That's

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Speaker 1: how the object that we now know is the Rosetta

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Speaker 1: Stone wound up as part of a wall inside an

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Speaker 1: Ottoman fortress, and it may very well have stayed there

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Speaker 1: if not for the boundless ambition of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

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Speaker 1: In seventeen ninety eight, he set out to conquer Egypt,

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Speaker 1: which at the time was still part of the Ottoman Empire.

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Speaker 1: One year into the campaign, while French forces were making

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Speaker 1: repairs on a run down fort they were occu engineer

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Speaker 1: Pierre Francois Bouchar noticed a peculiar slab of granite jutting

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Speaker 1: out of the ground. Looking closer, he realized it was

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Speaker 1: covered with three different types of writing, one of which

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Speaker 1: he recognized his ancient Greek. This led him to wonder

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Speaker 1: if the stone might contain the same message in different languages,

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Speaker 1: So he shared his findings with a group of French

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Speaker 1: scholars who had been ordered to seize culturally important Egyptian

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Speaker 1: artifacts on behalf of Napoleon. Unfortunately for them, the British

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Speaker 1: had also set their sights on Egypt and its treasures,

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Speaker 1: so two years later, when the British defeated Napoleon, they

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Speaker 1: took possession of the Rosetta Stone and brought it back

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Speaker 1: to London, where it was immediately put on display at

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Speaker 1: the British Museum. Right from the start, scholars hoped that

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Speaker 1: the letters and symbols chiseled into the stone's dark face

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Speaker 1: would one day help them decipher the mysterious language of

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Speaker 1: ancient Egypt. But to do that they'd have to crack

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Speaker 1: its code first, and that part proved no easy task.

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Speaker 1: Standing about four feet high in two and a half

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Speaker 1: feet wide, the Rosetta Stone is only a fragment of

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Speaker 1: a larger slab or steely that was broken apart centuries

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Speaker 1: ago and is now lost to time. But even in

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Speaker 1: its incomplete state, the text it bears is an invaluable

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Speaker 1: tool for scholars. Officially known as the Memphis Decree, the

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Speaker 1: text is essentially political propaganda. It was written in one

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Speaker 1: ninety six BC by a council of priests in Memphis, Egypt,

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Speaker 1: as a way to express their loyalty and gratitude to

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Speaker 1: Pharaoh Ptolemy the Fifth. According to the priests quote he

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Speaker 1: has dedicated to the temple's revenues in money and corn,

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Speaker 1: and has undertaken much outlay to bring Egypt into prosperity.

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Speaker 1: The inscription goes on to say that an identical copy

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Speaker 1: of this decree was to be placed in every large

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Speaker 1: temple in the country. At the time, the teenage Ptolemy,

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Speaker 1: who'd been crowned at age twelve, was in the midst

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Speaker 1: of dealing with a foreign war and an internal revolt,

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Speaker 1: so he probably appreciated this little morale boost from the clergy.

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Speaker 1: But the content of the Rosetta's Stones message is less

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Speaker 1: important today than the format in which it's presented, since

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Speaker 1: it was intended to be read all across Egypt. The

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Speaker 1: same message was inscribed in three different scripts, Hieroglyphics, the

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Speaker 1: sacred language used by priests, Egyptian Demotic, the common language,

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Speaker 1: and Ancient Greek, the official language under the Ptolemaic dynasty.

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Speaker 1: Although it wasn't the writer's intention, this multi language approach

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Speaker 1: allowed future scholars to suss out the meaning behind the

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Speaker 1: forgotten written language of hieroglyphics. It was easy enough for

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Speaker 1: scholars to translate the fifty four lines of Greek and

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Speaker 1: thirty two lines of demotic inscribed on the stone, but

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Speaker 1: lines of hieroglyphics took a full two decades to decipher.

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Speaker 1: Numerous scholars across Europe contributed to the effort, but the

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Speaker 1: two most vital contributions came from the nations that advied

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Speaker 1: for ownership over the stone, England and France. British scholar

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Speaker 1: Thomas Young made an important breakthrough in his attempts to

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Speaker 1: match up the glyphs with his translation of the ancient Greek.

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Speaker 1: This allowed him to identify what some of the glyphs represented,

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Speaker 1: as well as how proper names were signified and how

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Speaker 1: words were pluralized. Young published his findings in eighteen fourteen,

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Speaker 1: and from there the torch was taken up by French

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Speaker 1: egyptologist Jean Francois Champollion. Armed with an extensive knowledge of

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Speaker 1: the Egyptian language, he made slow but steady progress towards

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Speaker 1: decoding the hieroglyphs. Then one day he had a major epiphany.

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Speaker 1: He realized that a symbol of the sun corresponded to

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Speaker 1: the Egyptian word raah or sun, which formed the beginning

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Speaker 1: of the name Rameses. This meant that contrary to popular belief,

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Speaker 1: hieroglyphics was a largely phonetic writing system rather than a

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Speaker 1: purely symbolic one. The glyphs didn't represent just people or objects,

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Speaker 1: but sounds and groups of sounds. Champollion was so thrilled

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Speaker 1: by this revelation that he famously rushed over to his

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Speaker 1: brother's office shouting, Jertienne mona fare, I've got it. Then

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Speaker 1: he reportedly fainted and didn't recover until five days later.

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Speaker 1: Once he was back on his feet, Champollion used the

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Speaker 1: stone to create an alphabet of phonetic hieroglyphic characters, leading

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Speaker 1: to the first full translation in eighteen twenty two. Since then,

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Speaker 1: scholars have gained a much deeper understanding of the language

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Speaker 1: and culture of ancient Egypt, and the Rosetta Stone is

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Speaker 1: now regarded as one of the most important artifacts ever discussed. Today,

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Speaker 1: the Rosetta Stone is still housed in the British Museum

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Speaker 1: in London, despite repeated calls for it to be returned

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Speaker 1: to Egypt. At the time of recording. The museum has

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Speaker 1: politely but firmly declined each of those requests, but as

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Speaker 1: a consolation, it did gift Egypt a full size replica

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Speaker 1: of the stone in two thousand and five. That's obviously

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Speaker 1: not the same as just returning it, but since the

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Speaker 1: Rosetta Stone draws more than six million visitors to the

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Speaker 1: museum each year, it's not a spoil of war they're

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Speaker 1: likely to part with anytime soon. I'm gay, Blues gay,

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Speaker 1: and hopefully you now know a little more about history

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Speaker 1: today than you did yesterday. If you'd like to keep

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Speaker 1: up with the show, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook,

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Speaker 1: and Instagram at TDI HC Show, and if you have

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Speaker 1: any comments or suggestions, feel free to send them my

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Speaker 1: way by writing to This Day at iHeartMedia dot com.

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Speaker 1: Thanks to kas B. Bias for producing the show, and

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Speaker 1: thanks to you for listening. I'll see you back here

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Speaker 1: again tomorrow for another day in History Class