Fig.1 The Rosetta Stone on display in Room 4. (The British Museum Blog)
The Rosetta Stone from 196 BCE particularly caught my attention during the lecture as it was an important discovery that helped with the decoding of hieroglyphs.
Hieroglyph, a character used in a system of pictorial writing, particularly that form used on ancient Egyptian monuments. Hieroglyphic symbols may represent the objects that they depict but usually stand for particular sounds or groups of sounds. (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica)
After the 4th century CE, people could barely read and write hieroglyphs due to their lack of use. As such, the fact that it consisted of 3 different scripts, hieroglyphs, Demotic and Ancient Greek, all with the same content contributed to the understanding of the Egyptian pictorial writing when it was discovered in 1799. (The British Museum Blog)
In the early 19th century, scholars who were able to read Ancient Greek eventually decoded some of the hieroglyphs. An English physicist, named Thomas Young, discovered that some of the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone resemble the sounds of “Ptolemy”, the king then. Jean-François Champollion, a French scholar also found that the hieroglyphs could relate to the sound of the Egyptian language. Through the study of the stone inscriptions, with reference to other texts as well, he made further breakthroughs in the understanding of hieroglyphs. (The British Museum Blog)
Just an extra note, I noticed Chinese characters started out as pictorial representation as well, from 甲骨文, the oracle bone script. Hence, I actually find it interesting to note how things have evolved differently in the East and the West to become the languages we have today.
Reference:
- “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about the Rosetta Stone.” The British Museum Blog, 2 Aug. 2017, https://blog.britishmuseum.org/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-the-rosetta-stone/.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Hieroglyph.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/topic/hieroglyph.