Champollion's The Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone is one of the most famous archeological finds in the world. At the time of its discovery in 1799, the significance this stone would have was unimaginable. Before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, little was known about Egyptian hieroglyphs or what they represented. The Rosetta Stone was crucial to our understand Egyptian hieroglyphs, and it allowed us to better understand the culture of ancient Egypt.

Hailed as the archaeological find of modern times they were made out of papyrus or animal skins called gevil and written right to left with no punctuation. In fact there were no spaces between words they simply ran together. Written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek using ink made from carbon black and white pigments and using birds feathers as writing implements.

During the ancient Egyptians more than 3,00 yearlong history, they used three kinds of writings to write religious and secular texts. The basis of the two other writings is hieroglyphic. This writing was mainly used for sacred (Greek hieros) inscriptions on temple walls or public monuments (Greek glypho). Thus the word hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphics use clearly distinguishable pictures to express both sounds and ideas. The pictures could either be inscribed or drawn and often would be painted in many colors. The quality of the writing would vary from highly detailed signs to just mere outlines of them. A special form of hieroglyphics was used for the Book of the Dead, it was written in cursive...

The Rosetta Stone was found in the town of Rosetta and sent to French scholars in Alexandria during the summer of 1799 (Giblin 23). This black, measuring 112 by 76 stone found while the soldiers in the town were destroying a citadel was unprecedented because it had three different languages on it, the only understood one being Greek (Silet 1). The three languages on the stone were, as stated, Greek, the common Egyptian demotic, and 14 lines of hieroglyphics (Giblin 27). Scholars familiar with the Greek language and writing system were able to translate that section, and the final sentence revealed a fact that set the groundwork for future translations of the other parts. The final line reads: “This decree shall be inscribed on a stela of hard stone in sacred and native and Greek characters” (Giblin 27). It came to be understood that the three sections all contained the same message, and scholars promptly set to work on the translations.

Champollion, in 1822 was reserved a position on deciphering the hieroglyphics on the Rosetta stone.

Egyptian hieroglyphs were carved in stone, and later hieratic script was written on papyrus. However, Olmec glyphs was discovered on cylinders. Hence, Egyptians and Olmec had different types of writing, and different places to write.

Hieroglyphs were known to be created after the Cuneiform sometime between 3,200 and 3,400 BCE. Symbols were drawn on the walls of the temple for decorations. Hieroglyphs are written in rows and in columns, they can be read from left to right as well as can be read from right to left. Since the hieroglyphic inscriptions are in temples and in tombs, the writing in created by painters, sculptors, and craftsmen are in the plaster. Papyrus scrolls are created with a fine reed pen onto smooth surfaces. Hieratic handwriting was used on a day to day use for business, in which pictures were abbreviated as point of abstraction. There are three different versions of the scripts, for religious documents, for literature, and for private letters. Another type of script, called demotic was created for a more abbreviated version. Hieroglyphs and demotic continued be used until 400

There was also another problem that caused problems for the scholars. There was lack of deciphered written records. Archaeologists have discovered thousands of clay seals, copper tablets and a...

The most remarkable and well-known poetry of Paradise Lost was written by the author of John Milton and the illustrations of Paradise Lost were illustrated by the artist named William Blake. During the Romantic Era, William Blake was considered an influential figure in the history of the painters. He was a great painter, one of the great poet in English language, and a printmaker who designed his own printing press. Blake’s paintings were famous for his incredibly use of watercolor paints which made his art work matchless with any other artist. Therefore, one of the great painters of the Romantic Era, William Blake, inspired many of the great poets with his unique water color paintings, such as Paradise Lost by John Milton. Visions of gods and angels were seen in his paintings that are still famous and precious to this day.

First of all, the Sumerians invented Cuneiform which paved the way for the languages of today. (doc 1) Cuneiform was the very first written language and started simple.(oi) Cuneiform progressed over the years, at first it looked like pictures but it slowly progressed to be more like symbols.(doc