The Rosetta stone is to date one of the most important monoliths engraved by man in the world, the enigma about what it says and is inscribed in it, stole the sleep of all cryptographers in the world. This is why even though more than And more than two millennia since it was built, the Rosetta Stone continues to amaze its observers. What does the Rosetta stone really say?
If there is a region whose archaeological importance is such that it attracts hundreds of thousands of researchers in the world, it is Egypt. Characterized by having the largest of humanity, the nation that now serves as the passage between Africa and the Middle East hides the mysteries of Egyptian culture, one of the most important in antiquity.
The monolith was discovered in 1799 in the city of Rashid (or Rosetta), which is a port city 65 kilometers from Alexandria, during the French occupation in Egypt, when officers from Napoleon Bonaparte’s engineer division were carrying out a routine inspection. One of the officers noticed the presence of a blackish stone, surprisingly large in size for an inscription. The monolith measured 1.14 meters high, 72 centimeters wide, 28 centimeters thick and weighed 760 kilograms.
The Rosetta Stone Text
The text of the Rosetta stone is divided into three sections, was the first ancient multilingual text found, which means that it is written in three languages that deal with the same thing. The first section is inscribed in Egyptian hieroglyphics, which were mainly used by priests. The middle section on the other hand is written in ancient demoticthe common language of the Egyptian people during 196 BC And finally, the last part of the stone has a text in ancient greekwhich was the language used by the Greco-Macedonian rulers.
The importance of the Rosetta stone lies mainly in the fact that being the only one of its kind, which included ancient multilingual inscriptions and whose texts are even completely legible to date, led to it finally Jean François Champollion managed to decipher the hieroglyphs in 1822.
The text on the Rosetta Stone is actually a decree from a priestly council, known as ‘decree of Memphis’ where they talk about the coronation of Ptolemy V. Through the text inscribed on the monolith, the priests announced that the 13-year-old boy should be honored as all Egyptian kings were honored: with statues in the temples, celebrations of birthdays, processions and his promotion noted in official records.
Silver and grain gifts
But in addition to the divine to the new ruler, The Rosetta stone also recorded that Ptolemy V gave silver and grain to the temples, with which he assured the favor of the priestly caste. And finally, it was decreed that a copy of this inscription be erected in each temple in the language of the gods (hieroglyphics), the language of documents (demotic) and the language of the Greeks. This latest decree suggests to archaeologists that other Rosetta stones are out there lost and buried in the desert sands.
This is how the most important text of Egyptian culture for modern man ends, since thanks to this decree of Ptolemy V, who was only 13 years old and which was inscribed in different ancient languages, the hieroglyphs were finally deciphered, opening up the understanding of the world. ancient like never seen before. Currently the Rosetta Stone is exhibited there and is one of the most visited works in the entire facility.