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The man who read the stone no one could read
Giulia Fontana
Essay
Tue, Oct 6
·
a1
· 1 min read
A
flat
slab
of
dark
stone
sits
in
the
British
Museum
.
It
has
writing
on
it
in
three
different
scripts
.
French
soldiers
found
it
in
Egypt
in
1799
.
The
stone
is
called
the
Rosetta
Stone
.
It
was
carved
in
196
BC
.
The
same
message
is
written
three
times
on
it
.
One
script
is
Greek
.
Scholars
could
read
Greek
.
The
second
script
is
Demotic
.
The
third
is
ancient
Egyptian
hieroglyphs
.
No
one
could
read
the
hieroglyphs
.
The
first
clue
came
from
an
English
scientist
,
Thomas
Young
.
The
Greek
text
has
a
king
's
name
:
Ptolemy
.
In
the
hieroglyphs
,
one
group
of
signs
sits
inside
an
oval
frame
.
The
frame
is
called
a
cartouche
.
Young
saw
that
this
group
was
the
name
Ptolemy
.
Jean
-
François
Champollion
was
a
young
French
scholar
.
He
studied
copies
of
the
stone
and
many
other
old
texts
.
He
read
more
names
in
cartouches
.
Then
he
read
ordinary
Egyptian
words
too
.
This
was
the
key
.
Hieroglyphs
were
not
just
pictures
.
Many
signs
also
stood
for
sounds
.
On
27
September
1822
,
Champollion
announced
his
answer
in
Paris
.
Three
thousand
years
of
Egyptian
writing
became
open
to
the
world
.
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25 sentences · about 1 min
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