How Did We Really Crack The Rosetta Stone?

How did we really decipher the Ancient Egyptian language? Was the discovery of the Rosetta Stone crucial to cracking hieroglyphs? And who was the first person to decode it? Join Tristan Hughes as he explores a new exhibition at the British Museum - Hieroglyphs: Unlocking Ancient Egypt.

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2022 isn't just 100 years since the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. It's also exactly 200 years since one of history's greatest linguistic puzzles was cracked: when Jean-Francois Champollion made the ultimate breakthrough and deciphered the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic code. To mark this very special anniversary, the British Museum has opened a new exhibition that guides visitors through the story of how hieroglyphs were deciphered. In this special access film, Tristan Hughes is given fascinating insight into the key exhibits by the exhibition’s expert curator, Dr Ilona Regulski.

At the heart of the exhibition sits the Rosetta Stone, one of the most famous artefacts in the World. Ilona explains what the Stone actually is and why its discovery was so important in kickstarting the great race to decipher hieroglyphs in the early 19th century.

But the Rosetta Stone is just part of a much larger story; there were many other objects that academics in France and Britain used as they raced to decipher the ancient Egyptian script. Ilona shows Tristan some of these artefacts, including a long papyrus that Champollion worked tirelessly over with little success. And an emotional letter, written over 200 years ago by Champollion, that brings you closer to the genius himself and the many challenges he faced.

The objects in the exhibition reveal the highs and lows that academics like Champollion and his rival Thomas Young experienced, as they strived to crack the code over 20 long and arduous years. But Trisstan also discovers that interest in hieroglyphs stretched back much earlier than the Rosetta Stone's discovery and the arrival of western European academics. Also on display are some remarkable medieval Arab manuscripts, written in Egypt hundreds of years before the 19th century. And Ilona highlights the important role that these objects also played in the great decipherment story.

200 years since Champollion cracked the hieroglyphic code, the British Museum's new exhibition is shining more light on the people and objects behind this seismic breakthrough, and revealing how the decoding of these small symbols opened up the wondrous world of ancient Egypt to us all.

#historyhit #ancientegypt #rosettastone

[HistoryHit]

How do you think the Rosetta Stone ranks among the greatest finds from the ancient world? 🤔

[goodlookinouthomie]

What amazes me at this up close look at the RS is how tiny the letters are. And in immaculately straight lines of text. Incredibly pristine after millennia.

[frankkolmann]

I find it amazing that at the time of Alexander the Great, Egyptian Hieroglyphs were a LIVE language. It was a fairly recent event that Egyptian hieroglyphs were lost as a living script.

[kevd]

Say what you will about Napoleon, but credit to his the men who discovered the stone and had the foresight to understand how significant it could be. At least some of them must have been quite well educated.

[suecox]

This was fascinating--thank you! I had always assumed that the process of deciphering the ancient language was a much simpler effort once the Rosetta Stone was discovered. It's a revelation to know more about the complications and the enormous effort it involved.

[francisgruber]

Thank you for acknowledging so well the Coptic (monks) contribution. Many do not. It'd be like Renaissance artists or Enlightenment scientists neglecting to acknowledge medieval monks' transcriptions of Greek manuscripts.

[YungJ]

Egypt is on my bucketlist. I’ve always had a pull towards Egyptian culture ever since I was a kid.

[BHuang]

Imagine the bloke that had to carve all of that writing a thousand years ago!

[stephenschroeder]

Great work as always! I am a few classes away from finishing my anthropology degree and this was fascinating! Thank you All. 😎

[nellinightshade]

i'm a history junkie. this is what i binge-watch.

[Mildon]

listened to this while doing my Middle Egyptian course work translating and grammatically labelling a stela

[mentalizatelo]

I love how scholars rarely give a crap about politics and they just focus on the work at hand, the question that needs an answer. Knowledge is what defines us. Lovely production, she knows A LOT, it's an absolute pleasure to hear people who love what they do. Thank you!

[MrLantean]

Coptic language is the key to decipher Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. It is after all the living descendant of Ancient Egyptian language. There are several dialects of Coptic language and the one preserved by the Coptic Church as liturgical language is the Bohairic dialect. Some Medieval Arab scholars claimed to have deciphered them. However since none of their works survived, it is an unproven claim.

[innovati]

Loved this video, I'd love more videos about inscriptions, manuscripts, ancient languages, anything like that!

[ForeverWog]

Thanks for adding the ancient stuff! It’s making my world studies class more interesting!

[michaeltoney]

Coptic now is a dead liturgical language.

How fitting that in its last days it should revive the knowledge of its precursor.

It lived just long enough

[WiIIyeckerslike]

Good of the Brits to save artifacts for the future generations.

[VetsrisAuguste]

Did it ever cross the the mind of the individual(s) who carved the glyphs into the Rosetta Stone, that this very inscription they were carving would ultimately become the most important inscription in Egyptian history? I often wonder about the earliest days of these immensely old objects and the people who made them.

[PeterGaunt]

I actually touched this stone back in probably the 1980s when it was behind a low barrier rather than a case. I touched it and a recorded voice rang out telling me not to touch it. I have no regrets about this at all :-)

[chris.asi_romeo]

Without it they would not have able to read Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. It helps alot translating Ancient Egypt texts.