The Rosetta Stone: Bringing Ancient Egypt Back to Life

Back when Greek translators were living their absolute best life.

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[JustAnotherAccount]

Honestly props to them for writing the same thing in 3 different languages, they would've had no idea how important this would be in the future

[NJMike]

The very first line of text they deciphered was 'we have been trying to reach you about your car's warranty' or something like that

[MargoMB]

I never realized how long it took and how much effort (and misunderstandings) went into translating the texts on the Rosetta Stone. Learn something new every day, as my mom says!

[BinkyBorky]

"Let us borrow the stone, we will return in later, pinky promise."
"when is later?"
"Later"

[anarchyantz]

Going against form, the French surrendered. I genuinely laughed out loud at that.

[KeitieKalopsia]

I never knew that the Rosetta Stone was one of [presumably] many mass produced “flyers”! That concept is super intriguing.

[brianjacobs]

I've been asking you to do this and the Dead Sea scrolls for over a year now and you knock them out both in the same week. It was like you did this just for me!!! Thanks.

[framedlizard]

"Look at this. It's Worthless" "But I take it, bury it in the sand for a thousand years, it becomes priceless"

[CryztalRosez]

Feel like I watched so many Simon videos throughout my pregnancy that my newborn finds his voice more soothing than mine

[terryenby]

So my folks have a replica Rosetta Stone in their house, and as a small child (maybe 6?) I heard about it on tv and ran to them and shouted about how their wall stone was famous and worth lots of money!! 🤣🤣🤣
Thankfully they took the time to explain it wasn’t the original, and that’s why they had it up there! But it must have taken every bit of focus not to just fall about laughing at me, instead of a couple of giggles!

[DragonKingGaav]

Rosetta Stone language learning should have been a sponsor of this video

[WaywardVet]

Great description of the Stone. I knew there a mix within the languages, but your breakdown immediately made me think, oh, like emoji mixed with words and footnotes on how to say things. Got it!

[michaelpipkin]

I made an exact replica"smaller", for a project and I got a D. You know why? Because it was to good. Yep. They thought my parents did it all.

I took dozens of pictures of a replica at the library, lined them up, and made every, single piece of text perfectly. I'll never forgive them. Yes, I cried.

[Trystyna]

Perfect timing. After binge watching Roman/ Egyptian history, I have started to look into hieroglyphics. Another fascinating video. Thanks

[awesomerock]

You missed an incredibly important point. Champollion was able to translate the text only through the help of Coptic priests from the coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt. The church still uses ancient Egyptian language in liturgy through its modern form, the Coptic script. Champollion merely made the connection that the ancient Egyptian language never truly died, but still lived through the Coptic priests and script.

[rgnyc]

This tale has fascinated me since I was around 10 years old and someone gave me a book about "ancient worlds." Nice to see it so accessible here in an accurate well-written piece narrated by Simon.

[lockeyestlocksmith]

I am a Locksmith obviously, the story was in my trade magazines in the 80s and 90s. I may not remember all the details perfectly, but here we go. 1840s young Yale the son of the founder, He and his family went to London to look into setting up a factory to make locks and England. He was in London I am looking at different sites, and was hopping from haberdashery to haberdashery, he entered this one haberdashery and it was full of Egyptian artifacts, you came upon a table with a mechanical device on it that he recognized to be a lock. This lock was different than anything He had ever seen before, it was very old and dilapidated to the point of it being a cutaway of it's self. He drew pictures of it and 10 years later he patented it, what he discovered was the pen Tumbler Locking system we use today, I believe it's 1854 Patented . So he back engineered 4000 year old lock! That's some fun isn't it. But The story about all these Egyptian artifacts found their way to England is even more fun. In the 1840s and 50s England expanding the Kingdom found themselves in Egypt with thousands of people there, there's nothing to eat. These 250 ships that they used made multiple trips every year so that there was a ship arriving almost daily unloading food and supplies to keep these people live, they actually leased ships of the type they needed from other countries. Well there was nothing coming out of Egypt all they have is sand no need to import that. When the ships left port in England they were balanced perfectly to make it around Cape Horn where the water is always bad, after they made it to Egypt and offloaded they needed ballast rocks to balance the ships to get back home, well they clean the beaches off of all available stone for miles and miles and we're looking around for ballast when I thought it would be a good idea to use the statues and stuff they found buried in the sand for Ballast so they could make it home safely. Once they got home they put the stuff out on the dock and had an auction, to help pay for the trips . People from all over England came down to the docks and bought Egyptian artifacts to take home. They asked tribal people they encountered and they had no connection to the Egyptian artifacts . And told them it was OK to take whatever they needed they didn't care. At the time there was no government to deal with. With The state that The Middle East is in these days it seems that these artifacts are safer in England. But nevertheless these artifacts saved a lot of British lives therefore it is part of British history, it was also a logical Business decision. It help cover the cost of these trips .

[earlyriser]

the rosetta stone is indeed awesome in person and turned out to be much more useful than originally thought

[TaylorMaynes]

I learned about the Rosetta Stone in college in my typography class and then went and saw it in real life! It's HUGE!

[deemariedubois]

Rosetta Stone’s content not important but it’s assistance in translating a language is priceless.