Through the Eras

LiteraturePtolemeusKleopatraHieroglyphic and Greek writings of the names of Ptolemy andCleopatra. CREATED BY GGS INFORMATION SERVICES. GALE.The Rosetta Stone, on which the same text was written in twoforms of ancient Egyptian, hieroglyphic and demotic, as well asGreek. Discovery of the stone led to the decipherment of thedemotic and hieroglyphic script in 1822. THE ARTARCHIVE/BRITISH MUSEUM/DAGLI ORTI.DECIPHERING HIEROGLYPHS. In 1822 Champollionbecame the first modern person to read Egyptianhieroglyphs. He based his study of hieroglyphs on theRosetta Stone, a tri-lingual inscription bearing a dateequivalent to 27 March 196 B.C.E. It is a decree issuedby King Ptolemy VI, exempting the priests of Memphisfrom certain taxes, and recorded in Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphic,and in Egyptian Demotic, a cursive writingsystem derived from hieroglyphic. Champollion beganhis work with the assumption that the hieroglyphs representedthe same text as the Greek. Since Europeanscholars had never lost the ability to read ancient Greek,Champollion understood the contents of that section ofthe inscription with little difficulty. Champollion mayhave been aware of an English scholar named ThomasYoung, whose private work on hieroglyphs, written in1819 but never published, suggested that the ovals withhieroglyphic signs inside them carved on the RosettaStone were a phonetic writing of King Ptolemy VI’sname. Champollion assigned sounds to the signs thatrepresented Ptolemy’s name by relying on the Greek text.He then compared the text in Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphson the Bankes’ Obelisk, a monument broughtto England from southern Egypt in the early nineteenthcentury. This monument exhibited a Greek inscriptionwith the name Cleopatra and a hieroglyphic inscriptionthat included an oval with signs inside it. Taking thesounds “p,” “t,” “o,” “l,” and “e” that are common toboth Ptolemy and Cleopatra’s names, Champollionmade a comparison between the two groups of hieroglyphicsigns. He found that the expected hieroglyphicsign was in a predictable place. The same sign was presentto write “p,” the first sound in Ptolemy and the fifthsound in Cleopatra, in the first and fifth position of thewriting of their names. The same expectations were metfor the sounds “t,” “o,” “l,” and “e.” This comparisondemonstrated that hieroglyphs were phonetic, not mystical,philosophical symbols. Using these known signs asequivalents for known sounds, Champollion was quicklyable to identify the hieroglyphic writings of the namesof many of the Roman emperors who ruled Egypt afterOctavian (later the Roman emperor Augustus) conqueredthe country in 31 B.C.E. He used his knowledgeof Coptic, the last stage of the Egyptian language writtenwith Greek letters, to further identify the meaningsof Egyptian words written in hieroglyphics. Subsequentscholarly work since Champollion’s discovery has resultedin a nearly complete understanding of the Egyptianlanguage, its grammar, and its place among thelanguages of the world.DIALECTS OF EGYPTIAN. Egyptologists have discoveredfive different dialects of the Egyptian language,all of which had literature. A dialect is a variety of languagedistinguished by features of vocabulary, gram-116 Arts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Egypt (2675 B.C.E.–332 B.C.E.)