Ancient Hieroglyphics and the Rosetta Stone

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Ancient Hieroglyphics and the Rosetta Stone

• Hannah Feldman, Karl Fries, Danielle Mercado

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Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics

• Hieroglyphics stems from the Greek word
  hieroglyphica, which means sacred carvings
• Over 2,000 characters
• alphabetic, logographic, and ideographic elements
• Originated due to the artistic traditions of the
  preliterate Egyptians

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Hieroglyphics

• Demotic
• Popular script
• Could be read off tablets by educated citizens
• Hieratic
• Sacred script
• Used on temple walls

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Who Used Hieroglyphics?

• Priests
• Used cursive hieroglyphics (Hieratic script) to
  record religious literature
• Scribes of the government
• More simple and basic easier to understand
• Used Demotic script

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When Were Hieroglyphics In Use?

• Earliest known hieroglyphic writing was
  discovered to be from the 3000 B.C.
• Used up until the 4th Century A.D.
• Christians banned its use
• Ancient hieroglyphic script was replaced with
  Coptic
• The ability to read both demotic and hieratic
  hieroglyphics vanished

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Breaking the Hieroglyphics

• Decryption was hindered by the assumption that
  phonetic characters were not used
• People believed that hieroglyphics were semagrams

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Hieroglyphic Alphabet
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Important People

• German Jesuit priest Athanasius Kircher
• Napoleon
• Thomas Young
• Jean-Francois Champollion

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The Rosetta Stone

• Found in 1799 in the town of Rosetta in the Nile
  Delta
• Was inscribed with three separate texts, saying
  the same thing
• Greek
• Demotic
• Hieratic

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The Rosetta Stone, contd

• Ended up with the British due to the Treaty of
  Capitulation
• Described as granodiorite
• Measurements
• 45 inches high
• 28 ½ inches wide
• 11 inches thick

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The Rosetta Stone, contd

• Carved in 196 B.C.
• Deciphered fully in 1822 by Champollion
• Exhibited in the British Museum since 1802
• July 2003, Egyptians demanded the return of the
  Stone

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Example