Hieroglyphs and how Egypt was decoded through the Rosetta Stone

Today, we begin our journey into ancient Egypt by exploring its unique writing system, hieroglyphs. For thousands of years, these beautiful symbols guarded the secrets of one of the world's greatest civilizations. Then, for many centuries, no one could read them. The knowledge was lost. It took a remarkable discovery and the brilliant work of a few dedicated scholars to unlock the meaning of hieroglyphs, finally allowing us to understand the Egyptians in their own words. The word "hieroglyph" comes from ancient Greek. The Greeks called this writing "hieros glyphein," which means "sacred carvings." They saw these symbols mostly on the walls of temples and tombs, carved into stone, and they believed the writing was connected to religious rituals and divine messages. This writing system was used by the ancient Egyptians for an incredibly long time, almost 3,500 years. The earliest known hieroglyphic inscriptions appeared around 3200 BCE, and they continued to be used until about the 4th century CE. Hieroglyphs are fascinating because they are not like the alphabet we use today, where each letter represents a single sound. Instead, hieroglyphs were a complex system that combined different types of signs. Some signs were *logographic*, meaning they represented a whole word or idea. For example, a drawing of a sun could mean "sun." Other signs were *phonetic*, meaning they represented a sound, like a letter in an alphabet. And some signs were *determinatives*, which were placed at the end of a word to show what kind of word it was (for example, a picture of a walking man might be added after a word to show it was a verb of movement). This made hieroglyphs very rich in meaning but also very challenging to learn and to read. Over the centuries, as Egyptian society changed, so did its writing. Hieroglyphs were formal and often used for important inscriptions on monuments. But for everyday writing, Egyptians developed simpler, faster ways to write. One of these was *Hieratic*, a cursive form of hieroglyphs. Imagine writing quickly with a pen instead of carefully carving into stone; Hieratic looked much more like handwriting. It was used for religious texts, legal documents, and stories written on *papyrus*, a type of paper made from reeds, or on *ostraca*, which were pieces of pottery or stone used for notes and drafts. Later, from about the 7th century BCE, an even more simplified and cursive script called *Demotic* developed. Demotic was used for common administrative tasks and business documents. So, ancient Egypt had three main scripts: formal hieroglyphs for monuments, Hieratic for religious and literary texts, and Demotic for daily life. The knowledge of how to read hieroglyphs slowly disappeared over many centuries. This happened for several reasons. One major reason was the decline of the traditional Egyptian religion. As Christianity spread through Egypt, it gradually replaced the ancient Egyptian gods and rituals. The temples, where priests had maintained the knowledge of hieroglyphic writing, were eventually abandoned or converted into churches. The priestly class, who were the main people who could read and write hieroglyphs, no longer had their traditional roles. Another reason was the changing languages of Egypt. After Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 BCE, Greek became the official language of the government. For centuries, Greek was widely used in Egypt alongside Egyptian. Later, when Egypt became part of the Roman Empire, Latin also became important, and then Arabic became dominant after the Arab conquest in the 7th century CE. With new languages becoming more important, fewer people learned the old Egyptian scripts. By the 4th century CE, the use of hieroglyphs had almost completely stopped. The last known hieroglyphic inscription dates to 394 CE. Instead, Egyptians began to use *Coptic*, a new form of the Egyptian language written using the Greek alphabet, with a few extra letters taken from Demotic to represent sounds not found in Greek. When the Roman Emperor Theodosius I banned pagan cults in 391 CE, it marked the end of the ancient Egyptian religion and the closure of the last temples where hieroglyphic knowledge might still have been preserved. Eventually, no one alive could read hieroglyphs anymore. For more than a thousand years, the stories carved on the ancient Egyptian monuments remained a mystery. This all changed with a truly remarkable discovery in 1799. At that time, the French general Napoleon Bonaparte led a military campaign in Egypt. His army brought with them not just soldiers, but also many scientists, artists, and scholars. They were there to study the ancient land and its treasures. In July 1799, near a town called Rosetta (modern-day Rashid) in the Nile Delta, French soldiers were demolishing an old wall to expand a fort. As they worked, they unearthed a large, dark stone slab. It was a piece of *granodiorite*, a hard, dark rock, about 112 centimeters high and 76 centimeters wide. On its surface, they saw three different kinds of writing. This was the Rosetta Stone. The French soldiers immediately recognized that this stone was important. They had found something unique. The top part of the stone was inscribed with hieroglyphs. Below that was a text in Demotic. And at the bottom was a text in ancient Greek. Scholars quickly realized that these three texts were likely the same message, written in three different scripts. This was an incredible stroke of luck. Since ancient Greek was still a known language, scholars could read the bottom text. If the texts were indeed identical, then the Greek part could act as a "crib" or a key to unlock the Egyptian scripts. The Rosetta Stone contains a decree, which is an official order or law, issued by King Ptolemy V Epiphanes in 196 BCE. This decree was a statement from the council of priests in Egypt, affirming the royal cult of the then-young King Ptolemy V and listing all the good things he had done for Egypt. It declared that this decree should be inscribed on stelae (upright stone slabs) in hieroglyphic, Demotic, and Greek scripts, and placed in temples throughout Egypt. The stone itself was not a unique document; many such decrees were made and inscribed, but this particular copy was the one that survived and eventually led to the decipherment of ancient Egyptian writing. After the French defeat in Egypt, the Rosetta Stone became the property of the British under the terms of the Treaty of Alexandria in 1801. It was brought to London in 1802 and has been on display at the British Museum ever since. But its true journey was just beginning, as scholars across Europe started the monumental task of deciphering its texts. The challenge was immense. Hieroglyphs had been unreadable for so long that many scholars believed they were purely symbolic, with each picture representing an idea rather than a sound. It was like trying to guess the meaning of a picture puzzle without any instructions. Two brilliant scholars, Thomas Young from England and Jean-François Champollion from France, played the most crucial roles in cracking the code. Thomas Young was an English polymath, a person with knowledge in many different subjects, including medicine, physics, and linguistics. He made significant early progress. Young focused on the *cartouches*, which are oval shapes enclosing groups of hieroglyphs. He correctly guessed that these cartouches probably contained the names of pharaohs, especially foreign ones like Ptolemy. He managed to identify some phonetic values within these cartouches. For example, he looked at the cartouche for "Ptolemy" and tried to match the Greek letters to the hieroglyphic signs, figuring out which hieroglyph stood for "P," which for "T," and so on. He also correctly observed that hieroglyphs could be read in different directions, often indicated by the direction the animals or people in the hieroglyphs were facing. However, Young believed that only foreign names were written phonetically; he thought that Egyptian words themselves were still purely symbolic. He made important steps, but he did not achieve a full decipherment. The ultimate breakthrough came from Jean-François Champollion. Champollion was a French philologist and linguist, meaning he studied languages and their history. He was truly obsessed with ancient Egypt from a young age. Critically, Champollion had a deep knowledge of Coptic, the late form of the Egyptian language written with Greek letters. He understood that Coptic was the direct descendant of the ancient Egyptian language and that it preserved many of its words and grammatical structures. Champollion studied the Rosetta Stone intensely, along with other inscriptions he had access to. He carefully compared the names of pharaohs, like Ptolemy and Cleopatra, that appeared in cartouches on the Rosetta Stone and on other monuments. He realized that the phonetic principle Young had identified for foreign names also applied to Egyptian names and even to common Egyptian words. This was a revolutionary insight. Hieroglyphs were not just pictures representing ideas; they were a complex system combining phonetic signs (representing sounds), logographic signs (representing whole words), and determinatives (which helped clarify the meaning of a word). Champollion's knowledge of Coptic was his secret weapon. He would see a hieroglyphic word and compare it to Coptic words that sounded similar and had similar meanings. For instance, he found a hieroglyph that looked like a sun disc. He knew that the Coptic word for "sun" was "ra." He hypothesized that this hieroglyph represented the sound "ra." He then found this "ra" sign in other words, confirming its phonetic value. He systematically worked through the signs, building an alphabet of hieroglyphic sounds. In 1822, Champollion made his famous announcement. He wrote a letter to Monsieur Dacier, the secretary of the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, explaining his system for deciphering hieroglyphs. He showed that hieroglyphs were a phonetic system, meaning they represented sounds, and that he could read them. This was a monumental moment in history. The decipherment of hieroglyphs had enormous consequences. For millennia, ancient Egypt had been a land of mystery, understood mostly through the writings of ancient Greek and Roman historians. These accounts were often biased, incomplete, or misunderstood the true nature of Egyptian culture and religion. With hieroglyphs deciphered, scholars could finally read the words of the Egyptians themselves. This unlocked a vast treasure trove of information. Suddenly, the inscriptions on the walls of temples and tombs, the texts on papyri like the famous Book of the Dead, and countless other artifacts became readable. We could learn about Egyptian religion, their gods, their beliefs about the afterlife, their government, their daily lives, their literature, their science, and their history directly from their own records. We learned the names of pharaohs, the details of their reigns, the stories of their battles, and the wisdom of their sages. The decipherment of hieroglyphs also established Egyptology as a formal academic discipline. Scholars could now systematically study ancient Egypt using its own primary sources. *Primary sources* are original documents or objects created at the time being studied, like the Rosetta Stone itself, or papyrus scrolls written by ancient Egyptians. Before Champollion, Egyptology was largely speculation; after him, it became a science based on direct evidence. While the contributions of both Young and Champollion are acknowledged, it is Champollion who is credited with the complete and systematic decipherment. He understood the complex grammatical structure of the language, not just individual words, and he proved that hieroglyphs were a sophisticated writing system combining phonetic, logographic, and determinative signs, used for both foreign and native words. His profound knowledge of Coptic was truly the key that opened the door. Without the Rosetta Stone, with its identical text in three scripts, the decipherment of hieroglyphs would have been delayed for a very long time, or perhaps even been impossible in the 19th century. It was the perfect key for a locked door, and Champollion was the brilliant mind who figured out how to turn it. Thanks to this discovery and his work, we can now hear the voices of the ancient Egyptians across thousands of years, telling us their stories in their own unique and beautiful script. In our next lesson, we will explore one of the most central aspects of ancient Egyptian civilization that the decipherment of hieroglyphs helped us understand: their profound beliefs about death and the afterlife.