The Rosetta Stone - Taschenbuch

E.A. Wallis Budge was an English philologist and writer who worked for the British museum. Budge wrote a lot on the ancient East after taking multiple trips to Egypt and the Sudan. Until about 200 years ago the writing of the ancient Egyptians was an enigma to the world, but that changed when an ancient Egyptian monument known today as the Rosetta Stone was discovered (or rediscovered serendipitously) by French soldiers in Egypt in 1799. Now one of the most famous monuments in the world, the Rosetta Stone is a black granite stela that was inscribed with texts in Greek and two different scripts of the ancient Egyptian language: demotic and hieroglyphs. Stelae like the Rosetta Stone were monuments that ancient Egyptian kings inscribed texts on, usually to proclaim a battle victory or a legal decree. Since the kings who commissioned stelae to be built believed that the information they contained were important, they were usually large, as is the case with the Rosetta Stone. Although damaged over time, the Rosetta Stone still stands nearly four feet tall and over two feet wide, and it originally stood probably between five and six feet tall (Andrews 1982, 12). The discovery of the Rosetta Stone finally provided researchers with a way of reading the Egyptian language based on an understanding of the Greek translation. The texts on the Rosetta Stone were written during the reign of Ptolemy V in 196 B.C. Ptolemy V was descended from Ptolemy Lagos, who took control of Egypt after the death of his close friend, Alexander the Great, in 323 BC (Lloyd 2000, 396). Like their pharaonic Egyptian predecessors, the Ptolemies ruled Egypt as a royal dynastic family, and as time went on they even assumed the traditional royal Egyptian titles of kingship. Although not one of the most important of the Ptolemaic rulers, Ptolemy V's reign was important for a couple of reasons. Most of his rule was marked by rebellion of the native Egyptians against their Greek overlords; no matter what th