Welcome back to The Deep Dive, where we take
complex sources, articles, research papers, field
notes, extract the gold, and hand you the key.
And today, the key is the topic. It really is.
Okay, so let's get into it. We are doing a deep
dive on an object that isn't just an artifact,
it's, well, it's the ultimate key to a forgone
world. We're talking about the Rosetta Stone.
It's hard to overstate its importance. I mean,
before this one piece of stone was found, you
had over 1 ,400... Years of Egyptian history
just locked away. A total black box. Completely.
All of that amazing culture, the literature,
the dynasties, the pharaohs, the Ptolemaic period.
It was all behind a script that nobody on earth
could read. It was like a library had been sealed
shut for a millennium and a half. And our mission
today is to trace that incredible journey. We're
going to start with its original purpose, which
was actually pretty mundane, a political decree
in 1996 BC. Yeah, just politics. Then we'll follow
its rediscovery, which was, you know, incredibly
dramatic, found by Napoleon's army in 1799. The
total accident of war. Exactly. And then we'll
get into the intellectual battle to decipher
it. And finally, its complicated modern legacy,
the repatriation debates and how it's become
this global metaphor. And this is so crucial
for you, the learner. Because the story of the
Rosetta Stone is really the story of knowledge
recovery. It shows how one sort of fragmented
piece of evidence can just completely change
our entire understanding of the ancient world.
It basically resurrected a civilization from
silence. It's this perfect storm of, you know,
archaeology, human intellect and a healthy dose
of rivalry. A lot of rivalry, yeah. Okay. So
let's start with the object itself. When you
picture the Rosetta Stone, you think of this
huge black imposing slab in the British Museum.
But the reality is a little different, isn't
it? It is. That image of a solid black stone
is actually a longstanding misconception. Really?
Yeah. For most of its time in London, the curators,
they would rub white chalk into the inscriptions
to make them easier for visitors to read. Okay,
that makes sense. And they also coated the whole
thing in a layer of carnauba wax to protect it.
So that combination gave it that dark, uniform,
waxy look, which led everyone to think it was
black basalt. But that's not what it's made of
at all. Not at all. In 1999, they did this huge
cleaning project. They stripped all those layers
away, and underneath, they found its true nature.
It's a steel of dark gray granodiorite. Granodiorite.
What is that exactly? It's a much harder, more
crystalline rock. The cleaning revealed this
sort of sparkle in its texture. And most importantly,
it showed this really distinct pink vein running
across the top left corner. And that pink vein
is a clue. It's the geological fingerprint. That
specific coloration is characteristic of rock
from the quarries at Gebeltingar, which is near
Aswan in southern Egypt. So we know exactly where
the stone came from. And it certainly wasn't
small. I mean, the numbers are staggering. It's
112 .3 centimeters high. Almost four feet tall.
And it weighs around 760 kilograms. That's what,
nearly 1 ,700 pounds? Yeah, this was meant to
be a permanent, very public monument. You don't
carve something that heavy for a temporary notice.
And that's just a fragment. Right. And that's
the thing. What we have is only a piece of the
original. We know from comparing it to other
similar stelae from that period, like the Decree
of Canopus, that the original was probably much
taller. How much taller? Estimates put it closer
to 149 centimeters, so almost five feet high.
It would have had a rounded top of lunette, which
almost certainly would have had a carved scene
on it. A scene of what? Probably King Ptolemy
V. being presented to the Egyptian gods with
a winged disc symbol above them. The piece we
have is just the bottom two -thirds of that original
monument. And the damage is just, it's so unfortunate,
especially where the most important text was.
It's the great irony of the whole thing. The
top section, which had the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs,
the sacred language of the gods, is the most
heavily damaged part. How much is left? We only
had the last 14 lines. Every single one of them
is broken on the right side and some on the left
as well. It's a mess. So the most mysterious
script is the most incomplete. Exactly. The middle
text, the demotic script, is actually the best
preserved. We have 32 lines of that. And then
the bottom text, the ancient Greek, which was
the one they could already read, is mostly intact
until it breaks off at the corner. So we have
this incredible object with three different scripts
on it. A trifecta. Yeah. At the very top, you
have the formal hieroglyphs written in this sort
of archaic style to give it religious weight.
In the middle, you have demotic. That was the
everyday cursive script used for administrative
documents. It was the language people actually
used. The language of documents, I think I read.
That's a perfect way to put it. Yeah. And then
at the bottom, of course, Ancient Greek. That
was the language of the government of the ruling
Ptolemaic dynasty. And the absolute genius of
it, or maybe just the spectacular luck, was that
the text itself says that all three inscriptions
are versions of the same decree. That was the
light bulb moment. That's what Lieutenant Bouchard
and the French savants realized almost immediately.
It wasn't just three random texts. It was a key.
It made the stone this indispensable comparative
text. It was the only way to figure out the unknown
scripts using the known one as a guide. OK, so
let's get into the context of that decree. Why
was this thing even made in the first place?
back in 1996 bc it was issued for king ptolemy
the epiphanies and it sounds like his kingdom
was not in a great place not at all instability
is the defining word for that era Ptolemy Veth
was officially crowned when he was 12. 12 years
old. But he had technically been king since he
was five, after his parents died very suddenly
and very suspiciously. Assassinated. It's widely
believed they were murdered in a palace coup
by the king's mistress, Agathoclea, and her brother.
So you have a child king and a bunch of powerful,
scheming regents running the show. That sounds
like a recipe for disaster. It was total chaos.
For years, the kingdom was run by the secession
of warring guardians who were mostly interested
in their own power. And I'm guessing their rivals
on the outside saw this weakness and pounced.
Immediately. The big threat came from the north.
The Seleucid Emperor Antiochus III and Philip
V of Macedon basically made a pact to carve up
Egypt's overseas territories. So the empire was
shrinking. It was hemorrhaging territory. And
at the same time... there was an even bigger
problem at home. The revolt in the south. Yes,
a massive long -running revolt in Upper Egypt.
The southern part of the country was an open
rebellion against the Greek rulers. I mean, the
instability was existential. So this decree,
issued in March of 96 BC, it wasn't really a
celebration. It was more like a political transaction.
It was a desperate attempt to buy stability and
legitimacy. And it's so telling that the Congress
of Priests who issued it met in Memphis, not
the Ptolemaic capital of Alexandria. What's the
significance of that? Well, by going to Memphis,
the ancient spiritual heart of Egypt, the rulers
were signaling how much they needed the support
of the Egyptian priesthood. These priests had
immense influence. If they endorsed Ptolemy V,
it would help bridge that legitimacy gap. The
fact that he was a Greek ruling over Egyptians.
So what was the deal exactly? What did the priests
get for their support? It's a classic quid pro
quo. The priests pledged to establish a divine
cult for the young king to celebrate him every
year. And in return, Ptolemy V gave them huge
gifts of silver and grain, canceled debts, handed
out tax exemptions. Anything to solidify their
power and buy their loyalty. And he also made
a point of mentioning his public works to show
he was a good king for the common people. He
did, and it's remarkably specific. The decree
talks about this one unusually high Nile flood.
And Ptolemy claims he personally directed the
damming of the excess water to protect the farmers.
A bit of political PR. Classic PR. It was a tangible
benefit that people would understand. The message
was clear. This king, backed by the priests and
the gods, protects your livelihood. It's just
so interesting how these foreign rulers had to
constantly use these multilingual decrees to
communicate. This wasn't a one -time thing. Not
at all. It was standard practice for the Ptolemies.
We know there were other copies of this exact
decree, and it was part of a whole series of
similar decrees issued by earlier kings. So this
object that unlocked all of ancient history was,
at its heart, just a piece of government propaganda.
A mandatory government announcement, yeah. An
eternal key hidden in a temporary political crisis.
And it lay buried for almost 2 ,000 years until
another war brought it back into the light. Right.
We fast forward to 1799. Napoleon invades Egypt.
And this wasn't just a military campaign. Napoleon
was smart. He brought 151 scientists and technical
experts with him, the savants. He was trying
to conquer Egypt intellectually as well as militarily.
And the discovery itself was just this incredible
accident. So what happened? It's July 1799. French
soldiers are reinforcing this old Ottoman fort
near the town of Rashid, which they called Rosetta.
They were tearing down an old wall to build new
defenses. And a soldier just spots it in the
rubble. Lieutenant Pierre -Francois Bouchard
sees this big, dark slab with writing on it being
pulled out of the demolition. And he knew right
away it was something special. Because of the
three scripts. Exactly. He realized it was probably
three versions of the same text. So the stone
gets sent down to Cairo, and the news spreads
like wildfire through the French scientific community
there. And they figured out what they had pretty
quickly. Amazingly quickly. Jean -Joseph Marcel,
a printer, was the first to correctly identify
the middle text as demonic, which was a huge
step. But now they have this single, massive,
heavy object. The challenge must have been, how
do we share this with scholars back in Europe?
That was the next big problem. So in 1800, a
few of the French experts came up with some really
clever ways to make copies. One of them, Nicolas
-Jacques Conte, actually figured out how to use
the stone itself as a printing block. Like a
giant stamp. Pretty much. They'd ink the stone
and press paper onto it. And those prints were
vital. They were rushed back to Paris so scholars
could start working on it long before the stone
itself ever left Egypt. Which was good thinking
because the French weren't going to hold onto
it for long. No. The British landed in 1801,
defeated the French, and laid siege to Alexandria.
And the stone was in Alexandria with the French
commander, General Manu. Right. And when Manu
was forced to surrender, the stone became this
huge point of contention. This is where the ownership
dispute kicks off. It gets incredibly tense.
Menuh actually tried to claim the Rosetta Stone
as his personal private property to keep it from
being surrendered. You're kidding? Nope. He argued
it wasn't a military or state artifact. But the
British were determined. The scholars with the
British army, like Edward Daniel Clark, were
absolutely adamant that it belonged to the British
crown. So the academics were driving the conflict.
They were at the heart of it. And this led to
this incredibly dramatic moment. The French scholars...
furious at the idea of handing over their discoveries,
basically threatened to burn everything. They
said they'd rather throw it all into the sea
than surrender it to the English, invoking the
destruction of the Library of Alexandria. Wow.
So history itself was the bargaining chip. It
was. Eventually a compromise was reached and
all the antiquities, including the stone, were
handed over to the British. And the story of
the actual handover is a bit theatrical itself.
There are a couple of different versions, right?
There are. Colonel Turner, the British officer
in charge, claimed he just marched in and seized
it from Manu. But the more interesting account
is from Clark, the scholar. He said he was secretly
led by a French officer who apparently didn't
like Manu to where the stone was hidden. Hidden
where? Under some carpets mixed in with Manu's
personal baggage in the back streets of Alexandria.
So they grabbed it, put it on a captured friendship,
and sent it to England. And its public life in
Britain began almost the second it landed. Immediately.
It arrived in Portsmouth in February 1802. It
was presented to King George III, who directed
it be placed in the British Museum. But first,
it was shown to the scholars at the Society of
Antiquaries of London. And they made copies right
away. That was the priority. They made four high
-quality plaster casts and sent them to Oxford,
Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Dublin. And prints
were sent all over Europe. They knew this had
to be an international effort. When it finally
got to the British Museum, they made its origins
very clear. Oh, yeah. They painted inscriptions
right on the side of it in white paint. Captured
in Egypt by the British Army in 1801 and presented
by King George III. Not subtle. Not at all. And
it's been on display pretty much continuously
ever since. It's the museum's single most visited
object. It's so important that they've even moved
it for safety. Only once, really. During World
War I in 1917, there was a real fear of German
bombing raids over London. So they moved the
stone 50 feet underground into an unused station
of the Postal 2 Railway. Incredible. Just to
keep it safe. For two years. A testament to its
value. Okay, so this brings us to the intellectual
heart of the story. Reading the unreadable. Before
the stone, Egyptian history was just silent.
How did that happen? How does a whole civilization's
writing system just... It was a slow death, really,
driven by cultural and religious shifts in the
late Roman Empire. The last known hieroglyphic
inscription is dated to 394 AD. That's it. The
end of the line. That's the end. As Christianity
spread, the old Egyptian religious practices,
which were completely tied to the hieroglyphs,
were suppressed. The temples were closed, and
the script lost its reason for being. So the
culture that supported the script disappeared.
Exactly. The language evolved into Coptic, which
used the Greek alphabet. And for the next thousand
years, all these misleading ideas about what
hieroglyphs were took hold. You're talking about
Hor Apollo. He's the main culprit. His book,
Hieroglyphica, argued that the symbols were purely
allegorical. You know, a picture of a goose meant
sun because geese are loving parents. That kind
of thing. So everyone thought it was a picture
language, not a sound language. Exactly. And
that one idea blocked any real progress for centuries
until the Rosetta Stone provided the proof they
needed. So the stow arrives. Step one is the
Greek text. Right. That's the starting point.
It's the known quantity. Scholars like Stephen
Weston in England and Hubert Pascal Amelian in
France quickly produced translations. They knew
what the decree said. So once they have the meaning,
they can attack the other scripts. And they start
with the middle one, Demotic. That was step two.
A Swedish scholar, Johan Akerblad, and the French
Orientalist, Sylvester de Sassy, had a brilliant
idea. Which was? Use the proper names. They took
the foreign names from the Greek text, Ptolemaeos,
Alexandros, and looked for similar looking groups
of symbols in the demonic text. Because names
have to be spelled out phonetically. Exactly.
And it worked. To a point. Archibald managed
to identify about half of the demonic alphabet
correctly. It was a huge first step. But they
got stuck. But they did. Because they made a
wrong assumption. They thought the entire script
must be purely alphabetic. They didn't understand
that Egyptian writing is a hybrid. It uses phonetic
signs and ideograms, which are signs that represent
whole words or ideas. Which is where Thomas Young
comes in, step three. Right. Thomas Young, this
brilliant British polymath, he decided to focus
on the hieroglyphs, specifically the ovals, the
cartouches. The theory being that cartouches
always contained royal names. Exactly. So he
took the one name he knew was there. Ptolemy.
And he managed to isolate the phonetic signs
for P -T -O -L -M -N -S. It was a massive breakthrough.
He proved hieroglyphs had a phonetic component.
But he got stuck too, for a similar reason. A
very similar reason. Young assumed that phonetic
spelling was only used for foreign names, like
the Greek Ptolemies. He thought that for native
Egyptian words, the script went back to being
purely symbolic. Like Cor Apollo said. So he
could read the name of the ruler, but he couldn't
read what the ruler was actually doing. Precisely.
He had a key, but he thought it only opened one
very specific lock. And that sets the stage for
the final breakthrough. Jean -Francois Champollion.
Champollion. He was obsessed with Egypt and was
fluent in Coptic, which he was convinced was
the descendant of the ancient language. He knew
Young's work, but the final piece of the puzzle
came from another artifact. The Philae obelisk.
Right. It had another bilingual inscription,
this time with the names Ptolemaeus and Cleopatra.
Having a second name was the key. It was everything.
Because he could cross -reference the letters.
The P and the T and the L appeared in both names,
so he could confirm their sounds and quickly
build out a whole alphabet. He announced it in
1822. But the real eureka moment, the thing that
unlocked everything, wasn't a Greek name, was
it? No. And this is the crucial distinction.
In 1823, he got copies of cartouches from much
older temples with the names of native pharaohs.
And he was able to sound out the names Remesis
and Thutmose. Wow. And that was it. That proved
that the phonetic system wasn't just for foreigners.
It was used for native Egyptian names from a
thousand years before the Greeks. It shattered
Jung's assumption. And the entire 1 ,400 years
of silence just ended. The floodgates opened.
Because he knew Coptic, he could start to reconstruct
the grammar and the vocabulary. He had cracked
the entire system. Of course, this incredible
intellectual race was not always friendly. There
was a lot of rivalry. Oh, a huge amount. Yeah.
The British accused Champollion of plagiarizing
Young's initial work. It was a very nasty nationalistic
fight that went on for... And there was even
scandal inside the French camp. The Salvallini
affair. One of Champollion's own students basically
stole his notes after he died and tried to pass
the work off as his own. It was a cutthroat world.
So even with the code cracked, the work wasn't
done. It took decades to refine the translations.
The initial decipherment was just the framework.
It took until the 1850s for scholars to produce
really reliable revised translations. And there's
still debate today about which of the three texts
was the original. The source code, so to speak.
Right. Was it written in Greek first and then
translated? Or did it start with the sacred hieroglyphs?
The most likely answer is that it was all drafted
at the same time by a committee, blending the
three traditions together. Which makes sense.
It feels like a document created by a committee.
It really does. The Rosetta Stone is now probably
the most famous rock in the world. It's so famous
that its name has become part of our language.
It's a huge cultural achievement. The term Rosetta
Stone. Now just means the key to cracking any
kind of code, the one clue that lets you understand
a much bigger system. And you see that metaphor
everywhere. Everywhere. In physics, the spectrum
of the hydrogen atom is called the Rosetta Stone
of modern physics because understanding it allowed
us to understand all other atoms. And in biology,
too. Yeah, a little plant called Arabidopsis
is the Rosetta Stone of flowering time because
its simple genetics provided the key to how all
flowers work. Even the European Space Agency
named their comet -chasing probe. Rosetta. Because
they hoped the comet would hold the key to the
origins of the solar system. Exactly. The metaphor
is perfect. And it's important to remember, as
a concept, it's not totally unique. There have
been other bilingual texts that have unlocked
languages. That's a great point. The Rosetta
Stone is the most famous, but the Behistun inscription
in Iran did the same thing for cuneiform scripts,
which was just as important for Mesopotamian
history. So it's part of a larger story of decipherment.
It is a very important part. But that brings
us to its complicated modern life and the calls
for its repatriation. Yes. This has been a consistent
call since the early 2000s, led by Dr. Zahi Hawass
in Egypt. He's called it the icon of our Egyptian
identity and argued that it belongs in Egypt.
And he's proposed compromises, right? Not just
demanding it back permanently. He has. He's asked
for temporary loans, for example, for the opening
of the new Grand Egyptian Museum. The British
Museum did give Egypt a full -size replica, but
the original has stayed in London. And what is
the position of the British Museum and other
big international museums? They have a unified
defense. They argue that these objects were acquired
in a different era with different values and
that now they serve as world objects in world
museums. The argument being that more people
can see it in London, that it belongs to humanity.
That's the core of their position, that they
serve the people of every nation by making these
treasures of global heritage accessible. It's
a really complex debate with no easy answers.
A clash between national identity and global
access. And it leads to this great little irony
that the scholars... John Ray pointed out. He
noted that the day is coming when the Rosetta
Stone will have spent more time in the British
Museum than it ever did in Rosetta or anywhere
else in ancient Egypt. Its modern life as an
icon has now completely eclipsed its original
purpose. So when you boil it all down, what does
this all mean? We've traced this journey from
a piece of rock made for a nervous teenage king
all the way to the tool that brought a civilization
back to life. The deep dive really shows that
the genius wasn't just finding the stone. It
was the incredible intellectual effort that followed.
That moment of realizing that a single name,
Halimaos, held the phonetic key to unlock. Everything
else. That one connection was the thread that
unraveled the whole mystery. It gave us back
a millennium of history. And proved that even
the most difficult codes can be broken if you
just find the right key. Absolutely. Right. And
the final thought to leave you with is this.
That original decree was made for one reason
and one reason only. To secure the power of King
Ptolemy V. It was pure political propaganda designed
for immediate local relevance in a very turbulent
time. Meant to glorify one king. For a fleeting
moment. But consider the incredible irony. This
routine political document designed to solve
a short -term crisis instead became the eternal
key to understanding the entire religious and
historical world of the various civilization
it was meant to govern. This object, intended
to elevate a single king's cult, ended up resurrecting
an entire ancient world.