by Paola Lizares
Home >> The Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone was soon after taken to the Institut de l’Egypte in Cairo. This institution had been founded by Napoleon Bonaparte a year before. The scientists and researchers of the Institut immediately understood that the stone was extremely valuable. Not only for its beauty, not only for its ancientness, but especially because it was a key to the understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs.
The tiny inscriptions carved on the Rosetta Stone were not the same. There were elaborate pictures of birds, snakes, parts of the body and ordinary objects; these were Egyptian hieroglyphs, the language of the gods and the high clergy. There were less figurative doodles of something that looked a bit like Arabic or Hebrew; this was Egyptian demotic script, the language of the people. And then there were some characters that —thank goodness!— looked wonderfully familiar: the good old Greek alphabet.
The Institut de L’Egypte could easily read the Greek text. It turned out to be a rather boring decree dictated by Ptolemy V about some taxes that he had repealed and some statues that were to be erected in such and such temples. However, the decree all of a sudden became interesting when it self-consciously said that it was to be published not only in hieroglyphs, but also in demotic script and in Greek. The same text in three different scripts. Now researchers could use the Greek text to decipher the mysterious Egyptian hieroglyphs…
This extremely difficult task was accomplished by Jean-François Champollion from 1822 to 1824. A thirty-four year old professor of History at Grenoble, he was a man endowed with a superior talent for languages, having mastered twenty languages, ten of them Asian, by the age of twenty. He confirmed the hypothesis that, although some of the hieroglyphs were logographs (i.e. they represented a word or a concept), many of them were simply phonetic symbols.
Thanks to Bouchard’s fortunate discovery and Champollion’s hard work, archaeologists today can understand the secrets behind hundreds of buildings, monuments and daily objects that belonged to an ancient civilisation. The day will come when our own proud civilisation will disappear. Will we be forgotten by future civilisations? Will our languages become dust in an attic? Or will there be something — a stone, a book, a chip — that will help the researchers of future civilisations to catch a glimpse of their past?
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Posted on http://www.weeklyletter.com at 2005-07-22 02:00:00 +0200
Copyright (C) ITT (http://www.itt.es) and Planet Lingua (http://www.lingua.es)
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Hi Paola,
interesting article! I think in the future , civilisations will see us as new begginners in technology. And they’ll get old computers with old processors, old information disks; I wonder if they’ll be able to get the information ;-))
It’s very difficult to imagine the changes can be produced during two thousand years, but I would like to think the world will be better than now. A good mix between the Nature and the Technology.
Future civilisations will think about us that we were very materialist civilisation and we didn’t cultive the espiritual life enough. I’m sure they will use more and more the brain capabilities. Problably the name of our civilisation will be “the transiction civilisation”
In the future there will only be 3.000 languages. I think it’s a pitty that about more than 3.000 languages dissapear in the future. Problably it’s better to have only one, but I think with the technology, people can speak each other in differents languages with “Traslator Tools”
The most interesting archaeological relic I’ve never seen was relationated with Tutankamon faraon. I’ve been in the Egypt museum. Fantastic!!!
It’s difficult to understand how this civilisation can do so many thinks!!!! Have you ever seen the pyrams of Egypt?
Dear Begoña,
They probably won’t. They’ll get messages like “Page not available” or “Internal error 510” or “End task”. However, they’ll put the last Pentium 386 in a bullet-proof glass case right beside Nefertiti’s bust, and there will be a plaque saying “Here lies the primitive tool of the Homo computationis”.
Anyway, I’m glad you liked the article! Talk to you next Friday!
Paola
Dear Alberto,
Astrologists actually say that we are approaching the Age of Aquarius, in which there actually will be a balance between nature, technology and spirituality. Although I don’t believe in astrology, I hope they are right!
It’d be great if translator tools were so good that we could easily use them to communicate with speakers of other languages! But these tools are still far from perfect…
You’ve been to Egypt! Lucky you! I’ve never been there, but I have been to Israel. Although I was very little, I can still remember walking through the Garden of Gethsemane.
Have any of you been to the Holy Land?
Paola
It is ingrerible how many thing I unkmow about are pass, and for understand are present and are way of living, is very important to know where we come from.
The Roseta Stone, is a freat discover. Are future in undertain, now we have more information thar we can know. Are society is very complex, and this doesn´t help. Even now in are time, steel war from other way of living, not respecting cultures.
I agree with Yolanda that it is incredible how many things are unknown about the past. She is right that to understand the present we need to know where we come from. [“In this great future, you can’t forget your past” sang Bob Marley]. I think it is true that our future is uncertain and that our society is very complex. There are still wars in our time. Yolanda says we do not respect other cultures. Maybe if we appreciated history more, we would appreciate other cultures more.
“The past is another country. They do things differently there.”
If we keep on wasting Earth resources the way we do it now, there won’t anybody to remember us in 2000 years. Either, human race will be extinguished or back to the Stone Age
I imagine in the future (within 1000 years) the Earth left because there aren’t any forest and water and the temperature increased 20 degrees so the civilisation moved to other planet.
From the other planet the new civilisation will study the Earth. They probably won’t understand why the human knows that the Earth at the begginnig was 75 % of watter, lakes in Africa, ice in the North and South Pole, millions of species, ... and didn’t do anything. The new civilisation will found Kioto Treaty and won’t understand why the rich Nations bought to poor Nations tickets to contaminate. Neither understand why spend too much money in the Army and nothing to feed the World and make the povety history.
They will name us like the “incomprehensible civilisation”.
But also is probably that this history never happens because I play all the weekends to the quiniela and I never won.
Best regards!
Reading this article really brought to mind how life is really rather short, but memorable. It made me wonder about how civilisations before us used to communicate…no ipods, no Blackberries, no mobile phones (maybe some mobile “Rosetta stones” though… ha ha!). There are some that would say… YES, the simple life! I don’t think life is any more simple or more complicated than life before..just different. All civilisations have had their own unique way of living, communicating and (I was going to say developing) growing/digressing.
From dust to dust you shall return…. Life takes on different meanings, different forms, different circumstances… but in essence it’s very much the same… human nature is funny that way.. Enjoyed the article immensely and I learned something new as well!
Paul
Well, I think insects actually dominate the world now. Do you know that for every human being there are some 200,000,000 of insects? And we think we are the kings…
Yes, and especially beetles. They say that one out of every four animals is a beetle! An animal which, by the way, appears very often in Egyptian art. The ‘scarab’ is a type of beetle known for rolling excrements into balls and eating them, and for laying eggs in excrements and dead animals. These habits mirrored the way the god Ra rolled the sun across the sky, and the way life could come after death. Turquoise scarab amulets were worn to protect people in the afterlife. Which reminds me that I have one of these amulets but never wear it…
Dear Juan Carlos,
They say that the next creatures to dominate the world will be the cockroaches. They supposedly survive after nuclear tests. Can you imagine a world full of these insects?
Paola