The discovery and translation of this text are very important because it helps to interpret many other early written sources of ancient Egyptian civilization.īut what does the text on the Rosetta stone actually depict? Unfortunately, the stone that we have today is only a small portion of the actual stone plate and a lot of the text is missing.
As the text in the vernacular and the Greek language coincided, the significance of the Egyptian characters became clear. This was because, at that time, these were the three scripts that Egyptians used.īoth the demotic script and the ancient Greek language were well known to 19th-century Egyptologists who worked on deciphering the stone. The same text is engraved on the stone in two languages but in three ancient scripts - Egyptian hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek. The Rosetta stone is a fragment of a large black basalt stone engraving found near the city of Rosetta in the Nile Delta. Scientists and archeologists had little success in the interpretation of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs until the Rosetta stone was discovered in 1799 by accident by soldiers in Napoleon’s army. The Rosetta Stone Rosetta stone, full-frontal image Today, these two scripts have long been forgotten and the official language in Egypt is Arabic. Later on, they added six more that represented specific Egyptian sounds. They continued to be used in Egypt until about 400 CE, after which they were replaced by Coptic, another form of written language.Īt first, there were 24 letters that were borrowed from the Greek writing system. Hieroglyphics were mainly used for religious as well as solemn purposes. The ancient Egyptian writing system consisted of about 700 characters. This explains why most people think that Egyptians used vowels in their script. This lead to the creation of a reading protocol that was used artificially to interpret the words. Nevertheless, they did not include any in their writing system which made it extremely difficult for archeologists and historians to pronounce the hieroglyphs.
Undoubtedly, they used vowels in spoken language for pronunciation. The Ancient Egyptian script consisted of only consonants which is the case with all ancient scripts from the Pre-Dynastic and Early Dynastic periods of Egypt. Definitive signs were used to aid the two other groups and make them clearer.Ī beautiful inscription of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs Logograms were used to depict morphemes while phonograms were used to depict sounds.
There were three main groups of signs that include logograms, phonograms, and definitive signs. Please check your inbox to activate your subscription Thank you!Īlthough the ancient Egyptian script does looks complicated, it is actually quite clear and simple.