{"id":8839,"date":"2026-04-25T22:04:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T22:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/englishreally.org\/?p=8839"},"modified":"2026-04-25T22:32:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T22:32:07","slug":"the-key-to-ancient-egypt-the-rosetta-stone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/englishreally.org\/index.php\/2026\/04\/25\/the-key-to-ancient-egypt-the-rosetta-stone\/","title":{"rendered":"The Key to Ancient Egypt: The Rosetta Stone"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Se cumplen doscientos a\u00f1os del descubrimiento de la piedra de Rosetta, el fragmento de un monolito con inscripciones en tres lenguas diferentes que permiti\u00f3 descifrar el lenguaje de los jerogl\u00edficos y, gracias a ello, los secretos del antiguo Egipto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/englishreally.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/rosetta-top-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-8840\" srcset=\"https:\/\/englishreally.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/rosetta-top-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/englishreally.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/rosetta-top-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/englishreally.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/rosetta-top-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/englishreally.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/rosetta-top-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/englishreally.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/rosetta-top-2048x1152.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/englishreally.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/446-audio-05-the-rosetta-stone_2967607a_230418100634_0x0.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The time of the pharaohs has captured the imagination for centuries. Their temples and pyramids inspire&nbsp;<strong>wonder<\/strong>&nbsp;4,500&nbsp;<strong>years on<\/strong>. These incredible&nbsp;<strong>feats<\/strong>&nbsp;of architecture are marked with colourful hieroglyphics,&nbsp;<strong>recording<\/strong>&nbsp;the history of ancient Egypt. For a long time, however, they were&nbsp;<strong>merely<\/strong>&nbsp;decoration; no-one knew how to read them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2>A LOST MESSAGE<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Two centuries ago this year, they were finally deciphered, thanks to the Rosetta Stone. The basalt&nbsp;<strong>artifact<\/strong>&nbsp;is a broken piece of a larger&nbsp;<strong>slab<\/strong>, measuring 114cm by 72cm. On its surface, a message is&nbsp;<strong>carved<\/strong>&nbsp;in two languages and three&nbsp;<strong>scripts<\/strong>: demotic, hieroglyphics (both Egyptian) and ancient Greek. This combination provided the key&nbsp;<strong>to unlock<\/strong>&nbsp;the meaning of the symbols, so the writings of the ancient Egyptians could be understood&nbsp;<strong>at last<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2>THE STONE\u2019S JOURNEY<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The Rosetta Stone was found by French soldiers during Napoleon\u2019s invasion of Egypt in 1799. They were building a fort in the town of Rosetta \u2014 now Rashid \u2014 in the Nile Delta and discovered it&nbsp;<strong>buried<\/strong>&nbsp;in an old wall. Pierre-Fran\u00e7ois Bouchard, the&nbsp;<strong>officer<\/strong>&nbsp;in charge, realised the importance of the&nbsp;<strong>engravings<\/strong>. He correctly&nbsp;<strong>guessed<\/strong>&nbsp;that they were translations of the same text. The stone was sent to Cairo, where the inscriptions were copied at the Institute of Egypt. When Napoleon was&nbsp;<strong>defeated<\/strong>, the stone was sent to Britain. It was donated to the British Museum by King George III in 1802, where it still resides today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2>THREE LANGUAGES<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The Rosetta Stone had inscriptions in hieroglyphics, the language of the&nbsp;<strong>priests<\/strong>; demotic, the language of the people; and ancient Greek, the language of administration. Hieroglyphics were used until the 4th century&nbsp;<strong>AD<\/strong>&nbsp;but, by the 19th century, all knowledge of them had disappeared. However, ancient Greek was largely understood. An English&nbsp;<strong>physicist<\/strong>&nbsp;provided the first&nbsp;<strong>clue<\/strong>. Thomas Young discovered that the name \u2018Ptolemy\u2019 was present in all three inscriptions. He realised that hieroglyphics could describe sounds, as well as concepts. Some signs were symbols, others were alphabetic. French&nbsp;<strong>scholar<\/strong>&nbsp;Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Champollion used this key to unlock the language and he succeeded in deciphering hieroglyphics. He announced his discovery in a paper at the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres in Paris on 27 September 1822.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2>THE MEANING<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>So what does the writing on the Rosetta Stone mean? The inscription, once translated, is a little\u00a0<strong>anticlimactic<\/strong>. It is simply a\u00a0<strong>decree<\/strong>\u00a0<strong>passed<\/strong>\u00a0by a council of priests in support of thirteen-year-old Ptolemy V on the first anniversary of his coronation in 196\u00a0<strong>BC<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2>Glossary<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>wonder:\u00a0<\/strong>asombro<br><strong>years on:\u00a0<\/strong>a\u00f1os m\u00e1s tarde<br><strong>feats:\u00a0<\/strong>hitos<br><strong>to record:\u00a0<\/strong>documentar<br><strong>merely:\u00a0<\/strong>meramente<br><strong>artifact:\u00a0<\/strong>artefacto<br><strong>slab:\u00a0<\/strong>losa<br><strong>to carve:\u00a0<\/strong>esculpir<br><strong>scripts:\u00a0<\/strong>letras, alfabetos<br><strong>to unlock:\u00a0<\/strong>descifrar<br><strong>at last:\u00a0<\/strong>por fin<br><strong>to bury:\u00a0<\/strong>enterrar<br><strong>officer:\u00a0<\/strong>oficial<br><strong>engravings:\u00a0<\/strong>grabados<br><strong>to guess:\u00a0<\/strong>suponer, adivinar<br><strong>to defeat:\u00a0<\/strong>derrotar<br><strong>priests:\u00a0<\/strong>sacerdotes<br><strong>AD:\u00a0<\/strong>d.C. (anno Domini)<br><strong>physicist:\u00a0<\/strong>fisico<strong>clue:\u00a0<\/strong>clave<br><strong>scholar:\u00a0<\/strong>erudito<br><strong>anticlimactic:\u00a0<\/strong>decepcionante<br><strong>decree:\u00a0<\/strong>decreto<br><strong>to pass:\u00a0<\/strong>emitir, dictar<br><strong>BC:\u00a0<\/strong>a.C. (Before Christ)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Se cumplen doscientos a\u00f1os del descubrimiento de la piedra de Rosetta, el fragmento de un monolito con inscripciones en tres lenguas diferentes que permiti\u00f3 descifrar el lenguaje de los jerogl\u00edficos y, gracias a ello, los secretos del antiguo Egipto. The time of the pharaohs has captured the imagination for centuries. Their temples and pyramids inspire&nbsp;wonder&nbsp;4,500&nbsp;years &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/englishreally.org\/index.php\/2026\/04\/25\/the-key-to-ancient-egypt-the-rosetta-stone\/\">Seguir leyendo <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[199,198,192],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/englishreally.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8839"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/englishreally.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/englishreally.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/englishreally.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/englishreally.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8839"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/englishreally.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8845,"href":"https:\/\/englishreally.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8839\/revisions\/8845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/englishreally.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/englishreally.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/englishreally.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}