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The Rosetta Stone carries the same decree three times: in hieroglyphs, in Demotic, an everyday Egyptian script, and in ancient Greek. Scholars could still read Greek, so they could compare it with the Egyptian versions line by line. In 1822 the French scholar Jean-François Champollion used it to crack the hieroglyphic script.

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Hieroglyphs had been unreadable for more than 1,400 years: the last known inscription was carved in AD 394, and later scholars wrongly assumed that every sign stood for an idea. The breakthrough came through names. Royal names are written inside oval frames called cartouches, and from 1814 the English scientist Thomas Young matched the cartouche on the stone with the Greek name Ptolemy and worked out some of its sounds. Champollion knew Coptic, the last stage of the Egyptian language, still used in the Coptic Church. In September 1822, in a letter to the secretary of the French Academy of Inscriptions, he announced that many hieroglyphs stood for sounds, and by 1824 he had shown that the script combines signs for sounds with signs for meanings. Over the following decades, texts from more than 3,000 years of Egyptian history became readable again.

Türkçe oku
Rosetta Taşı'nda aynı kararname üç kez yazılıdır: hiyerogliflerle, gündelik Mısır yazısı Demotikle ve Eski Yunanca. Yunancayı okuyabilen bilginler, bu metni Mısırca yazılarla satır satır karşılaştırabildi. Fransız bilgin Jean-François Champollion da 1822'de bu taştan yola çıkarak hiyeroglifleri çözdü.

Hiyeroglifler 1.400 yılı aşkın bir süre okunamamıştı: Bilinen son hiyeroglif yazıt MS 394'te kazındı ve sonraki bilginler her işaretin bir fikri simgelediğini sanarak yanlış yola saptı. Çözüm, adlar sayesinde geldi. Kral adları, kartuş denen oval çerçevelerin içine yazılır. İngiliz bilim insanı Thomas Young 1814'ten itibaren taştaki kartuşu Yunanca metindeki Ptolemaios adıyla eşleştirdi ve bazı işaretlerin seslerini buldu. Champollion ise Mısır dilinin son evresi olan ve Kıpti Kilisesi'nde hâlâ kullanılan Kıpticeyi biliyordu. Eylül 1822'de Fransız Yazıtlar Akademisi'nin sekreterine yazdığı mektupta, hiyerogliflerin birçoğunun ses gösterdiğini duyurdu. 1824'e gelindiğinde de bu yazının sesleri gösteren işaretlerle anlamları gösteren işaretleri bir arada kullandığını ortaya koymuştu. Sonraki on yıllarda Mısır tarihinin 3.000 yılı aşkın dönemine ait metinler yeniden okunabilir hâle geldi.

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Background reading: Rosetta Stone
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