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An icon for our literate times
Review The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt by John Ray, Profile Books/Harvard University Press, £15.99/$19.95, ISBN 1861973349/0674024931
AN ICON FOR OUR LITERATE TIMES
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WHAT do a computer program for learning languages, a space mission in search of the building blocks of the solar system, a technique for deciphering the human genome and a Japanese glam rock group all have in common? The answer: the Rosetta Stone. That broken chunk of dark grey granite-like stone is used by scientists and rockers alike to invoke the idea of cracking a mysterious code and uncovering deep secrets. Weighing threequarters of a tonne and dated 27 March 196 BC, the Rosetta Stone is the most famous object in the British Museum in London. For years a plain postcard bearing its image has outsold every other postcard in the museum’s shop. A replica sits in the King’s Library in the museum, where visitors can run their fingers over its hieroglyphic symbols. The stone has become “the modern version of a religious relic”, writes University of Cambridge Egyptologist John Ray in this latest addition to Profile’s enterprising “Wonders of the World” series, The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt. The stone is an icon because it provided the key to decoding ancient Egyptian writing, allowing the pharaohs to speak to the modern world. It also stands for great intellectual
The Rosetta Stone’s hieroglyphics were translated nearly two centuries ago, yet this chunk of granite has lost none of its mystique. Andrew Robinson looks for the reasons why
“The stone has the status of a modern religious relic”
46 | NewScientist | 3 February 2007
ALISDAIR MACDONALD/REX FEATURES
“It has come to symbolise the lasting power of writing” achievement: the genius of Thomas Young, the English physicist and polymath who was the first to try and decipher it, and that of his rival, the French scholar Jean-François Champollion, who cracked the hieroglyphs in 1822 and founded Egyptology as a science. The stone also stands for national rivalry: between Napoleon’s army, which discovered it in Egypt in 1799, and the British army, which took it to the UK. Though few people know what it actually says, the Rosetta
stone’s hero, teenage pharaoh Ptolemy V, and the issue of whether the stone should one day be returned to Egypt. Ray believes not; he favours keeping it at the British Museum. His reasonable view, given the existence of similar, less broken stones in Egypt, is that “the real impact of the Rosetta Stone has been not on the ancient world, where it originated, but on the modern world, to which it migrated.” The book is less original, though no less readable, in its description of the deciphering of the stone. Ray is acutely aware of the controversy over who deserves credit for translating the stone’s writings, which has raged since the 1820s. Was it Young or was it Champollion? Ray is
Stone has come to symbolise the enduring power of writing. Ray writes knowledgeably about all these aspects of the stone, drawing on four decades of engagement with ancient Egypt – a career partly inspired by a schoolboy encounter with the stone in the 1950s. There are
The Rosetta Stone has been in London since 1802. Should it go back to Egypt?
already some good books on the subject, including those by Richard Parkinson, curator at the British Museum, but Ray sheds new light on topics such as the fragile political position of the
sympathetic to both, and even nominates Young for the fourth plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square, but as an Egyptologist his loyalty understandably lies with Champollion. He cannot altogether acquit Champollion of borrowing Young’s ideas without acknowledgement, as Young claimed, but he stops short of accusing him openly. “Compared with the paranoid feuds of Isaac Newton, Young was a model of diplomacy,” Ray writes. As Young’s latest biographer, maybe I am a bit biased, but I think the evidence strongly suggests that Young’s pioneering Encyclopaedia Britannica article on Egypt forced Champollion to change his system for deciphering the Egyptian script, something he never admitted. While Champollion deserves to be known as the decipherer of the hieroglyphs, his immortality will always be tainted by his hubris towards his more brilliant but modest rival. ● Andrew Robinson is the author of The Last Man Who Knew Everything: Thomas Young (Oneworld Publications, 2006) www.newscientist.com
AN ICON FOR OUR LITERATE TIMES
■
WHAT do a computer program for learning languages, a space mission in search of the building blocks of the solar system, a technique for deciphering the human genome and a Japanese glam rock group all have in common? The answer: the Rosetta Stone. That broken chunk of dark grey granite-like stone is used by scientists and rockers alike to invoke the idea of cracking a mysterious code and uncovering deep secrets. Weighing threequarters of a tonne and dated 27 March 196 BC, the Rosetta Stone is the most famous object in the British Museum in London. For years a plain postcard bearing its image has outsold every other postcard in the museum’s shop. A replica sits in the King’s Library in the museum, where visitors can run their fingers over its hieroglyphic symbols. The stone has become “the modern version of a religious relic”, writes University of Cambridge Egyptologist John Ray in this latest addition to Profile’s enterprising “Wonders of the World” series, The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt. The stone is an icon because it provided the key to decoding ancient Egyptian writing, allowing the pharaohs to speak to the modern world. It also stands for great intellectual
The Rosetta Stone’s hieroglyphics were translated nearly two centuries ago, yet this chunk of granite has lost none of its mystique. Andrew Robinson looks for the reasons why
“The stone has the status of a modern religious relic”
46 | NewScientist | 3 February 2007
ALISDAIR MACDONALD/REX FEATURES
“It has come to symbolise the lasting power of writing” achievement: the genius of Thomas Young, the English physicist and polymath who was the first to try and decipher it, and that of his rival, the French scholar Jean-François Champollion, who cracked the hieroglyphs in 1822 and founded Egyptology as a science. The stone also stands for national rivalry: between Napoleon’s army, which discovered it in Egypt in 1799, and the British army, which took it to the UK. Though few people know what it actually says, the Rosetta
stone’s hero, teenage pharaoh Ptolemy V, and the issue of whether the stone should one day be returned to Egypt. Ray believes not; he favours keeping it at the British Museum. His reasonable view, given the existence of similar, less broken stones in Egypt, is that “the real impact of the Rosetta Stone has been not on the ancient world, where it originated, but on the modern world, to which it migrated.” The book is less original, though no less readable, in its description of the deciphering of the stone. Ray is acutely aware of the controversy over who deserves credit for translating the stone’s writings, which has raged since the 1820s. Was it Young or was it Champollion? Ray is
Stone has come to symbolise the enduring power of writing. Ray writes knowledgeably about all these aspects of the stone, drawing on four decades of engagement with ancient Egypt – a career partly inspired by a schoolboy encounter with the stone in the 1950s. There are
The Rosetta Stone has been in London since 1802. Should it go back to Egypt?
already some good books on the subject, including those by Richard Parkinson, curator at the British Museum, but Ray sheds new light on topics such as the fragile political position of the
sympathetic to both, and even nominates Young for the fourth plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square, but as an Egyptologist his loyalty understandably lies with Champollion. He cannot altogether acquit Champollion of borrowing Young’s ideas without acknowledgement, as Young claimed, but he stops short of accusing him openly. “Compared with the paranoid feuds of Isaac Newton, Young was a model of diplomacy,” Ray writes. As Young’s latest biographer, maybe I am a bit biased, but I think the evidence strongly suggests that Young’s pioneering Encyclopaedia Britannica article on Egypt forced Champollion to change his system for deciphering the Egyptian script, something he never admitted. While Champollion deserves to be known as the decipherer of the hieroglyphs, his immortality will always be tainted by his hubris towards his more brilliant but modest rival. ● Andrew Robinson is the author of The Last Man Who Knew Everything: Thomas Young (Oneworld Publications, 2006) www.newscientist.com