What did the Rosetta stone contain and why was it important???

Question

What did the Rosetta stone contain and why was it important???

Answer 1

The Rosetta Stone led to the modern understanding of hieroglyphs. It is a stone tablet made in Egypt around 200BC which is engraved with writing which celebrates the crowning of King Ptolemy V. The writing is repeated three times in different alphabets which allowed for translation of hieroglyphics based on the knowledge of the other two languages.

Hieroglyphic (top of stone)- used by ancient Egyptians
Demotic (centre of stone)- used by Arabs including modern Egyptians
Greek (base of stone)

This is the full text:
In the reign of the new king, who was Lord of the diadems, great in glory, the stabilizer of Egypt, and also pious in matters relating to the gods, Superior to his adversaries, rectifier of the life of men, Lord of the thirty-year periods like Hephaestus the Great, King like the Sun, the Great King of the Upper and Lower Lands, offspring of the Parent-loving Gods, whom Hephaestus has approved, to whom the Sun has given victory, living image of Zeus, Son of the Sun, Ptolemy the ever-living, beloved by Ptah;

In the ninth year, when Aëtus, son of Aëtus, was priest of Alexander and of the Savior Gods and the Brother Gods and the Benefactor Gods and the Parent-loving Gods and the God Manifest and Gracious; Pyrrha, the daughter of Philinius, being athlophorus for Bernice Euergetis; Areia, the daughter of Diogenes, being canephorus for Arsinoë Philadelphus; Irene, the daughter of Ptolemy, being priestess of Arsinoë Philopator: on the fourth of the month Xanicus, or according to the Egyptians the eighteenth of Mecheir.

THE DECREE: The high priests and prophets, and those who enter the inner shrine in order to robe the gods, and those who wear the hawks wing, and the sacred scribes, and all the other priests who have assembled at Memphis before the king, from the various temples throughout the country, for the feast of his receiving the kingdom, even that of Ptolemy the ever-living, beloved by Ptah, the God Manifest and Gracious, which he received from his Father, being assembled in the temple in Memphis this day, declared:

Since King Ptolemy, the ever-living, beloved by Ptah, the God Manifest and Gracious, the son of King Pyolemy and Queen Arsinoë, the Parent-loving Gods, has done many benefactions to the temples and to those who dwell in them and also to all those subjects to his rule, being from the beginning a god born of a god and a goddess - like Horus, the son of Isis and Osirus, who came to the help of his Father Osirus - being benevolently disposed toward the gods, has consentrated to the temples revenues both of silver and of grain, and has generously undergone many expenses in order to lead Egypt to prosperity and to establish the temples... the gods have rewarded him with health, victory, power, and all other good things, his sovereignty to continue to him and his children forever.

Answer 2

The Rosetta Stone is dark Gray-pinkish granite stone (originally thought to be basalt in composition) with writing on it in two languages, Egyptian and Greek, using three scripts. It was created in 196 BC, discovered by the French in 1799, and translated in 1822. Because Greek was well known, the stone was the key to deciphering the hieroglyphs.

The Rosetta Stone was written in three scripts so that the priests, government officials, and rulers of Egypt could read what it said. The first script was Hieroglyphic, which was the script used for important or religious documents. The second was Demotic Egyptian, which was the common script of Egypt. The third was Greek, which was the language of the rulers of Egypt at that time.

The Stone is 114.4 cm high at its tallest point, 72.3 cm wide, and 27.9 cm thick. (45.04 in. high, 28.5 in. wide, 10.9 in. thick)

The Rosetta Stone has been exhibited in the British Museum since 1802, with only one break. Toward the end of the First World War, in 1917, when the Museum was concerned about heavy bombing in London, they moved it to safety along with other portable, important objects. The Rosetta Stone spent the next two years in a station on the Postal Tube Railway fifty feet below the ground at Holborn.

Answer 3

The inscription on the Rosetta stone were adulations to an Egyptian Pharoah, Ptolemy V. One of the first names recognized on the stone in Greek was Cleopatra. Using this they found where Cleopatra was in the Heiroglyphics and realized that the picures were merely phonetic sounds or letters basically.The inscription on the Rosetta stone appears in three scripts, hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek, scholars were able to decipher the hieroglyphic and demotic versions by comparing them with the Greek version. The deciphering was chiefly the work of the British physicist Thomas Young and the French Egyptologist Jean François Champollion.

Answer 4

The Rosetta stone, discovered by one of Napoleons lieutenants, is important because in detailing a wedding ceremony, it contained Greek, modern Egyptian (at that time) as well as heiroglyphic Egyptian so it served as a key to decode heiroglyphics

Nice CUT-&-PASTE job, Matahari!! too bad you didn't know what languages it contained

Answer 5

Going by memory.

It was a message written in 3 languages, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Greek and Latin.

Since the scholars knew the later two languages they could then learn how to decode the ancient Egyptian language.

It was big.

Answer 6

It had a passage translated into Greek, Latin, and Egyptian. It was importent, because without it, scholars wouldn't know how to read hyroglyphics, and the vast majority of ancint Egyptian culture would be lost.

Answer 7

Three ancient languages of the same text enabled the translation of heiroglyphics. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_stone