The beginning of Egyptology, the knowledge of the ancient Egyptian language, and the beginning of recognising the great civilization, the Rosetta Stone.
In 1799 AD, during the French campaign on Egypt led by Napoleon Bonaparte, an officer of Napoleon’s army ordered to dig a trench around a castle near the city of Rashid. I know that it is an antique. The commander informed and sent the stone to Cairo and ordered Napoleon to prepare paper copies of it to be in the hands of Egyptian civilization and scholars.
The stone remained in Egypt for 3 years after its discovery and the loss of the French army to the British army, and according to an agreement between them stipulating the British army to hand over the prisoners of the French army in return for the French ceding what belongs to them inside Egypt, including the Rosetta Stone and it was sent to Britain in 1802 AD.
The main reason for knowing the Egyptian language is if the same words were written in three lines, and it helped in translation since the Greek language was known to scholars, but we will know how the translation was done exactly.
In 1802, a group of scholars and the Air tried to match the Greek text with the Egyptian, and some letters and their equivalents in the Greek language were identified.
After a while, in 1814, the English naturalist (Thomas Young) came to know 86 phonemic groups, and unfortunately, most of them are incorrect. Still, he came to know the royal cartouches and learned the name of Ptolemy and the name of Thutmose from other inscriptions and almost reached the knowledge of the Egyptian language. Still, he did not continue his research In language because it was just a temporary hobby.
– The most important name associated with the Rosetta Stone and the Egyptian language is “Francois Champollion”, and it is he who laid the correct foundations for the ancient Egyptian language after a 10-year study by comparing the Greek and Egyptian letters on the Rosetta Stone and the inscriptions on other Egyptian antiquities
On the stone, there is writing in three lines.
There are 14 lines in hieroglyphics in the upper part, a line used in writing religious texts about the Egyptians.
In the middle part, there are 32 lines in demotic, which is the dominant line in the public life of the Egyptians.
Finally, 54 lines are in Greek, the language of the Ptolemies
Why is it written on the stone in Greek? The reason is that the stone was written in the Ptolemaic era in Egypt, specifically in the reign of Ptolemy V 196 BC by the hands of Egyptian priests in honour of the king.