The Legacy of Deciphering Hieroglyphs

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He's a professor of Ancient history and an expert on early Rome. Ketather We'll follow the myth from Divine origins to blood soaked Fing legend teeasing apart what the Romans believe archaeology can actually tell us and How a city built on stories became one of the greatest powers in history. Tickets are on sale now. We're coming to Canberra on the second of August And we're going to be in Auckland on the eighth The tickets they are selling far, so book yours now at fame. com. au. Can't wait to see you there Hello and welcome to The Ancients. We have an episode from our archive of today, one that was released originally almost four years ago We're talking about one of the most famous objects artifacts ever discovered, one that was crucial in the race to decipher The ancient Egyptian scripts that is hieroglos This is the story of the Rosetta Stone. Now four years ago markarched two hundred years since the deciphering of hieroglyphs. And so the British Museum exhibition all about this seismic event, the unlocking ancient Egypt to the world So I headed over to the British Museum to interview their curator of the exhibition. Dr. Elona Rgolsky all about the Rosetta Stone and its story. What this object is How it was discovered, what is actually set on it and why it plays such an important role in the race to decipher hieroglyphs two hundred years ago hope you enjoyed epis Let's go Lona It's wonderful to have you on the podcast today Thank you. And it's really lovely to be here at the British Museum to chat to you on the eve of this incredible new exhibition coming out on hieroglyphs. And it seems to be at the heart of this new exhibition, the Rosetta Stone, this feels like one of the most famous objects in the entire world Yeah, it's definitely one of the most popular objects in the British Museum and yeah, we're very excited to be able to redisplay it in the exhibition and to tell stories about it that perhaps visitors are not so familiar with. So it gives us an opportunity really to contextualize the stone, text on the stone, its journey to the Brit Museum. and so it's really an opportunity to elaborate on all those stories And we're going to delve into all of that. It's also important to highlight straight away we were chatting just before we started recording of these other objects. The Rosetta Stone might be the most well known object in this new exhibition, but there are so many other objects too aren't there. Yes, and especially for those scholars who were working on hieroglyphs and trying to decipher hieroglyphs They also used a lot of other objects in addition to the Rosetta stone and we were displaying a few of those. The interesting part of that is also that these were objects that were circulating in Europe, but also a lot of drawings, a lot of descriptions, because we also want to show that the available material was still limited, so we didn't really have big collections like the British Museum or the Louvre or the museum in Turin. All these big collections didn't exist as they exist today. so the evidence or the material that they had available was much Yeah, much less and was limited in fact And so Before we go into that whole story, the journey and the deciphering story of the Rosetta Stone, I think Background first of all Most of us, if not everyone's heard the name Rosetta Stone, but what exactly is the Rosetta Stone? Yeah, it's a steeler in fact, so a commemorative stone, if you want, that contains a text, a decree. It's a priestly decree that was issued on the twenty seventh of march one hundred ninety six BC. You can know the exact date. Conveniently for us. And so that decree was issued probably on a piece of papyrus and then sent around the country And as the text tells us, it had to be inscribed on heartstone. And in the three languages, the text actually tells us this and then set up in all the important temples of Egypt So if that happens, we don't really know we can't be sure that every temple had a copy of the Rzet Stone, but we do have twenty eight copies in total. So that decree was copied many times and one of them came to Europe and led to the decipherment Well let's delve into all of that now quickly. So you mentioned the date. So the early second century BC So what's the context of ancient Egypt at this time? What is this period Yeah, so Egypt at the time was ruled by the Ptolemes, the Ptolemyic dynasty, as we say. They're basically successors of Alexander the Great. who conquered Egypt in three hundred and thirty two BC And after some family members establishes the dynasty of Ptolemes And so the Rosetta stone dates to the reign of Ptolemy the fif, but we have an earlier version of the text from the reign of Ptolemy III Yeah, and at the time Egypt was very multicultural, It was really a melting pot of cultures and it was a trading hub in Northeast Africa. And the main language that was used in the administration more and more was Greek during the Ptolemaic times, even though people were still speaking Egyptian at home it was very Bilingual as a society, this is important because that's why of course the text was translated in these other languages So it was very international in a way And so from what you're highlighting there, so Greek, the language of the administration Egyptian elsewhere, but was the Egyptian hieroglyphic language? Was it important in religious circles, You mentioned temples earlier. So does that Egyptian language still retain its importance in the religious sphere at that time then In the temples definitely, but also in people's homes, it takes some time for a language to be replaced by another language. even we have the same process later when Egypt becomes part of the Arab world and starts to speak Arabic, it takes time for people to use those languages at home a few generations in fact. So definitely in the second century, BC Egyptian was still very much part of the daily life in spoken language but also in written culture So at the time we had Domotic, and Demotic was very much living next to Greek, and people were very fluent in moving between those two languages give my ignorance, what is demotic? Sorry ye, that's the Egyptian language. So Egyptian language and the script actually we refer to as deomotic. It's A cursive, handswritten version of hieroglyphs which is a later development of hieratics. So from the very beginning, you had hieroglyphs and a handwritten script very much like our typewriting font and a handwritten letter. So you had those two scripts Living next to each other were used for very specific purposes and that develops into a very cursive writing that is called the Motic by the Greeks when they come into Egypt. and you may recognize the word Demos in the Motic, so it's the language and the script of the people I'd like to focus a bit on the material of the Rosetta stone itself, the stone What do we know about its material? Be it's quite striking when you see it today. Do we think it originates from somewhere like Rosetta or What's the backstory do we think to this particular stone? Yeahes, so it's made of granodiorite, which is a very hard stone and we don't exactly know where it comes from It was probably quarried somewhere in the north of Egypt and then set up in one of the temples in the Delta, probably. We don't know the exact fine spot. Places like Sayis in the Delta have been mentioned in the past. There have also been suggestions that maybe it comes from Heliopolis, which was a very important place to worship the sun go in ancient Egypt We really don't know. We don't even know when it was transported to Bachite orte roosetta, as it was called by the French and Italians Probably during the Mamluk era because it was very common, especially in the Mamluk era that to reuse stones ancient Egyptian spoolia as we call it, in new buildings. So actually the very early history of the Rosetta stone is not very well known, even though we have all this information historically on the stone because of the text, we don't actually know where it was set up And well let's then focus on that text a bit more. You've kind of highlighted at this already, but I want to go back to it just quickly So official documents, three different languages But what exactly is it talking about? Yeah, so it's a priestly decree in which basically the king is given divine honors. It has a long list of these honors. For example, his statue has to be put up in the temple next to the statue of the Godd The statue has to be carried around in processions next to the statue of the God. The priests have to honor the statue of the king and so on. So it's really putting the king on the level of the gods actually. Why does he deserve all these honors? Because he did a lot of good deeds for the country, obviously. He protected the country from invaders and rebels, he restored temples, he founded new ones, he lowered taxes very popular. He guaranteed allowances for the animal cult and so on. And because of all this, he should really be treated like a god The important thing about the content of this text is that this is not very Egyptian So this is a kind of way of honouring a leader that was very popular or common from the fifth century onwards in the Hellenistic world in Greece, but wouldn't have been common in pharonic in earlier Pharonic times when The Pharaoh was really an intermediary between the divine and the human world So he would not have to be considered a god by his subjects. He would already be very close to the gods. So we can be pretty sure that the text or the type of text was also imported to Egypt from Greece Right, that's so interesting because once again the context of the Hellenistic world, this time that I found absolutely fascinating The emergence of these divine ruler cults But it's so interesting is we have a place like ancient Egypt where the phharaoh was always seen as a god in their own right and thetolemyies having to almost impose their own version of it on the people, on the priests And a great example to see that. We think of the Rosetta stone with the deciphering of Hierrolys, which we'll get to But it's also fascinating in I'm presuming in that development of divine ruler cult in Ptolemaic, Egypt too. Yes, it's a question why they felt they had to do that. It was probably just a practice that they were familiar with in their region and they just brought it to Egypt and this is yeah, a very good example of this assimilation between different cultures that is always happening when a foreign power comes into a new country and the Ptolemaic kings were very keen to be depicted as pharaohs and to continue that tradition of that powerful ruler. They just gave it a little bit of a local feel A bit of a local feel. and Rosetta. Let's focus on Rosetta. I know that you went to modern Rashid Rosetta, not too long ago. Whereabouts are we talking with Rosetta in Egypt today. So as a place, it's located on the north coast of Egypt, a bit east of Alexandria didn't exist in Pharonic times. It was founded actually much later during the Greco Roman period. even its foundation is not very clear. Its exact moment of foundation, I mean. It was called Rosettte by the French when they were there. And so when the stone was found, they called it the Pierre Rossette. so it became a Rsette stone in English It's present day Rashid. It's a very vibrant city with a diverse heritage And we also like to show that in the exhibition. It's not just the place where the Rosetta Stone comes from, it's also a city in its own right where people are living, communicating and have ideas about their heritage and have ideas about what they would like the world to know about their city. So much more to the story as you revealed in your exhibition. Well, you mentioned the French there, so let's therefore go on in time to the early nineteenth century, or is it the late eighteenth century talkal to me about The discovery or the rediscovery of the roosetta stone. Yes, so Napoleon invaded Egypt in seventeen ninety eight. The story is very well known, of course. And during the works of the fortifications along the north coast of Egypt at Rashid, they discovered the roosetta stone in the foundations of the building, so it was reused as a building block because it's a strong compact stone, so it was probably useful And it was immediately realized that the stone could be important for the decipherment. In fact, it was immediately in the newspapers in Egypt that potentially they had discovered a key to decipherment, which is quite amazing if you think about kind of context were in a political ye context that the soldiers restoring the fort and they immediately realized how important this could potentially be for our understanding of human history, which is like yeah quite an amazing idea that so soon it was an important object and because of the theree scripts and Greek that was known at the time. so they immediately realized that perhaps the Greek text could help us to understand the two Egyptian languages. Because Demotic that hadn't also been translated at that time. It's not just the hieroglyph, is it I mean focusing a bit more on that. So it seems as if before this stone is discovered Is there already attempts by people across the known world to try and decipher this hieroglyphic, this Egyptian ancient script Yes, there have been attempts, of course since Greco Roman times, very soon after Hieroglyphs fell out of use. It's a script that is very pictorial, it's beautiful, it's intriguing. so of course you will immediately have scholars. And anyone, in fact, who looks at this, to have ideas about it, to try to understand what these picture like signs may say And so in the exhibition, we start in the medieval period in Egypt itself where objects were sitting on the banks of the Nile. and just common people passing by every day had ideas about these objects and attributed manyain magical powers to it. because they thought that these hieroglyphs contained some secret knowledge about the nature of everything. And legends started to develop around certain objects And then of course, in the Arab medieval period, you have a lot of scholars also who travel to Egypt and who are amazed by the temples and the tombs they visit. and they also start writing about hieroglyphs Was that a key part of the exhibition you were keen to highlight? becausecause so often we think of Champoni, young, maybe William Banks as well, but the story of the actual attempts to decipherieroglyphs. it actually starts much, much earlier than the actual finding of the Rosetta stone. Yes, and that was important to show also because scholars like Thomas Youg and Jeques Frcois Champooyon they build on the work of previous scholars and of previous statements that have been made and steps in the right direction These scholars didn't have the Rosetta stone. they didn't have bilingual texts So it's really important to have one language or script that is known to give you access to the unknown language But yeah, these publications and these works were very important. We also have to realize that it's again, a matter of distribution. We didn't have the internet at the time. So it was also a matter of how later scholars could have access to these earlier publications They were mostly written in Arabic, of course. So somebody like Champ Pooyot is fluent in Arabic, so thereby has access to these sources of medieval Arab trallers But so it required later scholars in Europe during the Renaissance and later to learn Arabic in order to have access to all these other earlier scholars And I guess it' also important to highlight as we get into the importance of cooperation at that time, isn't it? It's the sending back and forwards of descriptions of reliefs of drawings and so on and so forth, so that library keeps growing and growing and growing, which by the time of the early nineteenth century, I'm guessing, even with the Napoleonic war raging that library is starting to grow, the amount of information is starting to grow alongside the restist. Yes, so I mean moving from the Arab medieval period, it takes some time for these manuscripts to arrive in Europe. That really only happens in the fifteent, sixteenth century when slowly European scholars start to have access to this. And this increases as more travelers go to Egypt in the seventeenth century, eighteenth century, and it's really a matter of distributing drawings, descriptions, notes and schcholars being in contact with each other A slight tangent on the hieroglyph's hieroglyphic system itself So you mentioned all of these symbols, all of these images Would you mind just kind of explaining how the hieroglyph system, how it works? Yes. So the trick is was and still is to understand that it's not an alphabetic script. So this was for the scholars of the early eighteenth and nineteenth century. Even though they had to Rosettea stone, they were mostly familiar with Arabic scripts, even scholars that were experts in oriental languages. those oriental languages were usually alphabetic So the idea that you have a writing system that is Partly alphabetic, it has a few alphabetic signs, but it has all these other signs and it has signs that you should read and you should not read. This was really difficult to discover. So basically, we prefer to speak about one letter signs rather than alphabetic signs because you also have three letter signs and two and three letter signs. You have signs that are entire words. And you have signs that you should not read, but they indicate the meaning of something. We call them classifiers or determinatives So for example, the words for book or the verb to write or the person who writes, they all have the same roots. and there is the classifier that will tell you whether you should read it as book or scribe or writing So it's a hybrid system. It's a mix of many different kinds of scis. At the peak of classical literature, we have about six hundred and fifty signs It's a massive alphabet, Well not alphabet feels like the word that should not be spoken. It's massive. amount of different symbols in this ancient language which the ancient Egyptians knew. Yes. And so if we continue from there, in regards to another word that I think we'll be talking about quite a bit as we go to the Dciphering story, Cartouche What is this and how does this also fit into the h? Yeahes, so the cartouch is basically an oval. It's an elongated shen ring. so it's a ring that is an eternal ring. It's shen also the word means it's a circular movement that continues. It's the idea of the continuation of something It's usually around it's a circle that is elongated in order to put the name of the king in there. So this is not just to contain the name of the king, but there's a huge symbolism behind this. So the king's name is eternal is forever and so on And this was a key thing for scholars to discover that this oval contained the name of the king And within that, especially in the Ptolemaic period, because they'rereek basically Greek Macedonian kings, they have foreign names. foreign names were always spelled phonetically So in a way alphabetically. So that means that one sign is one sound. So in those cartuousous, you have this alphabetic spelling in the Ptolemaic period which led to the first breakthrough of being able to read phonetically the name of the King. And then Champpeillll's discovery is that this actually also happened before during the Pharonic period where you can have again, this mix of signs in a cartouch Allright, well let's delve into this decipering story and how the Rosetta stone fits into that whole narrative than now alona. So We've got to the French rediscovering the Rosetta stone when they are in Egypt in the late eighteenth, early, nineteenth centuries So how does the Rosetta Stone therefore end up in London at the British Museum Well, it this is a bit the result of political history. So at a certain point, the French army has to surrender to the combined forces, which is basically the British and the Egyptian army. Egypt, of course, at the time, under Ottoman rule, had been for some time And the terms of surrender included stipulations about the objects that the French had collected during their time in Egypt And it was decided. that twenty two objects would be given to the British by the French. And this was drawn up in Article sixteen in the capitulation documents, so the capitulation of Alexandria in eighteen oh one And this is a document that we also show in the exhibition. It's kept in the National Archives, and it was signed by the representatives of the three governments of the French, the British, and the Egyptian government. This is how the Risetstone was part of these twenty two objects and they were then transported to the UK ye to England. First they arrived in Portsmouth in eighteen oh two. Then they went to the Society of Antiquarius for a very short moment, a few months only before they came to the British Museum. And the British Museum was a small place at the time was only basically consisted of the Montagu house, which was too small to host all these objects and So the arrival of these objects also encouraged the museum to expand and to build extra galleries and to then replace the Montague House with the building that you see nowadays Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the poisonous' cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and Shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. There are new episodes every week And it's interesting because we always think of the Resist stone as that object that comes to the British Museum. But as you mentioned there, that's just one of twenty two objects. There are other objects which also come Yes. British Museum. what objects were they I'm not going to test you on every single one.. No worries. Well, they were also yeah, objects that were discovered. Basically, as I mentioned, they were collected by the French. A lot of them were heavy objects, very heavy objects because they were also meant to keep the boats still at sea So we have two, for example, we have two huge sarcophagi, stone sarcophagi, and one of them is in the exhibition. Both of them are really interesting in terms of the history of early engagement with Hieraclys, because the one that is in the exhibition It was considered to be the Echanted basent or Enchanted basin. So the Enchanted basasin because if you touch the water within it, you could be cured of lo sickness. This was a legend that developed around this particular sarcophagus. The other one that is not in the exhibition was long believed to be the tomb of Alexander. Yes. I love this story. Car, let's talk about this. come on Yes So I decided to use the other one in the exhibition because I thought the stories that developed around the other one is less well known. The fact that the other one was considered the tomb of Alexandria is better known, so I focus on the other one. Let's not ruin the surprise of what it actually is once hieroglyphs are deciphered. We'll get to that wly in a bit, but it's an amazing story. and' that alongside the Rosetta Stone, and it's so fascinating. you' got so many these other objects as well which I'm guessing at this time when they do come to the British Museum And there's still a lot of mystery around what these hieroglyphs mean Is there a lot of excitement in Britain when they come to the British Museum and they see all these objects there? Yes, it's spectacular to suddenly have so many large objects arriving at the museum and in England ye. as everywhere in Europe and in the rest of the world, there weren't that many big objects. so very few people actually had the opportunity to see monumental hieroglyphs and objects of that size in collections in Europe in general. So it was a very exciting moment, absolutely. Of course it takes some time for the museum to reorganize, to build and to expand before it becomes one of the first public institutions. Right, so how long is it before people, academics, scholars start looking into the Rosetta stone and seeing how it can help with deciphering of the ancient Egyptians That already starts very soon as after discovering the stone. and while the stone was still in Egypt, the French and then also immediately afterwards the British make many copies of the text. So the French make a few casts, even when the Rosetta Stone is then handed over to the British, they still allow the French to make more copies. So there was a lot of on the scholarly level, there was a lot of collaboration. Then more copies were made of the Rosetta Stone. We actually have correspondence between scholars who were still back here in England and were writing to friends and colleagues in Egypt and said, canan you make another copy of the stone before you put it on the boat just in case something happens that we have a copy of the stone? They were all very, very keen to have the text available in some kind of copy, whether it was a cast or yeah a print because they used the Rosetta Stone as a printing block So they would put ink on the block and then roll it as a print because the script is so small, it's really difficult to copy in a traditional way, especially if you don't know what you're copying. So it's better to use it as a printing block. and these copies were distributed all over Europe and within two or three years after the discovery, every country had a copy of the Rosetta stone. Who are some of the key figures from this period then who have got copies of the Rosetta stone and then start gettingting to work, seeing how that can help in the deciphering of Hodics. Yeah, so a very important group of scholars are the French scholars who had joined Napoleon's army. So as we know, Napoleon took a large group of scholars with him. who in addition to his political adventure We were supposed to document the country, ancient Egypt, the monuments, modern Egypt, the customs, the nature and so on. And they went back home with their copies and also with copies of the Rosetta Stone. and they were quite instrumental in distributing these copies in France. Again, we have a lot of correspondence between some of those scholars and Champoyon who tries to get a copy of the Rosetta Stone and he complains that his copy is not good enough He wants a new copy and then at a certain point, He writes to the Royal Society here in England, asking for a new cast of the stone and so on and so forth. So there was a lot of talk about getting good copies of the Rosetta stone R And one of these other figures who let's talk about now Thomas Young, Sir Thomas Young, who is this figure on the other side of the channel Yeahes, so he's a very different kind of person from very different from Champoyignon in character in approach He is what we call a polymath, was a physician, a mathematician, a scientist. He had contributed immensely to the theory of light. and then in his leisurely hours did a bit of Egyptology. Later in his life, was much yeah, he was older than Champooyot when he started working on Rosetta Stone, which also makes a difference, I guess. And for him, it was kind of like an experiment, a scientific experiment to decipher hieroglyphs, more like a mathematical game almost, where Champooyignot really saw the decipherment as a way to enter ancient Egypt and to understand the culture. Rur Champ Pillot was vventure in itself, an intellectual challenge Right, well this challenge if it keeps going. So what's the first significant breakthrough, I guess when looking at the Rosetta Stone with helping with this decciide froment put this decoding. Yeah. So in eighteen eighteen, eighteen nineteen, Thomas Young starts to publish his first discoveries, which worry, Champooyil back in France and he's like, o, I have to hurry and I have to make I have to work harder. because there is this English scholar. This is really the first time when they get like in proper contact with each other or hear from each other. And for Thomas Young, he works a lot on the Demotic, So the middle part of the Rosetta stone And he tries to read the royal names. again, it goes back to the royal names in the cartouus. the names of Ptolemy in the first place. He reads the name of Ptolemy correctly but his Analysis of the individual signs are slightly wrong because he reads them as syllables. But it's a very good step in the right direction. And so what Thomas Jng does is basically he looks at the Greek text. Thomas Jg was also very well trained and Greek and Latins are very classically trained and he looks at the position of words in the Greek text that occur many times like the title Basileos, the word for temple, and he tries to find in more or less the same place in the Demotic text, the same cluster of signs. And he manages to identify many words like this even though he can't perhaps read the individual signs, he is able to give a first translation of some of the sentences in the Rosetta Stone. And that's what he publishes First anonymously This is the problem in the later debate of who was the first And that is yes, something that again, encourages other scholars to continue working and to refine. that's interesting because sometimes you associate young with that Ptoley cartou and the hieroglys., but from what you're saying there Lona He also spends a lot of time and makeakes some significant progress in deciphering deemotic as well. And is that sometimes overlooked that part of the story compared with the hieroglyphs? I think so. There's scholars who even say that Thomas Jng is the decipher of deemotic. I don't think you can say that because it is really the same language. It's the same writing system. so it really goes together And there were a few key understandings that Thomas Youong at least didn't publish in this way in the correct way as reading the names correctly. This is refined by Jean Poy much later. But yeah, I think the role of Thomas Young is not very clear always in the story, but he does go very far in reading large parts of the Rosta stone. So we have this anonymous publication in the late eighteen tenens, nearly eighteen twenty. I guessing Champ Polyon he gets a copy of it in the Rosetta Stoneies Proving importance But is it also important to highlight that at this time, there are other objects. other people are working on things. which ultimately will contribute to this hieroglyphic discipamment going further. Yeah, so even Thomas Jng himself was looking at other objects, mainly mummy wrappings and mummy labels because those were kind of objects that were distributed in Europe since the fifteenth century. So they were available mummy wrappings because of the mummy unwrapping events that were going on at the time and people who attended a mummy wrapping event received a piece of the linen. preferably with some writing on it, and this was distributed across Europe and amongst scholars. Papyai were also very important. so Thomas Jg has a few friends who travel to Egypt and bring back papyai, which was allowed at the time And all these sources give him access to different kinds of texts And that was the same for scholars working in Europe. It was mostly those small objects, mummy labels, mummy wrappings, and papyaye that they were also looking at in addition to the Rosetta Stone and some of them are in the exhibition. In the exhibition and I'm guessing Ite feels like we probably should mention the name William Banks. Is he one of these figures, he also plays a key role in communicating with young Banis Champ Poignon as well from his ventures and what he brings back at that time is also important to mention that part of the story? Yeah. so Banks was actually yeah very important and Young is communicating with him Banks traveled through Egypt and discovers, for example, an obelisk in Phile that he later brings back and puts up in his garden, which will provide a missing link for both Thomas Youg and Champ Pooyon The very interesting is the correspondence between Thomas Young and Banks, and at a certain point Jng writes to the father of Banks because he doesn't know where Banks is exactly in Egypt and it was obviously difficult to send letters to someone who's traveveling in Egypt at the time. So we displayed this letter in the exhibition And it's very nice because Thomas Young not only writes the letter, but also at the end gives a few spellings of hieroglyphs that he would like Banks to check in the temples of Egypt, but he sends it to his father because he thinks maybe his father knows exactly where he is in the country and is also corresponding with him. So he said, would you mind passing on this letter? Banks receives this letter while he's in Egypt and he does go and look for specifically those names and those cartouches that Jon would like to know about And yeah, and he finds them and he reads them and he copies them and he brings back these copies to England and so on and so forth. Yeah, he's very instrumental to the story. As I mentioned, the obelisk that comes back the Kingst the Lac Obelisk is provides a missing ling because it gives the scholars the name of Cleopatra L the Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the poisonous cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and Shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. There are new episodes every week then Cleopatra so they now know the hieroglyphic cartouche for two key figures there with Ptolemy and Cleopatra. So how does this therefore ultimately result in the big Eureka breakthrough of Champagignon. Yes, so important is that Banks copies the text on the obelisk and identifies the cartouge of Cleopatra but doesn't analyzsee the cartou There is a bit of discussion whether Champooyon saw this copy or not. So we know for sure that the copies of this obelisk were sent to Paris because they were in contact with some scholars in Paris, both young and ganks. We don't know whether Champooyillion saw this particular annotated version of the copy But there's also at the same time, pieces in France circulating also with the name of Cleopatrra. The important thing about that cartouche is that it shares four letters with the cartouche of Ptolemy And this is what Jg kind of misses and what Champoure uses to refine Jg's readings So these four letters in Copatra mean that Jung's readings of those hieroglyphs as syllables cannot be correct They have to be alphabetic letters in order to be used so easily in other names And this is what Champignon will publish in his eighteen twenty two letter. And that's the famous letter with the ultimate decoding of the hog.es. I mean, so in regards to all of that, The isetta stone, this renowned object How significant is it in the whole deciphering of hieroglyphs? It seems to be important, but not the only object that ultimately contributes to that big breakthrough. Well, yeah, there were many other objects that were used, but I think the Rosetta Stone is more than providing a text. It's also it accelerates the process of decipherment. becausecause of the Rosetta Stone, that people are going to look for these other objects. and the fact that Thomas Young asks Banks to look for the cartouge of Ptolemy and Cleopatra on other monuments, because Cleopatra was known, even though they didn't have her name, off course she was a known king from classical sources Many of these kings were known from the Bible. So there was an awareness that these names must have been somewhere. but I think because of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, there is this need to find parallels. for these names that were first read in the text on the Rosetta Stone. So it's a very important object to set that whole process in motion if you want Kickstarterir isn't it? I mean, Elena Just before we completely wrap up, I'd love to ask also about the legacy of this decoding and I know that's something you you get across in the exhibition too. I mean because the reaction to this script being deciphered What is the reaction in the whole world in Britain and France and so on and so forth? Once this discipherent has been made, is it almost like the curtain has been revealed and there's lots Egyptomania and does that start really taking root Yeah, definitely there is a huge interest in Egypt already starting from Napoleon's expedition and the reports and the drawings and the travel accounts also that arrive in Egypt. But I think with the decipherment of hieroglyphs, it's another wave of excitement. but there were many different reactions to this. Champ reads his letter in eighteen twenty two There is not an immediate acceptance that all of this was correct. So there were also a lot of critics who said, well, you actually he's just building on what predecessors have done Is it correct? How important is this? So there was also some hesitation by many scholars who still found it difficult to acknowledge that there is an ancient culture like the Egyptian one who would precede ancient Greece and Rome in being our predecessors, in being the predecessor of this classical culture that had always been understood as the foundations of European culture Greece and Rome being part of Europe very much. So to understand that there's this ancient civilization that is older, much older, not just a little bit older that is in Africa also in a different place was really quite shocking and there was a lot of resistance to acknowledging that our human history goes back further in time to something that is perhaps not European. That took some time But then very soon afterwards also Champignu himself refined his own system. and then there's other scholars who also confirmed that he really laid the ground and the system works as he says it works. And there was a lot of discussion and it really spurred a lot of intellectual criticism discussion as research should be There should be a lot of debate It was not that everybody immediately accepted, o, this is now it and we have everything we need. There was a lot of debate going on still. Yeah. And presumably I'm guessing as the new spreads and the resistance decreases, It allows these academics and others from all across the world to start re examining objects that had already been discovered. For instance, those other objects that were taken to the British Museum at the same time as the stone Yes, absolutely. and it spreads across the world also and to other countries. So of course, Britain and France have a huge history in Egyptology, very soon, Germany joins this kind of early Egyptology and Egypt, of course, has always been there. And then other countries and nowadaysgy Egyptology is taught from South America to Japan. So yeah, it's a long process that is still going on. I think very soon after the decipherment, it was really about ye looking at objects again, finding more texts, also the awareness that texts have to be copied accurately in Egypt. There was also immediately the debate about taking objects out of context. Isn't it better to copy the inscriptions while they are in situ in the temples in the tombs rather than taking them out This is all something that comes out of this decipherent in my feeling. And again, British scholars played enormously important role in that early phase of doing epigraphy in Egypt and established a very important school of epigraphy within the field of Egyptology. So all these discussions multiply and yeah are not only about understanding the text, but also about the preservation of Egyptian heritage All of that comes out of this understanding of what the ancient Egyptian civilization really means to us And tomb of Alexander, not the tomb of Alexander. And it turned out, was it? For example, yeah. I was in Karnak not too long ago and walking through that incredible place And like hieroglyphics everywhere. and talking to someone who just knew what every hieroglyph was and what it meant. It just reinforces. I know the deciphering was from two hundred years ago but just how Fascinating how much that therefore that revealed starting with the Rosetta Stone and those people before the Rosetta Stone, those medieval Arab scholars and so forth as you say, even to this day It will continue to fascinate so many people across the world. able to have people point out what this symbol mean, what it represents. and what stories they can tell, the variety of stories it tells of Ancient Egyptian history which sp found thousands of years. Absolutely. And especially Karnak temple is one of those temples that was founded at a certain point and then added on to by kings successively through Egyptian history. And it has this very layered history of ancient Egypt in one place, if you want it's a huge place because of this long history Well alone it This has been absolutely amazing. Last but certainly not least, you have created with a great team this remarkable new exhibition at the British Museum talk to me