The Rosetta Stone and the Restoration of the Lost Language of Egypt

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THE ROSETTA STONE AND THERESTORATION OF THE LOSTLANGUAGE OF EGYPT & THETRUTH ABOUT "THE CHRIST"

Egyptian hieroglyphics had been used by the Egyptians for thousands of years.However, a particularly bleak period of Egyptian history is the conquest of Egypt byPersia. The Egyptians were dominated by Persian intruders. In the Twenty-sixthDynasty there was a revival of independence and prosperity, which was followed bythe Persian conquest and the period from the Twenty-seventh Dynasty to theThirtieth Dynasty inclusive was one of Persian domination, except for brief intervalswhen the Egyptians gained temporary independence.

The events that changedthe nature of Egypt were not the Persian conquest but rather the war between Persia (the new rulers of Egypt) and the united Greek city-states.

Greece had originally been united by Philip of Macedon and then ruled effectivelyby Alexander the Great. Alexander defeated the Persian forces and then took hisarmy to Egypt. There he was welcomed as a conquering hero by the Egyptiansbecause he brought an end to Persian rule. He was made a god by the Egyptians aswell as a pharaoh. He, however, had other campaigns to wage and took his army off to the Middle East and the Indus River Valley leaving a regent in charge of Egypt.After the conquest of the Persians in Asia by the Greeks, Alexander the Great took possession of Egypt and the Greek domination under his successors, the Ptolemies,lasted until Egypt became a Roman province, the country then remaining in Romanoccupation until the Arab conquest.After the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, his empire was divided among histhree most trusted and powerful generals. The throne of Egypt fell to Ptolemy I, theson of Lagus. Ptolemy took Alexander’s preserved body in a jar filled with honeyback to Alexandria. Ptolemy ran Egypt like a business, strictly for profit. He waswelcomed by the Egyptians as part of Alexander the Great’s family. Ptolemy thenbecame the pharaoh, Ptolemy I. By so doing, he set the name standard for the 32ndDynasty which turned out to be the last of Egypt’s great dynasties. All of his malesuccessors were called Ptolemy and all of his female successors were calledCleopatra.

As we move to the end of this Greek Dynasty, there was increasinginvolvement with the Roman Empire. The Roman civil war between Caesar and Pompeii indirectly involved Egypt.

Pompeii lost this war and turned toEgypt for shelter and young Ptolemy (several generations below Ptolemy I) had himexecuted and delivered to Caesar. The young Ptolemy, thinking this would ingratiatehim with Caesar was totally incorrect. His sister, Cleopatra, who was vying for thethrone had other ways of ingratiating herself with Caesar - they had children

together. Caesar was unfortunately assassinated while visiting Rome and his empirewas divided up between General Marcus Antonious and his adopted son, Octavian.Marcus Antonious was better known as Marc Antony. Marc Antony took rulershipof that part of the Empire that contained Egypt and that resulted in his inheritingCleopatra. They, too, had children. His relationship with Octavian broke down andresulted in a war which Marc Antony lost. Antony was killed and Cleopatracommitted suicide. Their male children were executed and their female childrenwere probably married off to local princes.

The Egyptian dynastic system wasended and a Roman Governorship was established.During the Ptolemic dynasty, Egyptian and Greek languages were usedsimultaneously. During the Roman Governorship only Latin was used andoccasionally Greek.

Within a hundred years the Egyptian

hieroglyphics were no longer used or understood by anyone andeven the Roman authors of the time suggested that hieroglyphicswas not even a language. In the truest sense this is now a deadlanguage. Thus, following the Roman invasion of Egypt in 30B.C.E. the use of hieroglyphics began to die out with the lastknown writing in the fifth century AD.

Ultimately the Roman Empire fell and the Middle Ages "came about". Nevertheless,there existed a constant contact between Europe and Egypt such that hieroglyphicswere consistently known by the European elite. The reason for this is that medicalpractices of the Middle Ages resulted in the prescription of bitumen, ground upmummies as a cure for various kinds of diseases. Thus, there was a trade in wholemummies which resulted in examples of hieroglyphics coming into Europethroughout the Dark Ages.As a result,

there were some early attempts at translation of hieroglyphics.

In 1633, a Jesuit priest named Anthanasius Kircher, whose specialities were thehumanities, science, language and religion translated the word ‘autocrat’ or inGreek ‘autocratur’ into German and did so by substituting ideas for the images. Histranslation read "the originator of all moisture and all vegetation whose creativeforces is brought into this kingdom by the holy mukta" (is this a ‘bureaucrat’?)The history of the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphics during the 16th and17th centuries took small steps toward final interpretation. Some scholars thoughtthat the hieroglyphics were the origin of other languages. Some believed thathieroglyphics spelled nothing at all. Yet others believed that the hieroglyphics werean indication of social stratification or social significance.This speculation would have continued had not a political event interceded. Thealmost constant warfare between Britain and France resulted in a major change inthe understanding of hieroglyphics. The French under

Napoleon Bonaparte

decided that they could defeat the British by attacking Egypt and subsequentlycontrolling the rich food supply from along the Nile.In August of 1798, 13 French ships landed near Alexandria at Aboukir Bay inEgypt and marched inland to fight the British near Cairo. The night before thebattle, Napoleon exhorted his troops on by saying something like "Soldiers, fromthe tops of these pyramids, forty centuries are looking down at you." The Frenchground forces won the conflict but the British navy, under the command of LordHorratio Nelson, defeated the French navy. Napoleon believed that he would be inEgypt for only a few months, but he and his men were stranded there for three yearswith no way to return home. Napoleon had brought with him between nearly 1000civilians including 167 of whom were scientists, technicians, mathematicians andartists who studied the art, architecture, and culture of Egypt during their"extended vacation." From 1809-1828, they published a 19-volume work calledDescription of Egypt. Their observations, drawings and illustrations were circulatedthroughout Europe and created a tremendous interest in antiquities of Egypt.The soldiers continued to "dig in" and they reconstructed forts as most soldiers haddone during previous centuries by using building stones previously used by earlierpeoples.

In 1799, while extending a fortress near Rosetta, a small city near Alexandria, a young French officer named Pierre-Francois Bouchard founda block of black basalt stone. It measured three feet nine inches long, twofeet four and half inches wide, and eleven inches thick and it containedthree distinct bands of writing. The most incomplete was the top bandcontaining hieroglyphics, the middle band was an Egyptian script calledDemontic script (he did not know that), and the bottom was ancient Greek(he did recognize the bottom band). This stone was called the

Rosetta

Stone

.

He took the stone to the scholars and they realized that it was a royal decreethat basically stated that it was to be written in the languages used in Egypt at thetime. Scholars began to focus on the Demontic script, the middle band, because itwas more complete and it looked more like letters than the pictures in the upperband that were hieroglyphics. It was essentially a shorthand hieroglyphics that hadevolved from an earlier shorthand version of Egyptian called Heiratic script.Material from Egypt was continuously coming into Europe. In order to display theirstatus, the European gentry and nobility normally had some Egyptian relics in theirpossession, perhaps an art object on a table or if one were quite rich, they mighthave an obelisk in the front yard of the estate. Material containing hieroglyphicscontinued to enter Europe at a reasonably accelerated rate.The first to make any sense of the Demontic script on the Rosetta Stone was aFrench scholar named Silvester deSacy. Silvestre deSacy was an important andskilled French linguist. He identified the symbols which comprised the word‘Ptolemy’ and ‘Alexander’ thus, establishing a relationship between the symbols andsounds. Johann Akerblad who history records as a Swedish diplomat, looked at theRosetta Stone with an additional knowledge of Coptic. Coptic was the language used

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