The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt

The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt PDF Author: John Ray
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674024931
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Read the Bldg Blog interview with Mary Beard about the Wonders of the World series(Part I and Part II) The Rosetta Stone is one of the world's great wonders, attracting awed pilgrims by the tens of thousands each year. This book tells the Stone's story, from its discovery by Napoleon's expedition to Egypt to its current--and controversial-- status as the single most visited object on display in the British Museum. A pharaoh's forgotten decree, cut in granite in three scripts--Egyptian hieroglyphs, Egyptian demotic, and ancient Greek--the Rosetta Stone promised to unlock the door to the language of ancient Egypt and its 3,000 years of civilization, if only it could be deciphered. Capturing the drama of the race to decode this key to the ancient past, John Ray traces the paths pursued by the British polymath Thomas Young and Jean-Francois Champollion, the "father of Egyptology" ultimately credited with deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. He shows how Champollion "broke the code" and explains more generally how such deciphering is done, as well as its critical role in the history of Egyptology. Concluding with a chapter on the political and cultural controversy surrounding the Stone, the book also includes an appendix with a full translation of the Stone's text. Rich in anecdote and curious lore, The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt is a brilliant and frequently amusing guide to one of history's great mysteries and marvels.

The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt

The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt PDF Author: John Ray
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674024931
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Get Book

Book Description
Read the Bldg Blog interview with Mary Beard about the Wonders of the World series(Part I and Part II) The Rosetta Stone is one of the world's great wonders, attracting awed pilgrims by the tens of thousands each year. This book tells the Stone's story, from its discovery by Napoleon's expedition to Egypt to its current--and controversial-- status as the single most visited object on display in the British Museum. A pharaoh's forgotten decree, cut in granite in three scripts--Egyptian hieroglyphs, Egyptian demotic, and ancient Greek--the Rosetta Stone promised to unlock the door to the language of ancient Egypt and its 3,000 years of civilization, if only it could be deciphered. Capturing the drama of the race to decode this key to the ancient past, John Ray traces the paths pursued by the British polymath Thomas Young and Jean-Francois Champollion, the "father of Egyptology" ultimately credited with deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. He shows how Champollion "broke the code" and explains more generally how such deciphering is done, as well as its critical role in the history of Egyptology. Concluding with a chapter on the political and cultural controversy surrounding the Stone, the book also includes an appendix with a full translation of the Stone's text. Rich in anecdote and curious lore, The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt is a brilliant and frequently amusing guide to one of history's great mysteries and marvels.

The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt

The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt PDF Author: John Ray
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674069110
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
The Rosetta Stone is one of the world’s great wonders, attracting awed pilgrims by the tens of thousands each year. This book tells the Stone’s story, from its discovery by Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt to its current—and controversial— status as the single most visited object on display in the British Museum.

The Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone PDF Author: John Ray
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 184765066X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
What does the Rosetta Stone tell us about the past? What treasures of Egyptian literature can now be read, thanks to its decipherment? What does it tell us about the history of writing and the story of our own alphabets? How do decipherments work and how can we know if they are right? Who owns the Rosetta Stone and what happens if we start to return pieces of the past to countries who claim them? These are some of the fascinating questions which are explored in this introduction to one of the true Wonders of the World.

The Writing of the Gods

The Writing of the Gods PDF Author: Edward Dolnick
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501198947
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
The fast-paced and “engrossing account” (The New York Times Book Review) of “one of the greatest breakthroughs in archaeological history” (The Christian Science Monitor): two rival geniuses in a race to decode the writing on one of the world’s most famous documents—the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone is one of the most famous objects in the world, attracting millions of visitors to the British museum every year, and yet most people don’t really know what it is. Discovered in a pile of rubble in 1799, this slab of stone proved to be the key to unlocking a lost language that baffled scholars for centuries. Carved in ancient Egypt, the Rosetta Stone carried the same message in different languages—in Greek using Greek letters, and in Egyptian using picture-writing called hieroglyphs. Until its discovery, no one in the world knew how to read the hieroglyphs that covered every temple and text and statue in Egypt. Dominating the world for thirty centuries, ancient Egypt was the mightiest empire the world had ever known, yet everything about it—the pyramids, mummies, the Sphinx—was shrouded in mystery. Whoever was able to decipher the Rosetta Stone would solve that mystery and fling open a door that had been locked for two thousand years. Two brilliant rivals set out to win that prize. One was English, the other French, at a time when England and France were enemies and the world’s two great superpowers. Written “like a thriller” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis), The Writing of the Gods chronicles this high-stakes intellectual race in which the winner would win glory for both himself and his nation. A riveting portrait of empires both ancient and modern, this is an unparalleled look at the culture and history of ancient Egypt, “and also a lesson…in what the human mind does when faced with a puzzle” (The New Yorker).

The Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone PDF Author: R. B. Parkinson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 68

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Book Description
The Rosetta Stone is one of the most popular artefacts in the British Museum. Containing a decree written in Greek, Demotic and hieroglyphics, it proved to be the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics. This concise study traces the history of `the most famous piece of rock in the world' to become a modern icon and tells the story of the race to use it to decipher Egypt's ancient script by Jean-François Champollion and Thomas Young. Also includes a translation of the text.

Cracking Codes

Cracking Codes PDF Author: R. B. Parkinson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520223066
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Deciphering the Rosetta Stone -- Reading a text: the Egyptian scripts of the Rosetta Stone -- Towards reading a cultural code: the uses of writing in ancient Egypt -- The future: futher codes to crack.

The Linguist and the Emperor

The Linguist and the Emperor PDF Author: Daniel Meyerson
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0345448723
Category : Egyptian language
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Recounts the story of the race between Napoleon and linguist Jean-Francois Champollion to break the code of the Rosetta Stone, from its discovery and the early efforts to secure it, to the impact the stone had on the lives of everyone who encountered it.

The Oxford Handbook of Egyptian Epigraphy and Palaeography

The Oxford Handbook of Egyptian Epigraphy and Palaeography PDF Author: Vanessa Davies
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190083735
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 721

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Book Description
The unique relationship between word and image in ancient Egypt is a defining feature of that ancient culture's records. All hieroglyphic texts are composed of images, and large-scale figural imagery in temples and tombs is often accompanied by texts. Epigraphy and palaeography are two distinct, but closely related, ways of recording, analyzing, and interpreting texts and images. This Handbook stresses technical issues about recording text and art and interpretive questions about what we do with those records and why we do it. It offers readers three key things: a diachronic perspective, covering all ancient Egyptian scripts from prehistoric Egypt through the Coptic era (fourth millennium BCE-first half of first millennium CE), a look at recording techniques that considers the past, present, and future, and a focus on the experiences of colleagues. The diachronic perspective illustrates the range of techniques used to record different phases of writing in different media. The consideration of past, present, and future techniques allows readers to understand and assess why epigraphy and palaeography is or was done in a particular manner by linking the aims of a particular effort with the technique chosen to reach those aims. The choice of techniques is a matter of goals and the records' work circumstances, an inevitable consequence of epigraphy being a double projection: geometrical, transcribing in two dimensions an object that exists physically in three; and mental, an interpretation, with an inevitable selection among the object's defining characteristics. The experiences of colleagues provide a range of perspectives and opinions about issues such as techniques of recording, challenges faced in the field, and ways of reading and interpreting text and image. These accounts are interesting and instructive stories of innovation in the face of scientific conundrum.

The Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone PDF Author: Robert Solé
Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press
ISBN: 9781568582269
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Follows the saga of the Rosetta stone, from its discovery in 1799 by a French officer serving in Napoleon's Egyptian expedition, to the remarkable competition that ensued for possession of the stone, to the intellectual quest to decode its inscription.

The Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone PDF Author: E. A. Wallis Sir Budge
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 25

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Book Description
The Rosetta Stone by E. A. Wallis Sir Budge is an interesting and educational book. This volume tells the story of the Rosetta Stone, starting from its discovery during a French military excavation to its preservation in the British Museum as one of the great cornerstones of linguistic studies. The book contains a full and detailed explanation of the meticulous scholarship and inspired impulse that allowed a handful of scholars to decrypt the age-old code. With over 20 photographs, The Rosetta Stone is immensely academic but unstuffy; packed with linguistic details but clear and attainable to the layman; in short, it will fascinate any student of Egyptology, languages, or the history of the ancient Near East. Egyptologists' ground-breaking contributions and the work of linguists over the years eventually led to a true knowledge of the once enigmatic symbols. The book covers the history and meaning of the Rosetta Stone from an academic and also analytical point of view.