7 Finamore
The Rosetta Stone
Museums have long been heralded as a great thing for society. They encourage learning about past societies and stress the importance of art in history. There are many different types of museums, art museums, history museums, science museums, etc. But in the last few decades, a darker side of museums has been revealed. With their artifacts being obtained either illegally or in dubious ways. With objects that were looted being bought and sold, their history being erased, and their ascetics becoming more important than historical significance. Even when objects are not obtained illegally, rules and laws can have changed over time to make the “legal” obtaining of an artifact, now suspicious. Take the Rosetta Stone for Example.
Backstory
The Rosetta Stone is one of the most iconic artifacts in recent history. Not only has it clarified our view of the past, but it also has become the name for a company that teaches languages, and a word commonly used in decoding ciphers. The Rosetta Stone is a dark-colored stele made of granodiorite. On it are 3 languages, Greek (54 lines), Hieroglyphics (14 lines), and Demotic (32 lines). The Rosetta Stone that we have is unfinished. It would have been part of a larger stone that stood 2 meters or 6.6 feet. The Rosetta Stone was created around 196 BCE. It is a decree about King Ptolemy V, at the time of his official coronation, he was only 13 years old at this time. It is a complex document that verifies the negotiation between two powerful groups of that time. By the time the Rosetta Stone was created, hieroglyphics had gone out of fashion for the most part. They were used solely by priests, and just a few hundred years later they had been completely forgotten. The decree is written in 3 languages; the hieroglyphics for the priestly decree, the Demotic because it was the native language and was used for daily purposes, and Greek as the administrative language. When people translated the first line of Greek it stated “This decree shall be inscribed on a stela of hard stone in sacred (hieroglyphic), native (Demotic), and Greek characters.”
Discovery and Translation
The Rosetta Stone was discovered in June of 1799 by the French during their occupation of Egypt. It was found by Pierre François Xavier Bouchard (1772–1832), who recognized the importance of seeing the three scripts written next to each other. It is named the Rosetta Stone because it was found in the city of Rosetta, which is now called Al- Rashid. The French tried to take the stone as a war trophy but after Napoleon’s defeat in 1801, the Stone went to the British under the Treaty of Alexandria, which had a section including the handing over of antiquities. Although the Rosetta Stone technically has three languages written on it, there is actually a fourth. The side of the Stone has “captured in Egypt by the British army 1801” and “presented by king George III” written on it. The stone has remained in the British Museum under reg