Ray John. The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt

Harvard University Press, 2012. — 208 p. — (Wonders of the World). — ISBN 9781847650665, 186197339X.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-François 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 is the most famous object in the British Museum. According to the museum’s own figures, it is the most visited item in the entire display, and perhaps the most lingered over, although a similar claim is sometimes made for the unwrapped mummy of a ginger tomcat which also form part of the Egyptian collections. The stone is one of the world’s wonders, although it does not feature in the conventional lists of Wonders of the World. It is not a monumental building, but it attracts pilgrims in the way that imposing ruins do. In mundane reality it was part of a mass-produced series of stelae, a technical term for slabs of stone designed to perpetuate the official records of the Egyptian state. What it records is a decree, the text of an agreement issued jointly by a king and a synod of ancient Egyptian clergy. Its purpose was to witness to the Pharaoh’s benevolence towards his people and his piety towards the gods. It was the sort of thing a good king was expected to do, and to go on doing.John Ray is Herbert Thompson Professor of Egyptology at Cambridge University.The Fading of the Light.
The Pot and the Kettle.
The Man of Science.
The Man of Art.
«To Make Them Live Again».
The Return of the Light.
The Heirs of Jean-François.
The Words of the Stone.
Whose Loot is it Anyway?
The text of the stone
Further reading
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Index