026: How the Rosetta Stone Actually Works — And What It Really Took to Crack Hieroglyphs

After nearly 1,500 years of silence, how did we finally learn to read the "sacred carvings" of the Pharaohs? In this episode of the Voices of Ancient Egypt podcast, we dive into the high-stakes race to crack the code of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

From the accidental discovery of a stone hidden in a military fortress wall to the obsessive linguistic rivalry between an English polymath and a French prodigy, we explore the breakthroughs that turned a dead script into a living history.

Discover how a single realization about sounds and symbols shattered centuries of misconceptions and reopened the door to the ancient world.

In this episode, you will learn:

• The Fortuitous Discovery: How a "peculiar stone" reused as building material in a military fort became the most famous key in archaeological history.

• The Symbolic Trap: Why scholars were stuck for over a millennium believing hieroglyphs were purely symbolic, and the specific names that finally proved them wrong.

• The Battle of the Geniuses: The controversial rivalry between Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion—did the Frenchman truly work alone, or did he "borrow" the key to his success?

• The Secret Weapon: How Champollion’s teenage obsession with Coptic provided the final, missing bridge to the language of the Pharaohs.

• The "I’ve Done It!" Moment: The incredible true story of the man who worked himself into a five-day coma the moment he finally solved the puzzle.

• Decoding History: How a name found at the Temple of Abu Simbel proved that hieroglyphs weren't used for sounds just for foreign kings’ names, but were the phonetic heartbeat of an entire civilization.

• Unlocking the Code for Yourself: Why the decipherment of hieroglyphs wasn't just a win for 19th-century academics, but an open invitation for you to read the ancient texts today.

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Download my free guide, Half-Hour Hieroglyphs to get started with hieroglyphs now.

Learning hieroglyphs is a challenge if you don’t have a tried and true system to follow. This free guide will teach you how hieroglyphs work and how to use them to write names the way the ancient Egyptians did.

Grab the free guide at https://voicesofancientegypt.com/guide

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Voices of Ancient Egypt, the podcast for people who don't just want to learn about ancient Egypt, but want to understand it on a deeper, more meaningful level. I'm Melinda Nelsonhurst, an Egyptologist with a PhD in the field and years of experience teaching at the university level, working in Egypt, and training students around the world to read real ancient Egyptian texts. I've spent decades studying this civilization in a traditional academic setting so you don't have to. And so you can access knowledge that's usually locked behind academic walls. This podcast brings ancient Egyptian history, beliefs, and language to life and shows you that learning hieroglyphs is possible no matter your age, background, or schedule. So whether you want to read hieroglyphs in museums, on social media, or on your next trip to Egypt, you'll find the tools, stories, and encouragement to make it real right here. Let's hear the voices of the ancient world together. Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Voices of Ancient Egypt podcast. I'm so excited to be here with you today and discussing a topic that's probably near and dear to many of your hearts because it relates to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. We're going to talk a bit about the decipherment of hieroglyphs today and how we went from having over a thousand years, nearly 1,500 years, where no one could write or understand Egyptian hieroglyphs, to being able to read and learn them today, even if you're not an academic. So many had tried to decipher this hieroglyphic script and failed. And I mean, if you look at some of the attempts, like they're from many parts of the world, but for example, from medieval Europe, some of these attempts are really almost comic, really, when you read them in terms of the kind of grasping people were going, trying to find meanings for these signs. So did Jean Francois Champaglion succeed where others had failed for centuries before him? What were the keys to his success? Well, the year is 1822, and scholars have been making some headway into understanding two types of scripts that the ancient Egyptians used. The more famous hieroglyphic script and the demotic script, which was used from the late period to the end of pharaonic history as a kind of cursive script. The recent breakthroughs have been largely due to the French army's 1799 discovery of a peculiar stone in a military fort wall in the town of Rashid, often called by its Greek name Rosetta. This curious stone, which would come to be called the Rosetta Stone, had been reused in that wall, as it was clearly ancient and had three inscriptions on it, one in Greek, one in Demotic Egyptian, and one in hieroglyphic Egyptian. Using the texts on the Rosetta Stone, which are identical in content, though written in two different languages and three different scripts, scholars such as Johann Okrobad and A.I. Sylvester Dasasi had made significant contributions to understanding Egyptian writing, especially the demotic script, that cursive script we talked about a moment ago. For this script, they had figured out things like the names of kings and queens and even some pronouns, and a few other words in the demotic portion of the stone as well. With this groundwork lane, the English polymath Thomas Young was able to compare the hieroglyphic signs within ovals, or what we today call cartouches, to the royal names such as Ptolemy and Berenike that appeared in the Greek text. By doing this, Young was able to figure out the phonetic sounds of the Egyptian signs, such as the box for the sound of the letter P, or the loaf of bread for the sound of the letter T, and a folded cloth for the sound os. Or now we understand this to just be like the letter S and there's because there's no vowels. Before this time, it was universally believed that hieroglyphs were purely symbolic in meaning. That is, each sign or set of signs conveyed ideas, concepts, or things, but not sounds, such as an alphabet or a syllabic script would do. This new work showed that there were some signs at least that could be used to represent sounds, at least when transcribing foreign names, such as the Greek name Ptolemyos or Ptolemy. The other Egyptian script on the Rosetta Stone, Demotic, ironically, was assumed to be alphabetic, unlike what people thought about Egyptian hieroglyphs. However, Jung figured out that the Demotic script actually had developed from hieroglyphs and thus could not be a pure alphabet. And really, it's funny how scholars had divided these two and it was really holding them up in both cases. One of the main things that held people back with deciphering hieroglyphs was assuming that they were symbolic and constantly trying to make them fit that. And then with demotic, they made some headway, but still were held up by thinking that the whole thing was an alphabet as well. So Jung finally figured out that this was not the case. This was a big breakthrough. He recognized the similarity that some of the demotic signs had had with the corresponding hieroglyphic texts, and this allowed him to realize that the demotic was really originally derived from other Egyptian writing systems like hieroglyphic or hieratic, which they hadn't figured out yet, but would later. This caused a problem since it was believed that Demotic was purely phonetic or sound-based, like an alphabet, while hieroglyphs were thought to be symbolic and carried no sound value, with the exception of those used to write foreign names, of course. Jung determined that, in fact, demotic was composed of both symbolic or conceptual signs as well as alphabetic signs. However, Jung was unable to take the next step and apply the same idea to the hieroglyphs. Although he could not figure out how the hieroglyphic signs he saw on the Rosetta Stone could work conceptually to convey the same things that the Greek version of the inscription said, he still believed, as did everyone else at the same time, that the Egyptian hieroglyphs had purely conceptual or symbolic meaning rather than representing sounds. Of course, again, with the exception of those few signs that he had figured out before that he assumed were used that way only for foreign memes. Enter the Frenchman Jean-Francois Champaglion, a man who had obsessively studied a wide variety of written languages since he was a boy, and had become actually an expert in Coptic, the language used in the Egyptian Christian Church, and also the fifth and final stage of Egyptian. Initially, Champaglion was no different than those who had come before him, and he believed that the Egyptian hieroglyphs were purely symbolic in meaning. However, by 1822, Champaglion had changed his mind, but only in relation to foreign names, just like Thomas Young had. And it's debatable as to whether he's working off of Thomas Young's work at this point, or he figured this out independently. However, whichever way it happened, once he had made this shift in the ideas about Egyptian hieroglyphs, he was able to figure out many additional phonetic hieroglyphs beyond what Young had done by examining the names of Greek and Roman rulers in Egyptian texts. Luckily for Champollion, by 1822, he now had access to copies of many more inscriptions than were previously available to researchers. In these inscriptions, most notably on the so-called Banks Obelisk, he had access to a variety of new Greek and Roman names. The Banks Obelisk had a text in Greek on the base that he could use to compare to the names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra in the hieroglyphs. He also had gained access to a papyrus with texts in Greek and Demotic, which allowed him to figure out the demotic spelling of the name Cleopatra. This breakthrough in Demotic allowed Champollion then to hypothesize how Cleopatra would be spelled in hieroglyphs, because he had already recognized the equivalencies between many demotic and hieroglyphic signs. Between this and the hieroglyphs that he already knew from the name of Ptolemy on the Rosetta Stone, those for L, P, and what he believed to be E and O, he was able to identify the name of Cleopatra on the Banks obelisk. To test whether he was correct in interpreting the second name on the Banks obelisk as that of a queen named Cleopatra, Champollion started applying his interpretation of these hieroglyphs to other names that he found in cartouches from other monuments. For example, he found one in a cartouche where he could recognize many of the sounds. He noticed there was what seemed like an A, an L, then a sign he didn't know, then an S, then an E, then another sign he didn't know, then a T, then an R, and then another unknown sign. Now Champollion guessed that this entire name included the sounds A L K S E N T R S, which would be equivalent to the Greek name Alexandros or in English we say Alexander. Champaglion continued on in this manner for all of the foreign names that he could possibly find. And around this same time he received a copy of an inscription from the Temple of Abu Simbal. In this inscription was a royal name that he had not deciphered yet, an Egyptian name. The name was written several different ways, but the simplest form of the name had four signs. And as luck would have it, Champollion was already familiar with two of them from his work on Greek and Roman names, that is the two S in this name. Now the first sign in the cartouche looked like a son, so Champollion guessed that it might have the same phonetic meaning as the Coptic word for sun, Ri. But once he had Ri blank S, Champollion thought about the names of Egyptian pharaohs known from the history of Egypt written in Greek by the Egyptian priest named Manetho during the third century BCE. And he realized that this name bore a striking resemblance to the name of Ramses. Based on this idea, he thought that the middle sign must represent the letter M. He then moved on to another name in a cartouche. The first sign was a picture of an ibis. This bird was known to be a symbol of the god Thoth. Champollion put this together with the other signs that he now knew and figured out that this name must be Tutmoza, a pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, who was also named in Minetho's history. Champollion then realized that the sign that he had believed to be M, just a mmm sound, was used on the Rosetta stone in places where the Greek text talked about birthdays, suggesting that this sign also spelled out the word for birth, which in Coptic was Misi. Now, since the hieroglyphs actually only represent the consonants and not vowels, this sign actually stands for M and S, but that hadn't been figured out yet. Now Champollion though finally had the key. He was able to now keep going to the next name and the next name. Now it was this breakthrough that reportedly caused Champollion to run to his older brother's office, burst in and say, I've done it, and then promptly pass out before he could actually explain to his brother what it was that he had figured out. He was unconscious for five days, after which he returned to work, and only about a week later he gave a lecture on the topic to the Academy of the Inscriptions and Belle Lettres, announcing his breakthrough. Now, as a little side note, Champignon did have poor health throughout his life, so it's not maybe as far-fetched as it might kind of sound, where he would feverishly bust in and then pass out for five days. He also was prone to quite literally burning the candle on both ends, but both literally and figuratively staying up all hours obsessing over a language. So he very much was capable of working himself into the ground. Now, this breakthrough, after he had actually given a talk about it, he would then later publish this lecture the following month as his now famous Lettre à M Dossier. However, up to this point, Champollion still believed that, other than when used for names, hieroglyphs typically represented ideas or things, not sounds. So he still hung up on this idea that has really plagued people for like 1500 years at least. It wasn't long after this, though, when in the following year, Champagne was finally able to take that next step and create his system or key to move on from names to other words in Egyptian. Now the question remains: how did he do this? How did he go from thinking that everything other than the names was symbolic, that the signs used for everything else were purely symbolic, to finally figuring out that many, many, many of these signs were actually phonetic. They represented sounds. This is actually a little bit of a gray area, a little bit of a mystery because he never explained this exact process anywhere that has been, at least that has been found and published. But we can put together a few events from that time to maybe help explain this breakthrough. Champollion realized that there were not nearly enough hieroglyphic signs on the Rosetta Stone to be able to say everything that was in the Greek version of the text, if the hieroglyphs each represented a single thing or idea. Perhaps also influenced by a recently published grammar of Chinese, which showed that many of the signs in Chinese were phonetic, that is, they represented sounds, rather than representing things or ideas, Champollion may have finally realized from that that many Egyptian hieroglyphs were also purely phonetic. We can't say for certain, it could be pure coincidence that that was published around that time. But however he figured out this last bit, once he had, he had this final sort of piece to the puzzle that would allow him to figure out so much more. He was now able to use his intimate knowledge of Coptic and its vocabulary with his newfound ability to recognize the sounds of many hieroglyphic signs in order to start deciphering hieroglyph after hieroglyph and word after word. He would subsequently publish a more comprehensive study of the hieroglyphic system of writing in 1824. Now, ever since Champollion published his findings, which he did without acknowledging Jung's important work, there has been a fierce debate about whether he used Jung's ideas without crediting him, or whether Jung's discoveries had no influence on Champaglion, who instead had reached the same conclusions on his own. Opinions often fall along nationalistic lines with this, with people from different countries kind of falling in line with their own nationalistic background and the particular scholar. Champaglion does seem to be, from what he wrote at the time, maybe a little pompous about this, and perhaps he did not acknowledge Jung's work when he actually had seen it. It's hard to say. However, one thing is clear, which is that Champaglion definitely took this much further, and he was the one who really discovered a true key to the language, not simply the names, but to the rest of the language as well, with now giving other scholars as well as myself the key to continue this work, which has been continued ever since. He died fairly young, actually. So he did do a lot more work on this, but was cut short in his 40s, in his early 40s, in fact, really only about a decade after he started making some of these bigger discoveries. So luckily, though, others were able to continue on this work, and this work really continues today, though there's now so much more available to us than there was before, thanks to the work of many, many scholars from countries all around the world. So while Champollion and other decipherers spent their lives restoring something that had been silent for almost 1,500 years, now you, I, my students, everybody, you sitting at home, are now able to learn this language. The decipherment didn't just happen for scholars in 1822 or 1824. It happens for everyone who would ever want to read hieroglyphs again. Whether you've learned them already or maybe you're thinking about learning them, and this decipherment can happen for you. For you there listening right now, wherever you are, at home, in your car, at the office, this is a decipherment you can unlock as well. And you'll want to stay tuned to this podcast to learn more about that and about other aspects of ancient Egypt. I can't wait to see you in the next episode.