Translating the Rosetta Stone

An English medical man, Dr. Young, was the first to furnish a clue to the mystery of the Rosetta Stone. Happening to take a keen interest in dead languages as well as in living people, he saw among the hieroglyphics two sets of signs with a line drawn round them, and as the name of Ptolemy was twice mentioned in the Greek text he reasoned that these signs stood for the name of the ruler who made the decree. He reasoned correctly, and we learned in time that a king's name was always enclosed in a panel, which is now generally known as a cartouche.

The deciphering of the king's name was a happy discovery which pointed to the general significance of the cartouche in connection with royal names. But the deciphering of the rest of the hieroglyphics bristled with difficulties. No one knew whether the signs stood for sounds, letters, words or things.

Egyptians had painted these puzzling pictures, but there was not a single man in all Egypt who knew what they meant. The oldest Egyptian peasant was ignorant on the subject, the most learned Egyptian scholar had not the faintest idea of their meaning. The Egyptians had forgotten how to read the writing of their forefathers. It was the writing of a dead age, of a vanished civiUzation.

Dr. Young threw himself enthusiastically into the task of deciphering the signs. The difficulty seemed to add a zest to his search. He pored over the copy of the writing on the Rosetta Stone day after day. There was absolutely nothing to guide him. Everything was sheer deduction at first, and then his deductions had to be tested and verified.

So difficult was his task that the discovery of a single letter was an event. Perhaps by great good fortune he would succeed in deciphering two signs in a week, then for a month he might study the copy until his brain reeled, and decipher nothing at all. It was a heart-breaking undertaking. On one occasion he announced that he had succeeded in translating a certain set of hieroglyphics into a word of seven or eight letters. It was afterwards proved that he was right in only one letter, and that the rest were hopelessly wrong.

He began on his project in 1814 and, after struggHng with it for four years, the sum total of his labours amounted to the deciphering of just over ninety characters. His discovery thus averaged fewer than twenty-five signs a year. It meant that he had to concentrate all the power of his exceptional brain, and all his knowledge of languages, for a whole month to decipher two characters. In doing what he did, he accompHshed an astounding feat. It is impossible to praise Young too highly for his early work on the Rosetta Stone.

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