The Rosetta Stone is the most valuable communication artefact in modern history. Found by the French in 1790 in Al-rashid (Rosetta,Egypt), it contained a decree from the Ptolemic period about some taxes of the people. Why is it so important and what is the fascination about a stone ? It is the first item ever to have 3 separate languages written (or chiselled) into it, thus enabling people to decipher and finally interpret the ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic language. The stone was owned by the British due to the treaty of Alexandria where they had control over Egypt during the 18th century.
The stone is not large, about 115cm in height, 75 cm in width and just 24 cm thick but the decree was written in Hieroglyphic - which was used by the ancient high priests during those times, as well as Demotic - short form slang Egyptian and Greek thus allowed latter day historians to decipher and translaate and finally understand the hieroglyphic language.
It is housed in the British Museum, for the viewing of people the world over although Egypt has formally asked the British to hand over their national treasure. I would really like to view this historic piece firsthand.
2 comments:
i like this post very much...btw mark all the best for the coming `chinese new year`
Thanks Risha. I try to make the posts as interesting as possible, and as varied as possible.
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