His error, however, was in thinking that the demotic script was exclusively alphabetic. David Akerblad, a Swedish Orientalist, identified all the Greek names in the demotic section and formed a partial alphabet of sixteen letters. The translation of the Greek portion had appeared in French and English by 1802, and, armed with this, scholars in several countries began to study the Egyptian texts. The Rosetta Stone was quickly recognized as a find of immense value to students of Egypt’s history. But during the eighteenth century more serious attempts were made to unravel their mysteries, and ideas and theories began to take shape. Somehow the Chinese were thought to be involved with them, and at best they were viewed as a purely pictorial symbolism. In the past, Egyptian hieroglyphics had been mistaken for mere ornamentation. But cracking the most difficult and secret of codes has often proved simple by comparison with some ancient scripts.
Unknown writing has always attracted the curiosity of man. The last band at the bottom contains the Greek translation. At the top, the intriguing hieroglyphic characters are incised on the stone, and below this appears the demotic, or more popular simplified form, the writing of the people in general. The Rosetta Stone is of importance to linguists because its inscription is in two languages, Egyptian and Greek. By the end of 1802 it was on exhibition in the British Museum, where it still occupies the most prominent position in the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery. When Napoleon heard about the stone, he ordered that copies of it be made, and later, when the stone was surrendered as part of the spoil of war, it was taken to England. What was more, there were different types of writing making up the inscription, one of which included Greek characters. An officer named Boussard recognized the stone’s value. Looking more closely, he noticed that it was covered with curious writing. It was black and had a metallic ring when struck by the workman’s pick. Suddenly, one of the soldiers came across a most unusual stone.
Thrown onto the defensive by the victory of the British fleet under Nelson, the French army under Napoleon was preparing for a last stand. Four miles from the small Egyptian town of Rashid, or Rosetta, a corps of French soldiers was hard at work making alterations on Fort Julien. The Rosetta Stone-Key to Egyptian Hieroglyphics
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