Cracking the Rosetta Stone
Written by Studio AM.
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By the late 1700s, scholars could not fully read the hieroglyphs on ancient Egyptian monuments. Some signs looked like pictures, but their roles in the writing system remained unclear.
In 1799, French soldiers working near Rosetta in Egypt uncovered an inscribed stone. It recorded a royal decree in three scripts: Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic, and Greek. These represented two languages, Egyptian and Greek. Because scholars could read Greek, that version helped them compare the other forms of the decree.
The work took years and involved several researchers. Thomas Young identified sound values in a royal name. Jean-François Champollion developed a broader account of how hieroglyphs represented Egyptian, announcing a major breakthrough in 1822. Knowledge of Coptic, a later form of the Egyptian language, also helped him.
The signs did not all work like letters in an alphabet. Some represented sounds, while others helped convey meaning. Comparing texts, names, and language knowledge gradually made the system readable. The stone mattered because its related inscriptions connected a known language with writing that scholars were trying to understand.
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Questions
Choose an answer. The explanation appears after you answer.
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Question 1 of 4
The passage mainly explains
The answer is C: how a stone with matching texts let scholars finally read hieroglyphs
The passage tells how three matching texts, one in readable Greek, allowed hieroglyphs to be decoded.
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Question 2 of 4
What made the stone useful for decoding hieroglyphs?
The answer is B: It recorded the decree in related versions, including readable Greek.
The Greek version gave scholars a known text to compare with Egyptian scripts.
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Question 3 of 4
Why was knowledge of Greek useful even though hieroglyphs were not simply Greek letters?
The answer is B: It gave scholars information about the decree’s meaning for comparison.
Knowing a related version’s meaning helped researchers compare names and passages while investigating the Egyptian writing system.
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Question 4 of 4
In this passage, 'scripts' most nearly means
The answer is D: systems of writing
Set against 'a language' in the next sentence, 'scripts' means systems of writing.
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