The Rosetta Stone
Written by Studio AM.
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In 1799, French soldiers were digging near a town in Egypt. One of them found a broken slab of dark stone. The stone was covered with writing. It had three kinds of script cut into its surface: Egyptian hieroglyphs at the top, an Egyptian script called Demotic in the middle, and Greek at the bottom.
Scholars could read the Greek. The three sections were versions of the same decree, an official statement issued by priests in support of a king. So the stone was a kind of key. Comparing the versions gave scholars clues to the unknown signs.
The work was still slow. For more than twenty years, scholars argued about what the signs meant. Many people believed that hieroglyphs were only pictures of ideas. Thomas Young linked some signs to sounds in royal names. In 1822, Jean-François Champollion announced a major advance in understanding how hieroglyphs represented the Egyptian language. With that idea, the old writing began to make sense.
The stone is cracked and incomplete, but its inscriptions helped scholars recover a writing system used for thousands of years. Other ancient texts and continued research were also essential.
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Questions
Choose an answer. The explanation appears after you answer.
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Question 1 of 4
What does the passage mainly explain?
The answer is B: How a stone with three scripts helped scholars decipher ancient Egyptian writing
The passage connects the three versions of the decree with the work of scholars deciphering hieroglyphs.
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Question 2 of 4
According to the passage, which text on the stone could scholars already read?
The answer is C: The Greek at the bottom
The text says plainly, 'Scholars could read the Greek,' which sat at the bottom of the stone.
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Question 3 of 4
Why was it important that the three sections carried the same message?
The answer is B: It meant a text people could read could be compared with signs they could not
If the meaning is the same in all three, the known Greek gives a starting point for guessing the unknown signs. That is why the writer calls the stone a key.
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Question 4 of 4
In this passage, 'decree' means
The answer is A: an official order or announcement
The passage defines the decree as an official statement issued by priests in support of a king.
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