The Rosetta Stone: The Story of the Decoding of Hieroglyphics (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Dominique Valbelle (Author) "ARCHAEOLOGY? That was last thing on the minds of the French soldiers occupying northern Egypt in July 1799!..." (more)
Key Phrases: enchorial inscription, demotic inscription, conjectural translation, Rosetta Stone, Silvestre de Sacy, British Museum (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Rosetta Stone is a dense summary of the 1799 discovery in Egypt of the granite block that, by virtue of having been engraved with identical text in three different languages (Greek, demotic--or "common"--ancient Egyptian, and hieroglyphics) made possible the deciphering of the last, the long-lost language of ancient Egypt. The book follows the false starts and feuds of French and British scholars, culminating in the success of the brilliant, precocious Orientalist Jean-Francois Champollion, who came to realize in 1824 that the ideograms were a complex mix of the semantic and the phonetic. The book includes a translation of the Rosetta Stone's script and a small sampling of hieroglyphic translation. The subject matter is arcane; the book, brief and somewhat bloodless, is finally less than engaging. --H. O'Billovich

Product Description

In July 1799, a French officer serving in Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition unearthed a granite block bearing text in three different scripts — Greek, demotic Egyptian, and hieroglyphics. Following the discovery, a remarkable competition ensued for possession of the stone as well as for decoding its inscription. Using all the elements of a detective thriller, the authors, a well-known novelist and a leading Egyptologist, tell the story of international intrigue surrounding the intellectual quest to crack the stone’s code — the key to reading ancient Egyptian texts for the first time in 14 centuries. Also included are reproductions of the stone and its inscriptions as well as portraits of the key figures involved in its translation.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (May 9, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568582269
• ISBN-13: 978-1568582269
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #387,037 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The birth of archaeological linguistics, December 18, 2005

By	Jacques COULARDEAU "A soul doctor, so to say" (OLLIERGUES France) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This book is highly useful to understand in plain language the real endeavour of archaeologists when confronted to the Rosetta Stone at teh beginning of the 19th century, to the various writing systems of the old dead Egyptian language. These archaeologists had to become linguists and that was difficult for them because they did not have the slightest idea of how a language can work. The first attempts failed because they did not take into account the fact that the signs they were trying to understand and identify were a writing system for a particular language that you had to visualize as a language in order to understand the writing system. The key for that was also to visualize the various uses and hence discursive situations that this language and its writing systems (there were three writing systems for the old Egyptian language before the final coptic one took over before Arabic arrived) were supposed to satisfy. The break-through effort came from Jean François Champollion who stated that after all the hieroglyphs were an overall alphabetical writing system. From there came the penetration of the language that today we know pretty well. This book is honest about the various contributions of different people at the time and the value of each one of them, with Champollion's attempt being the main step towards a full understanding of the language. The book also concentrates on the particular role of the Rosetta Stone and all the events happening around it, particularly the national embroglio between England and France as for the righteous ownership of it, only solved in 1972 after a discreet but effective intervention of Queen Elizabeth II. An essential book for those who want to understand how linguists decipher strange languages and how linguists reconstruct dead languages, but also how humanity invented writing systems corresponding both to the languages they transcribed and the uses they were supposed to satisfy. The methods have not basically changed since Champollion, and that must be his essential merit.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Université Paris Dauphine, Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The amazing and true story of the Rosetta Stone, August 11, 2002

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

Collaboratively written by novelist and journalist Robert Sole and Egyptologist Dominique Valbelle (President of the French Egyptological Society), The Rosetta Stone: The Story Of The Decoding Of Hieroglyphics is the amazing and true story of the Rosetta Stone, from its discovery by Napoleon's army during their sojourn in Egypt, to how the Rosetta Stone became the key to deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics -- which had not been used as a written language for over fourteen centuries. An amazing saga about the reclamation of history itself, The Rosetta Stone is a highly recommended addition to both school and community library Archaeology and Egyptology reference collections.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Filled with insights and a sense of action, July 7, 2002

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

The Rosetta Stone shares the history of the Rosetta stone that contained text written in early Greek, Egyptian and hieroglyphs enabling a link to a longlost language. From its discovery in 1799 to its theft from the French by the British army and the studies which have lead to earth shaking linguistic discoveries, The Rosetta Stone is filled with insights and a sense of action.