Book Review: The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt

The Rosetta Stone, a stele with an inscription recording "the text of an agreement issued jointly by a king and a synod of ancient Egyptian clergy" (2), written in three different scripts (hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek, the scripts used for religion, daily purposes, and administration, respectively), was discovered by a French soldier in el-Rashid (also known as Rosetta) in the summer of 1799. After the British defeated the French in Egypt, the Stone was brought to the British Museum in 1802, where it has remained ever since. The Stone is perhaps the most famous object to be found in the British Museum, and is, according to the British Museum itself, the most popular item displayed there (2). One sign of its popularity is the wide range of Rosetta Stone paraphernalia available at the British Museum and elsewhere; a postcard of the Stone has been the best-selling item available in the museum shop for "as long as museum staff can remember" (2). While the contents of the Stone are perhaps not as exciting as one might wish from a literary point of view, it led to the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, and as such, its importance to Egyptology (as well as to fields like historical linguistics) cannot be underestimated.

The book under consideration here, written by John Ray, currently the Sir Herbert Thompson Professor of Egyptology at the University of Cambridge, pursues two different, albeit related, scholarly issues. On the one hand, it tells the story of the Rosetta Stone; on the other hand, it traces the growth and development of Egyptology as a scholarly pursuit, with a special emphasis on the decipherment of the hieroglyphs. The book contains nine thematic chapters, an introduction, and a translation of the text of the Stone, in addition to the usual extras (lists of suggested further readings and illustrations, and a detailed index, among others).