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Question
#71187. PRS
asks:
A black basalt slab was found by a soldier in 1799 that contained fragments of passages written in three different scripts: Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Egyptian demotic. Two decades later, French Egyptologist Jean Franýois Champollion was able to decipher the hieroglyphics using his knowledge of Greek as a guide, and the language and culture of ancient Egypt was suddenly open to scientists as never before. What was the name of this artifact?
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skysmom65
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Inscribed stone slab, now in the British Museum, that provided an important key to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. An irregularly shaped block of black basalt with inscriptions in hieroglyphs, Demotic Egyptian, and Greek, it was discovered by Napoleon's troops near the town of Rosetta (Rashid), northeast of Alexandria, in 1799. The text concerns the deeds of Ptolemy V Epiphanes (205–180 BC) and dates from the ninth year of his reign. Its decipherment was begun by Thomas Young, who isolated the proper names in the Demotic version, and decisively completed by J.-F. Champollion, who grasped that some hieroglyphs were phonetic.
 http://www.answers.com/Rosetta%20Stone
Oct 05 06, 6:48 AM
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