The Rosetta Stone

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Ancients — The Rosetta Stone (June 7, 2026)

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Episode Overview

This special archive episode of The Ancients marks the bicentenary of the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs, focusing on the Rosetta Stone’s critical role in unlocking Ancient Egypt for the modern world. Host Tristan Hughes visits the British Museum to speak with Dr. Ilona Rogorski, curator of a major exhibition on hieroglyphs, to discuss the Rosetta Stone’s origins, discovery, multilingual inscriptions, its journey to London, and its pivotal place in the intellectual race to decode an ancient language.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Rosetta Stone: What It Is and Why it Matters

• Object Description: The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stela inscribed with a priestly decree dated March 27, 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty, honoring King Ptolemy V. (Dr. Ilona Rogorski, 06:03)
• Multilingual Texts: The decree was replicated in three scripts—Hieroglyphic (for religious texts), Demotic (everyday script), and Greek (administrative language)—making it an invaluable linguistic bridge.
• Historical Context: Ptolemaic Egypt was cosmopolitan and bilingual; while Greek dominated the administration, Egyptian languages remained key in homes and temples, reflecting a society in transition. (07:07–08:23)

2. Discovery and Modern Emergence

• Where Found & Early History: Uncovered by French soldiers in 1799 in the Nile Delta town of Rashid (Rosetta), the stone had likely been moved and reused as building material centuries earlier. Its exact original location remains uncertain. (09:58)
• Immediate Recognition: “It was immediately realized that the stone could be important for the decipherment…potentially they had discovered the key to decipherment, which is quite amazing.” — Dr. Rogorski (14:49)
• International Rivalry and Transfer: After Napoleon’s defeat, the stone was ceded by the French to the British under Article 16 in the Capitulation of Alexandria (1801), arriving at the British Museum in 1802. (23:02)

3. The Text: What Does it Actually Say?

• Content of the Decree: “It’s a priestly decree in which basically the king is given divine honors…It has a long list of these honors...Putting the king on the level of the gods actually.” — Dr. Rogorski (11:10)
• Cultural Synthesis: The format and content drew from Greek traditions of ruler cults, layered onto older Egyptian concepts of kingship—a testament to cultural fusion. (13:03)

4. The Scripts: Hieroglyphs, Demotic, and Greek

• Hieroglyphic Complexity: Not an alphabet but a hybrid system with one-letter, two-letter, three-letter signs, words, and determinatives—over 650 signs at its height. (19:44)
  • “The trick is, was and still is, to understand that it’s not an alphabetic script…It’s a mix of many different kinds of signs.”—Dr. Rogorski (19:44)
• Demotic Explained: “A cursive, handwritten version of hieroglyphs…The language and the script of the people.”—Dr. Rogorski (09:04)

5. The Race to Decipher

• Early Efforts: Attempts to decode hieroglyphs stretch back to antiquity and the Middle Ages; much lore associated them with magical knowledge. (16:16)
• Distribution of Knowledge: Before mass communication, reproductions—rubbings, prints, casts—of the Rosetta Stone’s text were rapidly disseminated among scholars across Europe. (30:05–31:21)
• Key Figures:
  • Thomas Young: British polymath who made early advances, particularly with the Demotic script and identifying cartouches (royal name ovals). He saw the process as a scientific puzzle. (32:30–33:17)
  • Jean-Francois Champollion: French linguist who, building on Young’s work, realized that certain cartouches contained phonetic spellings, enabling a leap in understanding—published his breakthrough in a letter in 1822. (41:57)
  • William Banks: English traveler whose copies of hieroglyphic inscriptions on the Philae obelisk (Kingston Lacy obelisk) provided a crucial link for the names “Cleopatra” and “Ptolemy.” (37:27)
• Collaboration and Rivalry: Despite national rivalries, extensive correspondence and sharing of casts, notes, and reconstructions drove the breakthrough. “There was a lot of…collaboration.” — Dr. Rogorski (30:05)
• Breakthrough Mechanism: The recognition that Greek names (like “Ptolemy” and “Cleopatra”) in cartouches were spelled phonetically enabled the matching of specific signs to specific sounds (41:57–42:15).

6. The Aftermath and Legacy

• Immediate Impact: Decoding the script did not solve everything overnight—there was skepticism and debate in the scholarly community. Some resisted recognizing a non-European, African civilization as a fountainhead of classical antiquity. (43:32)
• Broader Consequences: The decipherment triggered a huge wave of Egyptomania in Europe, the systematic study of Egyptian texts, awareness of monument preservation, and the professionalization of Egyptology. (43:03, 46:17)
• Ongoing Influence: “Egyptology is taught from South America to Japan…it spreads across the world.” — Dr. Rogorski (45:38)

7. The British Museum Exhibition

• Exhibition Range: Tracing the story of hieroglyphic writing from 3250 BC to today, showcasing not just the Rosetta Stone but objects that highlight the long, multicultural engagement with ancient Egypt, attempts at decipherment, and the field’s birth and legacy. (48:12)
• Layered History: The exhibition explores not only scholarly races but also popular ideas, legends, and later debates about preservation and context.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Exhibition’s Aim:
  “It gives us an opportunity really to contextualize the stone, text... its journey to the British Museum.”
  — Dr. Ilona Rogorski (04:31)

• On the Stone’s Discovery:
  “It was immediately realized that the stone could be important for the decipherment…potentially they had discovered the key to decipherment, which is quite amazing.”
  — Dr. Ilona Rogorski (14:49)

• On Hieroglyphs’ Structure:
  “The trick is, was and still is, to understand that it’s not an alphabetic script…It’s a mix of many different kinds of signs.”
  — Dr. Ilona Rogorski (19:44)

• On Cultural Reactions:
  “There was a lot of resistance to acknowledging that our human history goes back further in time to something that is perhaps not European…that took some time.”
  — Dr. Ilona Rogorski (43:32)

• On Enduring Fascination:
  “Even to this day it will continue to fascinate so many people across the world…what stories they can tell…the variety of stories it tells of ancient Egyptian history.”
  — Host (47:40)

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• Rosetta Stone’s Background & Importance – 04:13–06:54
• Cultural and Historical Context: Ptolemaic Egypt – 07:07–08:23
• Multilingual Text and its Cultural Meaning – 10:58–13:03
• Discovery by the French and Transfer to Britain – 14:49–23:02
• Nature of the Stone’s Inscriptions – 11:10–12:31
• How Hieroglyphs Work – 19:44–22:42
• Race to Decipher; Early Scholarly Work – 16:16–19:31
• Young, Champollion, and the Breakthrough – 32:30–41:57
• Wider Reaction and Egyptomania – 43:32–45:23
• Legacy & Museum Exhibition – 48:12–49:28

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Conclusion

This episode provides a compelling journey through the world-shifting story of the Rosetta Stone—from its ancient origins to its globally resonant legacy. Through the lively expertise of Dr. Rogorski and the probing curiosity of Tristan Hughes, listeners gain not just a sense of how the stone “unlocked” Ancient Egypt, but also how collaboration, rivalry, and cross-cultural dialogue shaped the path to understanding one of humanity’s oldest writing systems.

Transcript

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

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[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

Hello and welcome to the Ancients. We have an episode from our archive today, one that was released originally almost four years ago. We're talking about one of the most famous objects, artifacts ever discovered, one that was crucial in the race to decipher the ancient Egyptian script, that is hieroglyphs. This is the story of the Rosetta Stone. Now, four years ago marked 200 years since the deciphering of hieroglyphs. And so the British Museum had an exhibition all about this seismic event, the unlocking of ancient Egypt to the world. So I headed over to the British Museum to interview their curator of the exhibition, Dr. Ilona Rogorski, all about the Rosetta Stone and its story, what this object is, how it was discovered, what is actually set on it, and why it plays such an important role in the race to decipher hieroglyphs 200 years ago. Hope you enjoy the episode. Let's. Ilona, it's wonderful to have you on the podcast today.

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Thank you.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

And it's really lovely to be here at the British Museum to chat to you on the eve of this incredible new exhibition coming out on hieroglyphs. And it seems to be at the heart of this new exhibition, the Rosetta Stone. This feels like one of the most famous objects in the entire world.

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yeah, it's definitely one of the most popular objects in the British Museum. And yeah, we're very excited to be able to redisplay it in the exhib and to tell stories about it that perhaps visitors are not so familiar with. So it gives us an opportunity really to contextualize the stone, text on the stone, its journey to the British Museum. And so it's really an opportunity to elaborate on all those stories and we're

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

going to delve into all of that. It's also important to highlight straight away. We were chatting just before we started recording of these other objects that the Rosetta Stone might be the most well known object in this new exhibition. But there are so many other objects too, aren't there?

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yes. And especially for those scholars who were working on hieroglyphs and trying to decipher hieroglyphs, they also used a lot of other objects in addition to the Rosetta Stone and we're displaying a few of those. The interesting part of that is also that These were objects that were circulating in Europe, but also a lot of drawings, a lot of descriptions, because we also want to show that the available material was still limited. So we didn't really have big collections like the British Museum or the Louvre or the Muse Turin. All these big collections didn't exist as they exist today. So the evidence or the material that they had available was much. Yeah. Much less and was limited, in fact.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

And so before we go into that whole story, the journey and the deciphering story of the Rosetta Stone, I think background. First of all, most of us, if not everyone's, heard the name Rosetta Stone, but what exactly is the Rosetta Stone?

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yeah, it's a stela, in fact, so a commemorative stone, if you want, that contains a text, a decree. It's a priestly decree that was issued on 27th March, 196bc you can know the exact date, conveniently for us. And so that decree was issued probably on a piece of papyrus and then sent around the country. And as the text tells us, it had to be inscribed on hearthstone and in the three languages. The text actually tells us this and then set up in all the important temples of Egypt. So if that happens, we don't really know. We can't be sure that every temple had a copy of the Rosetta Stone, but we do have 28 copies in total. So that decree was copied many times, and one of them came to Europe and led to the decipherment.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

Well, let's delve into all of that now quickly. So you mentioned the date, so the early second century B.C. so what's the context of ancient Egypt at this time? What is this period?

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yeah, so Egypt at the time was ruled by the Ptolemies, the Ptolemaic dynasty, as we say, they're basically successors of Alexander the Great, who conquered Egypt in 332 B.C. and after some family members establishes the dynasty of the Ptolemies. And so the Rosetta Stone dates to the reign of Ptolemy V, but we have an earlier version of the text from the reign of Ptolemy iii. Yeah. And at the time, Egypt was very multicultural, was really a melting pot of. And it was a trading hub in Northeast Africa. And the main language that was used in the administration more and more was Greek during the Ptolemaic times, even though people were still speaking Egyptian at home. So it was very bilingual as a society. This is important because that's why, of course, the text was translated in these other languages. So it was very international in a way.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

And so from what you're highlighting there. So Greek, the language of the administration, Egyptian elsewhere. But was the Egyptian hieroglyphic language, was it important in religious circles? You mentioned temples earlier. So does that Egyptian language still retain its importance in the religious sphere at that time, then?

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

In the temples, definitely, but also in people's homes. It takes some time for a language to be replaced by another language. Even we have the same process later when Egypt becomes part of the Arab world and starts to speak Arabic. It takes time for people to use those languages at home. A few generations, in fact. So definitely in the second century bc, Egyptian was still very much part of the daily life in spoken language, but also in written culture. So at the time we had Demotic, and Demotic was very much living next to Greek, and people were very fluent in moving between those two languages.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

Forgive my ignorance. What is Demotic?

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Sorry? Yeah, that's the Egyptian language. So the Egyptian language and the script actually we refer to as demotic. It's a cursive, handwritten version of hieroglyphs, which is a later development of hieratics. So from the very beginning, you had hieroglyphs and a handwritten script, very much like our typewriting font and a handwritten letter. So you had those two scripts living next to each other, were used for very specific purposes. And that develops into a very cursive writing that is called demotic by the Greeks when they come into Egypt. And you may recognize the word demos in demotic. So it's the language and the script of the people.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

Absolutely right. I'd like to focus a bit on the material of the Rosetta stone itself. The stone. What do we know about its material? Because it's quite striking when you see it today. Do we think it originates from, like, Rosetta or what's the backstory, do we think to this particular stone?

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yes. So it's made of granodiorite, which is a very hard stone, and we don't exactly know where it comes from. It was probably quarried somewhere in the north of Egypt and then set up in one of the temples in the delta. Probably. We don't know the exact find spots. Places like Saez in the Delta have been mentioned in the past. There have also been suggestions that maybe it comes from Heliopolis, which was a very important place to worship the sun God in ancient Egypt. We really don't know. We don't even know when it was transported to Rashid or Rosette, Rosetta, as it was called by the French and Italians probably during the Mamluk era. Because it was very common, especially in the Mamluk era, that to reuse stones, Ancient Egyptian spolia, as we call it, in new buildings. So actually, the very early history of the Rosetta Stone is not very well known. Even though we have all this information historically on the stone, because of the text, we don't actually know where it was set up and.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

Well, let's then focus on that text a bit more. You've kind of highlighted this already, but I want to go back to it just quickly. So an official document, three different languages, but what exactly is it talking about?

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yeah, so it's a priestly decree in which basically the king is given divine honors. It has a long list of these honors. For example, his statue has to be put up in the temple next to the statue of the God. The statue has to be carried around in processions next to the statue of the God. The priests have to honor the statue of the king, and so on. So it's really putting the king on the level of the gods, actually. Why does he deserve all these honors? Because he did a lot of good deeds for the country, obviously. He protected the country from invaders and rebels. He restored temples, he founded new ones. He lowered taxes. Very popular. He guaranteed allowances for the animal code and so on. And because of all this, he should really be treated like a God. The important thing about the content of this text is that this is not very Egyptian. So this is a kind of way of honoring a leader that was very popular or common from the 5th century onwards in the Hellenistic world in Greece, but wouldn't have been common in Pharaonic. In earlier Pharaonic times, when the pharaoh was really an intermediary between the divine and the human world. So he would not have to be considered a God by his subjects. He would already be very close to the gods. So we can be pretty sure that the text or the type of text was also imported to Egypt from Greece.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

Right. But that's so interesting because once again, the context of the Hellenistic world this time that I find absolutely fascinating, the emergence of these divine ruler cults. But it's so interesting is that with a place like Ancient Egypt, where the pharaoh was always seen as a God in their own right, and the Ptolemies having to almost impose their own version of it on the people, on the priests, And a great example to see that we think of the Rosetta Stone with the deciphering of hieroglyphs, which we'll get to. But it's also fascinating in, I'm presuming in that development of divine ruler cult in Ptolemaic Egypt too?

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yes. It's a question why they felt they had to do that. It was probably just a practice that they were familiar with in their region and they just brought it to Egypt. And this is a very good example of this assimilation between different cultures that is always happening when a foreign power comes into a new country. And the Ptolemaic kings were very keen to be depicted as pharaohs and to continue that tradition of that powerful ruler. They just gave it a little bit of a local feel.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

Bit of a local feel. And Rosetta. Let's focus on Rosetta. I know that you went to modern Rasheed Rosetta not too long ago. Whereabouts are we talking with Rosetta in Egypt today?

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

So as a place, it's located on the north coast of Egypt, a bit east of Alexandria. It didn't exist in Pharaonic times. It was founded actually much later, during the Greco Roman period. Even its foundation is not very clear, its exact moment of foundation. I mean, it was called Rosette by the French when they were there. And so when the stone was found, they called it the Pierre de Rosette. So it became Rosette Stone in English. It's present day Rashid. It's very vibrant, vibrant city with a diverse heritage. And we also like to show that in the exhibition, it's not just the place where the Rosetta Stone comes from, it's also a city in its own right where people are living, communicating and have ideas about their heritage and have ideas about what they would like the world to know about their city.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

So much more to the story, as you revealed in your exhibition. Well, you mentioned the French there. So let's therefore go on in time to the early 19th century, or is it the late 18th century? Talk to me about the discovery or the rediscovery of the Rosetta Stone.

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yes. So Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798. This story is very well known, of course. And during the works of the fortifications along the north coast of Egypt at Rashid, they discovered Rosetta Stone in the foundations of the building. So it was reused as a building block because it's a strong, compact stone. So it was probably useful. And it was immediately realized that the stone could be important for the decipherment. In fact, it was immediately in the newspapers in Egypt that potentially they had discovered the key to decipherment, which is quite amazing if you think about the kind of context we're in, a political context, that the soldiers restoring the fort and they immediately realized how important this could potentially be for our understanding of human history. Which is like, yeah, quite an amazing idea that so soon it was an important, important object and because of the three scripts and Greek that was known at the time. So they immediately realized that perhaps the Greek text could help us to understand the two Egyptian languages because demotic that

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

hadn't also been translated at that time. It's not just the hieroglyphs, is it? And I mean, focusing a bit more on that. So it seems as if before this stone is discovered, is there already attempts by people across the known world to try and decipher this hieroglyphic, this Egyptian ancient script?

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yes, there have been attempts, of course, since Greco Roman times, very soon after hieroglyphs fell out of use. It's a script that is very pictorial, it's beautiful, it's intriguing. So of course you will immediately have scholars and anyone in fact who looks at this to have ideas about it to try to understand what these picture like signs may say. And so in the exhibition we start in the medit medieval period in Egypt itself, where objects were sitting on the banks of the Nile and just common people passing by every day had ideas about these objects and attributed mainly magical powers to it because they thought that these hieroglyphs contained some secret knowledge about the nature of everything. And legends started to develop around certain objects. And then of course, in the Arab medieval period, you have a lot of scholars also who traveled to Egypt and who, who are amazed by the temples and the tombs they visit and they also start writing about hieroglyphs.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

Was that a key part of the exhibition you were keen to highlight? Because so often we think of Champollier Young, maybe William Banks as well. But the story of the actual attempts to decipher hieroglyphs, it actually starts much, much earlier than the actual finding of the Rosetta Stone.

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yes. And that was important to show also because scholars like Thomas Young and Jean Francois Champollion, they built on the work of previous scholars and of previous y statements that have been made and steps in the right direction. These scholars didn't have the Rosetta Stone, they didn't have bilingual texts. So it's really important to have one language or script that is known to give you access to the unknown language. But yeah, these publications and these works were very important. We also have to realize that it's again a matter of distribution. We didn't have the Internet at the time, so it was also a matter of how later scholars could have access to these earlier public. They were mostly written in Arabic, of course. So somebody like Champollion is fluent in Arabic, so thereby has access to these sources of medieval Arab travelers. But so it required later scholars in Europe during the Renaissance and later to learn Arabic in order to have access to all these other earlier scholars.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

And I guess it's also important to highlight, as we'll get into, like, the importance of cooperation at that time, isn't it? The sending back and forwards of descriptions, of reliefs, of drawings, and so on and so forth. So that library keeps growing and growing and growing, which by the time of the early 19th century, I'm guessing even with the Napoleonic War raging, that library is starting to grow. The amount of information is starting to grow alongside the Rosetta Stone.

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yes. So, I mean, moving from the Arab medieval period, it takes some time for these manuscripts to arrive in Europe. That really only happens in the 15th, 16th century, when slowly European scholars start to have access to this. And this increases as more travelers go to Egypt in the 17th century, 18th century. And it's really a matter of distributing drawings, descriptions, notes, and scholars being in contact with each other.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

And a slight tangent on the hieroglyphs, hieroglyphic system itself. So you mentioned all of these symbols, all of these images. Would you mind just kind of explaining how the hieroglyph system, how it worked?

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yes. So the trick is, was and still is, to understand that it's not an alphabetic script. So this was for the scholars of the early 18th and 19th century, even though they had the Rosetta Stone, they were mostly familiar with Arabic scripts. Even scholars that were experts in Oriental languages. Those Oriental languages were usually alphabetic. So the idea that you have a writing system that is partly alphabetic, it has a few alphabetic signs, but it has all these other signs, and it has signs that you should read and you should not read. This was really difficult to discover. So basically, we prefer to speak about one letter signs rather than alphab signs, because you also have two and three letter signs. You have signs that are entire words, and you have signs that you should not read, but they indicate the meaning of something. We call them classifiers or determinatives. So, for example, the words for book or the verb to write or the person who writes, they all have the same root, and there is the classifier that will tell you whether you should read it as book or scribe or writing. So it's a hybrid system. It's a mix of many different kinds of signs. At the peak of classical literature, we have about 650 signs.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

It's a massive Alphabet. Well, not Alphabet Feels like the word that should not be spoken. It's a massive amount of different symbols in this ancient language which the ancient Egyptians knew.

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yes.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

And so if we continue from there in regards to another word that I think we'll be talking about quite a bit as we go to the deciphering story, cartouche. What is this and how does this also fit into the hieroglyphic?

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yes, so the cartouche is basically an oval. It's an elongated shen ring. So it's a ring that is an eternal ring. It's shen also. The word means it's a circular movement that continues. It's the idea of the continuation of something. It's usually around. It's a circle that is elongated in order to put the name of the king in there. So this is not just to contain the name of the king, but there's a huge symbolism behind this. So the king's name is eternal, is forever, and so on. And this was a key thing for scholars to discover, that this oval contained the name of the king. And within that, especially in the Ptolemaic period, because they're basically Greek Macedonian kings, they have foreign names. Foreign names were always spelled phonetically, so in a way alphabetically. So that means that one sign is one sound. So in those cartouches, you have this alphabetic spelling in the Ptolemaic period, which led to the first breakthrough of being able to read phonetically the name of the king. And then Champollion's discovery is that this actually also happened before and during the Pharaonic period, where you can have, again, this mix of signs in a cartouche.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

All right, well, let's delve into this deciphering story and how the Rosetta Stone fits into that whole narrative then. Now, Ilona. So we've got to the French rediscovering the Rosetta Stone when they are in Egypt in the late 18th, early early 19th centuries. So how does the Rosetta Stone therefore end up in London at the British Museum?

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Well, this is a bit the result of political history. So at a certain point, the French army has to surrender to the combined forces, which is basically the British and the Egyptian army. Egypt, of course, at the time under Ottoman rule had been for some time. And the terms of surrender included stipulations about the objects that the fren collected during their time in Egypt. And it was decided that 22 objects would be given to the British by the French. And this was drawn up in Article 16 in the Capitulation document. So the capitulation of Alexandria in 1801. And this is a document that we also show in the exhibition. It's kept in the National Archives and it was signed by the representatives of the three governments of the French, the British and the Egyptians government. This is how the Rosetta stone was part of these 22 objects and they were then transported to the UK yeah, to England. First they arrived in Portsmouth in 1802. Then they went to the Society of Antiquarius for a very short moment, for a few months only before they came to the British Museum. And the British Museum was a small place at the time. It was only basically consisted of the Montagu House, which was too small to host all these objects. And so the arrival of these objects also encouraged the museum to expand and to build extra galleries and to then replace the Montagu House with the building that you see nowadays.

[Jack Myers]

What makes a leader worth following?

[Tim Spengler]

What should you really care about in your job? As technology is changing so quickly, is

[Jack Myers]

it just gonna be about machines talking to other machines? I mean, should you quit your job and start something on your own? What would that take?

[Tim Spengler]

What does success and risk look like when we're all at the starting gate together?

[Jack Myers]

These are the questions we answer each week on Lead Human with Jack Myers and Tim Spengler.

[Tim Spengler]

Join us each week and subscribe at your favorite podcast platform and YouTube.

[Jack Myers]

We'll tell stories, we'll hear from some of the best, and we'll try to figure this out together.

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

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[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Well, that's cool.

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[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

It's interesting because we always think of the Rosetta Stone as that object that comes to the British Museum. But as you mentioned there, that's just one of 22 objects. There are other objects which also come. Yes, British Museum. What objects were they? I'm not going to test you on every single one. Only a couple.

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yeah, no worries. Well, they were also. Yeah, objects that were discovered. Basically, as I mentioned, they were collected by the French. A lot of them were heavy objects, very heavy objects, because they were also meant to keep the boat still at sea. So we have two. For example, we have two huge sarcophagi, stone sarcophagi, and one of them is in the exhibition. Both of them are really interesting in terms of the history of early engagement with hieroglyphs because the one that is in the exhibition was considered to be the enchanted basement or enchanted basin. So the enchanted basin, because if you touch the water within it, you could be cured of love sickness. This was a legend that developed around this particular sarcophagus. The other one that is not in the exhibition was long believed to be the tomb of Alexander.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

Yes. I love this story. Come on, let's talk about this. Come on.

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yes. So I decided to use the other one in the exhibition because I thought the stories that developed around the other one as less well known. The fact that the other one was considered the tomb of Alexander is better known. So I focus on the other one.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

Let's not ruin the surprise of what it actually is once hieroglyphs are deciphered. We'll get to that, won't we, in a bit. But it's such an amazing story and that alongside the Rosetta Stone. And it's so fascinating. They've got so many of these other objects as well, which I'm guessing at this time, when they do come to the British Museum and there's still a lot of mystery around what these hieroglyphs mean. Is there a lot of excitement in Britain when they come to the British Museum and they see all these objects there?

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yes. It's spectacular to suddenly have so many large objects arriving at the museum. And in England, as everywhere in Europe and in the rest of the world, there weren't that many big objects. So. So very few people actually had the opportunity to see monumental hieroglyphs and objects of that size in collections in Europe in general. So it was a very exciting moment. Absolutely. Of course, it takes some time for the museum to reorganize, to build and to expand before it becomes one of the first public institutions.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

All right, so how long is it before people, academics, scholars, start looking into the Rosetta Stone and seeing how it can help with. Of deciphering of the ancient Egyptian language?

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

That already starts very soon after discovering the stone. And while the stone was still in Egypt, the French, and then also immediately afterwards, the British make many copies of the text. So the French make a few casts. Even when the Rosetta Stone is then handed over to the British, they still allow the French to make more copies. So there was a lot of. On the scholarly level, there was a lot of collaboration. Then more copies were made of the Rosetta Stone. We actually have corresp between scholars who were still back here in England and were writing to friends and colleagues in Egypt and said, can you make another copy of the stone before you put it on the boat, just in case something happens that we have a copy of the stone? They were all very, very keen to have the text available in some kind of copy, whether it was a cast or a print, because they used the Rosetta Stone as a printing block. So they would put ink on the block and then roll it as a print. Because the script is so small, it's really difficult to copy in a traditional way, especially if you don't know what you're copying. So it's better to use it as a printing block. And these copies were distributed all over Europe, and within two or three years after the discovery, every country had a copy of the Rosetta Stone.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

Who are some of the key figures from this period, then, who have got copies of the Rosetta Stone, and then start getting to work, seeing how that can help in the deciphering of hieroglyphs.

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yeah. So a very important group of scholars are the French scholars who had joined Napoleon's ar. So, as we know, Napoleon took a large group of scholars with him who, in addition to his political adventure, were supposed to document the country, Ancient Egypt, the monuments, modern Egypt, the customs, the nature, and so on, and they went back home with their copies and also with copies of the Rosetta Stone. And they were quite instrumental in distributing these copies in France. Again, we have a lot of correspondence between some of those scholars and Champollion who tries to get a copy of the Rosetta Stone. And he complains copy is not good enough and he wants a new copy. And then at a certain point, he writes to the Royal Society here in England asking for a new cast of the stone and so on and so forth. So there was a lot of talk about getting good copies of the Rosetta Stone.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

Right. And one of these other figures, who. Let's talk about now, Thomas Young. So Thomas Young, who is this figure on the other side of the Channel.

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yes. So he's a very different kind of person, very different from Champollion in character and approach. He is what we call a polymath, was a physician, a mathematician, a scientist. He had contributed immensely to the theory of light, and then, in his leisurely hours, did a bit of Egyptology later in his life. He was older than Champollion when he started working on the Rosetta Stone, which also makes a difference, I guess. And for him, it was kind of like an experiment, a scientific experiment to decipher hieroglyphs. More like a mathematical game almost. Whereas Champollion really saw the decipherment as a way to enter Ancient Egypt and to understand the culture, whereas for Champollion, it was a venture in itself, an intellectual challenge.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

Right. Well, this challenge, if it keeps going. So what's the first significant breakthrough, I guess, when looking at the Rosetta Stone, with helping with this decipherment, with this decoding.

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yes. So in 1818, 1819, Thomas Young starts to publish his first discoveries, which worry Champollon back in France, and he's like, oh, I have to hurry and I have to make. I have to work harder, because there is this English scholar. This is really the first time when they get in proper contact with each other or hear from each other. And for Thomas Young, he works a lot on the Demotic, so the middle part of the Rosetta Stone. And he tries to read the royal names. Again, it goes back to the royal names in the cartouches, the names of Ptolemy in the first place. He reads the name of Ptolemy correctly, but his analysis of the individual signs are slightly wrong because he reads them as syllables. But it's a very good step in the right direction. And so what Thomas Young does is basically he looks at the Greek text. Thomas Young was also very well trained in Greek and Latin, so very classically trained. And he looks at the position of words in the Greek text that occur many times, like the title basileios, the word for temple. And he tries to find in more or less the same place in the Demotic text, the same cluster of signs. And he manages to identify many words like this, even though he can't perhaps read the individual signs. He is able to give a first translation of some of the sentences in the Rosetta Stone. And that's what he publishes first, anonymously. This is the problem in the later debate of who was the first. And that is something that again encourages other scholars to continue working.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

And I mean, that's interesting because sometimes you associate Jung with that Ptolemy, Cartouche and the hieroglyphs. But from what you're saying there, Ilona, he also spends a lot of time and makes some significant progress in deciphering Demotic as well. And that is that sometimes overlooked that part of the story compared with the hieroglyphs, I think.

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

So there's scholars who even say that Thomas Young is the decipherer of the Demotic. I don't think you can say that because it is really the same language, it's the same writing system. So it really goes together. And there were a few key understandings that Thomas Young at least didn't publish in this way, in the correct way, as reading the names correctly. This is refined by Champollion much later. But, yeah, I think the role of Thomas Young is not very clear always in the story, but he does go very far in reading large parts of the Rosetta Stone.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

So we have this anonymous publication in the late 1810s, nearly 1820s, getting champollion, he gets a copy of it. And the Rosetta Stone is proving important, but it is also important to highlight that at this time there are other objects, other people are working on things which ultimately will contribute to this hieroglyphic decipherment. Going further.

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yeah, so even Thomas Young himself was looking at other objects, mainly mummy wrappings and mummy labels, because those were kind of objects that were distributed in Europe since the 15th cent. So they were available mummy wrappings because of the mummy unwrapping events that were going on at the time. And people who attended a mummy wrapping event received a piece of the linen, preferably with some writing on it, and this was distributed across Europe and amongst scholars. Papyri were also very important. So Thomas Young has a few friends who travel to Egypt and bring back papyri, which was allowed at the time. And all these sources give him access to different kinds of texts. And that was the same for scholars working in Europe. It was mostly those small objects, mummy labels, mummy wrappings and papyri that they were also looking at, in addition to the Rosetta Stone. And some of them are in the exhibition.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

In the exhibition. And I'm guessing it feels like we probably should mention the name William Banks. Is he one of these figures? He also plays a key role in communicating with Young. I'm guessing also Champollion as well, from his ventures and what he brings back at that time. Is it also important to mention that part of the story?

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yeah. So Banks was actually very. And Young is communicating with him. Banks travels through Egypt and discovers, for example, an obelisk in Philly that he later brings back and puts up in his garden, which will provide a missing link for both Thomas Young and Champollion. Very interesting is the correspondence between Thomas Young and Banks. And at a certain point, Young writes to the father of Banks because he doesn't know where Banks is exactly in Egypt. And it was obviously difficult to send letters to someone who's traveling in Egypt. Egypt at the time. So we display this letter in the exhibition and it's very nice because Thomas Young not only writes the letter, but also at the end, gives a few spellings of hieroglyphs that he would like Banks to check in the temples of Egypt, but he sends it to his father because he thinks maybe his father knows exactly where he is in the country and is also corresponding with him. So he said, would you mind passing on this letter? Banks receives this letter while he's in Egypt, and he does go and look for specifically those names and those cartouches that Jung would like to know about. And. Yeah, and he finds them and he reads them and he copies them and he brings back these copies to England and so on and so forth. Yeah, he's very instrumental to the story. As I mentioned, the obelisk that comes back, the Kingston Lacy obelisk, provides a missing link because it gives the scholars the name of Cleopatra. Acast powers the world's best podcasts.

[Jack Myers]

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[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

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[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

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[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

The name Cleopatra. So they now know the hieroglyphic cartouche for two key figures there with Ptolemy and Cleopatra. So how does this therefore ultimately result in the big eureka breakthrough of Champollion?

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yes. So important is that Banks copies the text of on the obelisk and identifies the cartouche of Cleopatra, but doesn't analyze the cartouche. There is a bit of discussion whether Champollion saw this copy or not. So we know for sure that these copies of this obelisk were sent to Paris because they were in contact with some scholars in Paris, both Young and Banks. We don't know whether Champollion saw this particular annotated version of the copy, but there's also, at the same time, pieces in in France circulating also with the name of Cleopatra. The important thing about that cartouche is that it shares four letters with the cartouche of Ptolemy. And this is what Jung kind of misses and what Champollion uses to refine Jung's readings. So these four letters in Cleopatra mean that Jung's readings of those hieroglyphs as syllables cannot be correct. Correct. They have to be alphabetic letters in order to be used so easily in other names. And this is what Champollion will publish in his 1822 letter.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

And that's the famous letter with the ultimate decoding of the hieroglyphs?

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yes.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

I mean, so in regards to all of that, the Rosetta Stone, this renowned object, how significant is it in the whole deciphering of hieroglyphs? It seems to be important, but not the only object that ultimately contributes to that big break.

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Well, yeah, there were many other objects that were used, but I think the Rosetta Stone is more than providing a text. It also accelerates the process of decipherment. It's because of the Rosetta Stone that people are going to look for these other objects. And the fact that Thomas Young asks Banks to look for the cartouche of Ptolemy and Cleopatra on other monuments, because Cleopatra was known, even though they didn't have her name. Of course, she was a known king from classical sources. Many of these kings were known from the Bible. So an awareness that these names must have been somewhere. But I think because of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, there is this need to find parallels for these names that were first read in the text on the Rosetta Stone. So it's a very important object to set that whole process in motion.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

If you want the Kickstarter, isn't it? I mean, Elena, just before we completely wrap up, I'd love to ask also about the legacy of this decoding. And I know that's something you get across in the exhibition, too. I mean, because the reaction to this script being deciphered, what is the reaction in the whole world, in Britain, in France and so on and so forth, once this decipherment has been made, is it almost like the cursive has been revealed and there's lots of Egyptomania? And does that start really taking root?

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yeah, definitely. There is a huge interest in Egypt already, starting from Napoleon's expedition and the reports and the drawings and the travel accounts also that arrive in Egypt. But I think with the decipherment of hieroglyphs, it's another wave of excitement. But there were many different reactions to this. So once Champollion reads his letter in 1822, there is not an immediate acceptance that all of this was correct. So there were also a lot of critics who said, well, you know, actually, he's just building on what predecessors have done. Is it correct? How important is this? So there was also some hesitation by many scholars who still found it difficult that to acknowledge that there is an ancient culture like the Egyptian one, who would precede ancient Greece and Rome in being our predecessors, like, in being the predecessor of this classical culture that had always been understood as the foundations of European culture. Greece And Rome being part of Europe, very much so. To understand that there's this ancient civilization that is older, much older, not just a little bit older, that is in Africa also in a different place, was really quite shocking. And there was a lot of resistance to acknowledging that our human history goes back further in time to something that is perhaps not European. That took some time. But then very soon afterwards also Champollion himself refined his own system. And then there's other scholars who also confirm that he really laid the ground and the system works as he says it works. And there was a lot of discussion and it really spurred a lot of intellectual criticism. Discussion as research should. There should be a lot of debate. It was not that everybody immediately accepted, okay, this is now it, and we have everything we need. There was a lot of debate going on still. Yeah.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

And presumably, I'm guessing as the news spreads and the resistance decreases, it allows these academics and others from all across the world to start re examining objects that had already been discovered. For instance, those other objects that were taken to the British Museum at the same time as the stone.

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Yes, absolutely. And it spreads across the world also and to other countries. So of course, Britain and France have a huge history in Egyptology. Very soon Germany joins this kind of early Egyptology. And Egypt, of course, has always been there and then other countries. And nowadays Egyptology is taught from South America to Japan. So, yeah, it's a long process that is still going on. I think very soon after the decipherment, it was really about looking at objects again, finding more texts. Also the awareness that texts have to be copied accurately. In Egypt, there was also immediately the debate about taking objects out of context.

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Text.

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Isn't it better to copy the inscriptions while they are in situ in the temples, in the tombs, rather than taking them out? This is all something that comes out of this decipherment in my feeling. And again, British scholars played enormously important role in that early phase of doing epigraphy in Egypt and established a very important school of epigraphy within the field of Egyptology. So all these discussions multiply and are not only about understanding the text, but also about the preservation of Egyptian heritage. And. And all of that comes out of this understanding of what the ancient Egyptian civilization really means to us.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

And Tomb of Alexander, not the Tomb of Alexander, as it turned out.

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Was it, for example?

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

Yeah, I was in Karnak not too long ago and walking through that incredible place and like hieroglyphics everywhere and talking to someone who just knew what every hieroglyph was and what it meant, it just reinforces. I know the decipherment was 200 years ago, but just how fascinating how much that, therefore that revealed, starting with the Rosetta Stone and those people before the Rosetta Stone, those medieval Arab scholars and so forth, how, as you say, even to this day it will continue to fascinate so many people across the world. Being able to have people point out what this symbol means, what it represents and what stories they can tell, the variety of stories it tells of ancient Egyptian history, which spanned thousands of. Of you.

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Absolutely. And especially Karnak Temple is one of those temples that was founded at a certain point and then added on to by kings successively through Egyptian history. And it has this very layered history of ancient Egypt in one place, if you want. It's a huge place because of this long history.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

Well, Ilona, this has been absolutely amazing. Last but certainly not least, you have curated with a great team, this remarkable new exhibition at the British Museum. Talk to me a little bit about the exhibition, it seems, and what it all is.

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

So I think, yeah, it's. What is perhaps most impressive about it is that it covers such a long breadth of time. So we start in 3250 BC, when the Egyptian writing system emerges, or at least we have the first evidence for until present day. So we're looking at 5,000 years of ancient Egyptian history, but also of history of Egyptology and scholarly work that is being done on the ancient Egyptian culture and trying to still till this day try to understand it and refine our understanding of ancient Egypt. The exhibition tells the story of decipherments, the engagement with hieroglyphs from the 5th, 6th century onwards until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799, and then really goes into depth, into the story of decipherment itself. The race of decipherment, which is presented as a race between Champollion and Thomas Young, with also contributions of these other schol. It shows the objects that were used, some of the objects that were used in addition to the Rosetta Stone. And then there is a large last part that talks about the legacy and the impact of the ciphermen. So what do we know now about Egypt that we wouldn't know if we couldn't read? Hieroglyphs.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

Fantastic. And you've got a copy of your book in front of us there. And I see that the title is Hieroglyphs Unlocking Ancient Egypt. Because it was that unlocking wasn't Thessalona. Well, it just goes for me to say this has been Great. And thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today.

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

You're welcome. It was a pleasure.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

Well, there you go. There was Dr. Ilona Rogorski talking all about the Rosetta Stone, its discovery and its role ultimately in the deciphering of hieroglyphs, the unlocking of ancient Egypt. I hope you enjoyed the episode that was originally recorded back in 20, 20, 22. I can't believe almost four years ago I went to the British Museum to do that episode with Ilona. It doesn't feel that long ago at all. So we've recorded many episodes on ancient Egypt over the years, but two I'll recommend that kind of align with this one on the Rosetta stone. Well, they're two episodes with Dr. Chris Norton, the first of which we actually recorded in our first ever Year of the Ancients. So that is, that is some five years ago now, six years ago. And that was an episode all about how ancient Egypt stayed Egyptian over so many centuries, over millennia, down into Ptolemaic times, too. And that episode is called How Ancient Egypt Stayed Egyptian. He also recorded an episode later on with Chris all about the tomb of Alexander the Great, which also, of course, has a link, a clear link to one of the objects that came to Britain alongside the Rosetta Stone. So we'll put a link to both of those episodes with Chris in the show. Notes. If you want more ancient Egypt content on the Ancients, thank you for listening to this episode of the Ancients. Please make sure to follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us. You'll be doing us a big favor if you'd be kind enough to leave us a rating as well. Well, we'd really appreciate that. Lastly, don't forget, you can also sign up to History History hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign [e-mail] subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Acast powers the world's best podcasts.

[Host (Ancients Podcast)]

Here's a show that we recommend.

[Jameela Jamil]

What if you laughed all through your commute or if you heard the funniest story while at the gym?

[Dr. Ilona Rogorski]

Well, now you can.

[Jameela Jamil]

I'm Jameela Jamil, and guests on my new podcast Wrong Turns share their most mortifying and hilarious disaster stories. I'm talking people like Mae Martin, Bob the Drag Queen, Catherine Ryan, Jake Johnson, Margaret Cho, Simon Pegg, Penn Badgley, and so many more. So let's listen wherever you get your podcast. Wrong turns where dignity goes to die.

[Jack Myers]

Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere.

[Carvana/Aura Advertiser]

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