The Rosetta Stone

Following a Pagan path that is based on an ancient religion is much easier when you have sufficient information about the culture and religious practices of the time.

Often, much of that past is lost. But sometimes it takes only a single archaeological item to bring the knowledge of the past into the present. In the case of ancient Egypt, that one object is the Rosetta stone.

The stone is a large piece of basalt, and was carved in 196 BCE by priests under the reign of Ptolemy V. A passage of text about the great and Godly works of Ptolemy was carved into the stone in 3 languages: Greek, Demotic, and in hieroglyphics. It was discovered in 1799 by Napoleon's soldiers who were excavating a fort. The stone was named for a nearby village.

Most people associate ancient Egyptian writing with the pictorial hieroglyphs seen in the ruins of nearly every temple, tomb and pyramid. The truth is that only the priests used this script, while the more common folk used a much simpler demotic script.

Because the languages are so different from one another, the Rosetta stone was not immediately understood or translated. It was more than 20 years later when Jean-Francois Champollion finally translated the hieroglyphic portion of the stone. Champollion's knowledge of Greek and Coptic were the key in finally unlocking the stone. Coptic is a more recent 'version' of the older demotic script, and comparisons were made between the two languages to help translate the demotic portion of the stone.

Although the stone only contained one passage, there was enough hieroglyphic text that further translating was possible from other Egyptian writings. So from that one tri-lingual stone, nearly the entire language of the Egyptians has been opened up.

The vast amount of writings left by the Egyptians have given us an amazing view into their lives, once we learned how to read their hieroglyphic writing.

The stone currently resides in the British Museum.