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How the Rosetta Stone Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the all new Toyota Corolla. Welcome
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Speaker 1: to Stuff You Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
0:16
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
0:19
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, and this is Stuff you Should Know, the
0:23
Speaker 1: Overly Hot Studio Edition. I have a bit of a chill. No,
0:28
Speaker 1: you don't, I do. I'm not at all hot. Yeah.
0:31
Speaker 1: You also said that it hurt when our new coworker
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Speaker 1: shook your hand. So what does that say that it
0:39
Speaker 1: is a strong hand shape. Okay, and you're always cold? Yeah,
0:42
Speaker 1: it's always lamps in here. Well, Jerry's decorated. It's nice.
0:46
Speaker 1: It is nice. It's just like an Ikea cattalog. That's right. Um, Chuck,
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Speaker 1: how many times have you been to Egypt? Um? Kinding
0:55
Speaker 1: that trip in high school? Zero? Same here? Yeah, and
1:00
Speaker 1: yet we know an awful lot about Egypt. Yeah, it's popular,
1:05
Speaker 1: especially ancient Egypt. Like I would wager that we probably
1:08
Speaker 1: know more about ancient Egypt than modern Egypt most people
1:12
Speaker 1: in the West. Yeah, is there a modern Egypt? There is?
1:15
Speaker 1: And uh, it's undergoing quite a bit of turmoil right now. Um, Okay,
1:21
Speaker 1: I just wanted to make sure that you knew that
1:22
Speaker 1: Egypt was still around. Kay Um. Well, the reason that
1:26
Speaker 1: you and I know a lot about Egypt is thanks
1:29
Speaker 1: to a soft science one of the humanities. You would
1:33
Speaker 1: call it um called egyptology, pretty on the nose name
1:38
Speaker 1: for the study of ancient Egypt. It's a real popular
1:42
Speaker 1: thing and has been for a while a while, but
1:45
Speaker 1: not too terribly long, I would say, about the beginning
1:48
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century. Uh. And the reason that all
1:52
Speaker 1: of it was foster than that all of it came
1:54
Speaker 1: about and that we you and me know about Egypt
1:59
Speaker 1: was because of the discovery of a tablet known as
2:04
Speaker 1: the Rosetta stone. Right. But you can also go back
2:07
Speaker 1: even further and make the case that if it wasn't
2:09
Speaker 1: for Napoleon Bonaparte, we may not understand Egypt to this day. Yeah,
2:14
Speaker 1: that little guy, he wasn't that little though, is that right? Right?
2:17
Speaker 1: He was average height? Why why does why do people
2:20
Speaker 1: say that? Then? Where that come from? Because some doctor
2:22
Speaker 1: wrote down I think upon his death that he was
2:24
Speaker 1: five ft two. But what a lot of people don't
2:28
Speaker 1: realize is that the doctor was using the French inch,
2:33
Speaker 1: which is longer than the British Imperial inch. So when
2:39
Speaker 1: you translate five ft two from the French inch to
2:41
Speaker 1: the imperial he was about five six, which is average height.
2:46
Speaker 1: And uh. The other reason why he was called like
2:48
Speaker 1: the little Emperor by his armies was because compared to
2:53
Speaker 1: most of his bodyguards and his people he had around him,
2:56
Speaker 1: he was shorter than them. Yeah. I guess when you're
2:58
Speaker 1: five six, he wants some six four dudes or on you. Right. So,
3:01
Speaker 1: but the idea that he was a very short man
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Speaker 1: is is not correct. Yeah, I'd always heard that, but
3:06
Speaker 1: I did another story, the French Inch. There's your band
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Speaker 1: name for the day. Although I typically don't like rhyming names,
3:15
Speaker 1: French inch doesn't rhyme. It's just it sounds similar. I
3:19
Speaker 1: wouldn't call it a rhyme. French and inch, Yeah, French
3:23
Speaker 1: of the e and the eye. Yeah, that's nippicky. Well yeah,
3:27
Speaker 1: it's the vowels that rhyme, that the confidence. Yeah. But
3:30
Speaker 1: if you're Steve Maltmous and you put French at the
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Speaker 1: end of the line and an inch at the end
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Speaker 1: of another, it would be it would be rhymy and
3:36
Speaker 1: you'd sell a lot of records. That's right. Yeah. Um, yeah, Well,
3:40
Speaker 1: there was our pavement reference episode. That's becoming a daily
3:46
Speaker 1: thing too. So you want to get on with this, Yeah,
3:50
Speaker 1: let's do it. We're gonna be talking Rosetta Stone, not
3:52
Speaker 1: the language software, which neither one of us has ever used. No,
3:56
Speaker 1: we're talking about the the real thing, which is actually
4:00
Speaker 1: bigger than I thought. You know, many things are smaller
4:04
Speaker 1: for me, like when you see him in person, Lisa,
4:07
Speaker 1: of course, mona Lisa small. Like I went to England,
4:09
Speaker 1: I was like, big Ben, that ain't so big. Yeah,
4:12
Speaker 1: I don't think I had the impression of big Bembo.
4:15
Speaker 1: It's kind of underwhelmed. It definitely didn't seem big. Whereas
4:18
Speaker 1: the Eiffel Tower that was bigger than I thought. That
4:20
Speaker 1: is where I developed a fear of heights that still
4:23
Speaker 1: plagues me to this day. Like it literally happened to
4:26
Speaker 1: me on the Eiffel Tower on the way up. Never
4:29
Speaker 1: had a fear of heights in my entire life. On
4:31
Speaker 1: the way down, I like was hanging on to the
4:34
Speaker 1: fence and it took me forever to get down because
4:37
Speaker 1: I was suddenly deathly afraid of height. Just hit me
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Speaker 1: my brain Uh changed? How old were you? Uh? Seventeen
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Speaker 1: is wow? Yeah? I didn't go up to the top.
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Speaker 1: I probably missed out. I didn't either. It was the
4:51
Speaker 1: first level that got me really wow. Alright, so, um, anyway,
4:57
Speaker 1: where was I going? Oh, it's bigger than I thought
4:59
Speaker 1: it was. It is um black basalt, and it weighs
5:02
Speaker 1: about three quarters of a ton um inches high point
5:07
Speaker 1: five inches wide and twelve inches deep. And it's it's large,
5:11
Speaker 1: it's heavy, it's um. You didn't write this, did you? No? Um,
5:16
Speaker 1: it's about the size of a heavy coffee table. Were
5:18
Speaker 1: you about to make fun of something? I was just
5:21
Speaker 1: gonna say. Whoever wrote this ref referenced an l c
5:24
Speaker 1: D TV of medium size. Yeah, a medium screen l
5:27
Speaker 1: c D television. Oh, by the way, thank you to
5:29
Speaker 1: Teresa Dove fan request. That's who requested this one. Yeah. Okay, so, um,
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Speaker 1: it's larger than I thought. And I learned a lot
5:39
Speaker 1: about this. I thought the Rosetta stone because I'm a dummy.
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Speaker 1: Um was literally like, here's what our alphabet is, and
5:46
Speaker 1: here's what everything means, and now that you found it,
5:49
Speaker 1: you can decipher everything. Yeah. I think I had the
5:52
Speaker 1: same impression as well. Until I read this, I thought
5:55
Speaker 1: it was like created as a key to higher glyphics,
5:59
Speaker 1: not at all. Not so it was a government document. Basically,
6:03
Speaker 1: it's a stella stella. Stella is the plural. And uh,
6:07
Speaker 1: it's not just the Egyptians that use stella stella um.
6:11
Speaker 1: The Mayans have largely been figured out their language has
6:15
Speaker 1: from old stella. Yeah. Um. Well, and that's it. Those
6:19
Speaker 1: are the two that use stella. Yeah. In this case,
6:22
Speaker 1: it's an inscription carved in three different languages, Greek, hieroglyphics
6:28
Speaker 1: and demotic with the t not demonic. Yeah, demotic. But
6:33
Speaker 1: since I'm from the South, I saw it in my tea,
6:35
Speaker 1: so it might sound like I'm saying demonic um. And
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Speaker 1: basically it was in the three languages to ensure that
6:41
Speaker 1: everybody could read it because it was an official government decree.
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Speaker 1: Not super exciting though. No, it wasn't basically what the
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Speaker 1: Rosetta stone says. And like you said, it's in three languages.
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Speaker 1: There's a degree that says um. Essentially that Ptolemy the
6:55
Speaker 1: fifth is a great ruler and he is a righteous
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Speaker 1: worship or of all the right gods. So he's okay
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Speaker 1: in our book. And this decree was made by some
7:05
Speaker 1: priests who gathered at Memphis and they um inscribed the
7:11
Speaker 1: stoner had and inscribed and dated March, and it's not.
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Speaker 1: It doesn't actually say March hieroglyphics. It says eighteen must Shire,
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Speaker 1: which on the Egyptian calendar translates to something like um
7:27
Speaker 1: March uh. And then they got the because somewhere in
7:32
Speaker 1: there the references the ninth year of Ptolemy, the fifth reign,
7:37
Speaker 1: which is about so that's where they got the date
7:40
Speaker 1: from the what we would in the West equate it to. Yeah,
7:45
Speaker 1: so um, like we said, it doesn't say anything of
7:47
Speaker 1: particular interest at the time, it was an important message.
7:51
Speaker 1: But it's not the Rosetta stone because of what is
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Speaker 1: transcribed upon that stone. No, it's the fact that it's
7:57
Speaker 1: in three different languages. So there's like you said, hieroglyphics,
8:03
Speaker 1: Demotic and Greek, and hieroglyphics were a sacred um alphabet. Yeah,
8:11
Speaker 1: they used that for really important stuff. I didn't know
8:14
Speaker 1: this either. I thought just any old thing they wanted
8:16
Speaker 1: to write was a hieroglyphics. Now that's what they had
8:19
Speaker 1: demiotic for or demotic that was kind of like an
8:24
Speaker 1: abbreviated shorthand more vulgar version of hieroglyphics. Yeah, and in
8:29
Speaker 1: between that was hieratic um, which was slightly more complicated
8:35
Speaker 1: than demotic, but less complicated and not sacred like hieroglyphics. Yeah,
8:40
Speaker 1: it was like a kind of a transition between Um
8:43
Speaker 1: demotic and hieroglyphics. Curve right, so you can UM, so
8:48
Speaker 1: you could use um hieratic for like a business transaction.
8:55
Speaker 1: But if you were saying the king is a very
8:57
Speaker 1: righteous ruler and you mentioned the gods, you're to use hieroglyphics.
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Speaker 1: That's so to have it written in Greek UH demotic,
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Speaker 1: which was an offshoot of hieratic, which was an off
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Speaker 1: shoot of hieroglyphics, and UM hieroglyphics. These priests that gathered
9:17
Speaker 1: and issued this decree that was written on the Rosetta stone,
9:20
Speaker 1: they made sure that everyone in Egypt two was literate
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Speaker 1: could read this one way or another. Yeah, And it
9:26
Speaker 1: was sort of not a stroke of luck. I mean,
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Speaker 1: it was just smart thinking at the time, but ended
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Speaker 1: up being a stroke of luck because the three languages,
9:33
Speaker 1: I mean, without that, I don't think we we may
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Speaker 1: have never been able to figure out hieroglyphics. No agreed,
9:37
Speaker 1: And I've been lost forever exactly. Um. And that's that's
9:41
Speaker 1: not the only way that the Rosetta Stone was kind
9:44
Speaker 1: of a bit of fortune. But UM. So the reason
9:47
Speaker 1: that it was lost was up until the fourth century
9:51
Speaker 1: a d any average Egyptian could have read the Rosetta
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Speaker 1: Stone one way or another. But after that the egypt
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Speaker 1: it left the pharonic stage. Cleopatra is the last pharaoh
10:05
Speaker 1: of Egypt, and then it came to be ruled by
10:07
Speaker 1: the Greeks, later on the Romans, the Tlamites, UM, and
10:12
Speaker 1: a bunch of different foreigners or different groups. And with
10:17
Speaker 1: these groups came the introduction of new gods and the
10:22
Speaker 1: suppression of old gods. And since hieroglyphics were um very
10:28
Speaker 1: much religious in nature. They're sacred or holy, but associated
10:32
Speaker 1: with those old gods, hieroglyphics itself came to be cut
10:36
Speaker 1: off stop suppressed. Yeah, especially Christianity. Um. They tended to
10:41
Speaker 1: want to get rid of other competing gods and languages
10:45
Speaker 1: that are tied to those gods. Right, But luckily we
10:47
Speaker 1: still had Demotic, that's right, and Demotic wasn't taboo. UM.
10:52
Speaker 1: That eventually became what's known as Coptic, and Coptic used
10:58
Speaker 1: UM some Greek um and in a little bit of
11:01
Speaker 1: still of the hieroglyphic symbols. So there's still like this,
11:04
Speaker 1: just a little bit, very tenuous link between Coptic and hieroglyphics.
11:09
Speaker 1: But then Coptic is lost, it's pushed out by Arabic,
11:12
Speaker 1: and then that was like way gone, goodbye hieroglyphics. That's it.
11:17
Speaker 1: That was like the hieroglyphics is no longer understood by
11:21
Speaker 1: anyone walking planet Earth. And that means that all of
11:25
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptian civilization itself was lost thousand years aside
11:30
Speaker 1: from its structures, um, the the thought put into it,
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Speaker 1: the reasoning behind it, all the explanations, all of the inscriptions,
11:37
Speaker 1: all the writing all over these ancient buildings are understood
11:41
Speaker 1: by no one now. And then as a result of that,
11:45
Speaker 1: the buildings themselves, the last vestiges of this ancient civilization,
11:50
Speaker 1: are deconstructed and used for the next wave by new rulers,
11:55
Speaker 1: and so ancient Egyptian culture is lost to the mists
12:00
Speaker 1: of time. Yeah, wow, thanks very nice. Yeah, there was
12:04
Speaker 1: no love lost. They were basically like, we don't need
12:07
Speaker 1: this language anymore, we don't need these sacred buildings anymore.
12:09
Speaker 1: They're pagan anyway. Yeah, let's tear them all down, build
12:12
Speaker 1: up new ones. And oddly, the Rosetta stone was actually
12:17
Speaker 1: used as a buttress in a wall of a new building. Yes,
12:22
Speaker 1: so part of the construction. Right, that's how this is
12:25
Speaker 1: another way that this is all just stroke of luck
12:28
Speaker 1: after stroke of luck. So the first stroke of luck,
12:30
Speaker 1: as you pointed out, is that they just happened to
12:33
Speaker 1: decree that this thing be written in three languages, same
12:37
Speaker 1: message in three languages. Then it's used for a building
12:42
Speaker 1: a wall, right, Yeah, Then it happens to be discovered
12:47
Speaker 1: by some French who are marooned in Egypt because they
12:51
Speaker 1: got crushed by the British right when they tried to invade. Yeah,
12:54
Speaker 1: I guess let's talk about that person. The French thought, hey,
12:58
Speaker 1: we need to we need to get a stronghold on
13:01
Speaker 1: India eventually, and Napoleon said, I think a good way
13:04
Speaker 1: to do that is to start a little further away,
13:08
Speaker 1: and let's say Egypt. Let's cut off the the Brits
13:12
Speaker 1: access to the Nile River and that will really help
13:14
Speaker 1: our cause. Unfortunately, the Brits at a great navy and
13:19
Speaker 1: pretty much destroyed all their ships and stranded them in
13:21
Speaker 1: Egypt for what nineteen years? Yeah. Yeah. And so for
13:25
Speaker 1: the French, whose ships were now at the bottom of
13:29
Speaker 1: Abu Kir bay Um, they decided that they really kind
13:34
Speaker 1: of needed to set themselves to creating forts, like since
13:39
Speaker 1: we're here, right, um. And it wasn't just military that
13:42
Speaker 1: was there part of this invasion, this um strategy that
13:46
Speaker 1: Napoleon had come up with to take over Egypt, it
13:50
Speaker 1: was kind of a hearts and mind strategy too, and
13:53
Speaker 1: so he created something called the Institute of Egypt, also
13:56
Speaker 1: known as the Scientific and Artistic Commission uh mineral a.
14:00
Speaker 1: Just mathematicians, art historians, a lot of engineers, chemists, all
14:04
Speaker 1: of like, all of these people from the letters and
14:07
Speaker 1: sciences UM brought together to understand and study Egypt. Yeah,
14:13
Speaker 1: they were actually given military rank, but they weren't. I
14:16
Speaker 1: think that was just more of a here just so
14:20
Speaker 1: we'll call you military, Like, they weren't from military backgrounds,
14:23
Speaker 1: so they were thinkers. But they were among this invading
14:27
Speaker 1: force that was left stranded in France. So as the
14:31
Speaker 1: real military guys were billing the forts, the people from
14:34
Speaker 1: the Institute Egypt starts studying Egypt. Yeah, I guess they
14:38
Speaker 1: were the first Egyptologist. Yeah, boy, it was close. Uh,
14:43
Speaker 1: they definitely were. Uh, and it was very covert operation,
14:47
Speaker 1: like they weren't really allowed to talk about what they
14:49
Speaker 1: were doing that much except to just say, hey, we're
14:52
Speaker 1: following Napoleon's orders, acting on behalf of the good of
14:55
Speaker 1: the French Republic. This is what we're doing. Don't ask
14:58
Speaker 1: any questions, yeah, that's what. Don't ask why I have
15:00
Speaker 1: this measuring tape out or why I'm transcribing things from papyrus.
15:04
Speaker 1: But they did, um, they did become I guess embedded
15:08
Speaker 1: with the local population as well to help learn as
15:11
Speaker 1: much as they could. And so it's under this climate
15:14
Speaker 1: that French soldier one day, um finds this very polished
15:19
Speaker 1: black stone that's inscribed and something about it told him
15:24
Speaker 1: that it was pretty important. So we took it to
15:27
Speaker 1: these um early egyptologists, the French, and said, you guys
15:33
Speaker 1: think this is important and they said yes, yeah. That
15:36
Speaker 1: was Lieutenant Pierre Francois Bouchard, and uh, he took it
15:40
Speaker 1: to his boss and they they said, okay, this is
15:43
Speaker 1: weird that this is built into a wall, but it's
15:45
Speaker 1: clearly something of note and maybe we should take a
15:48
Speaker 1: closer look at it, and UM, immediately they started to
15:52
Speaker 1: get to work on trying to transcribe it. Super difficult
15:55
Speaker 1: at the time, UM, and would prove to be difficult
15:59
Speaker 1: over the years. UM. It eventually ended up in the
16:02
Speaker 1: hands of England, of course, but luckily these uh, the
16:07
Speaker 1: Institute of Egypt people made copies of it. Yeah, I
16:11
Speaker 1: think that like etchings or in the plaster molds and things.
16:14
Speaker 1: I'm sure, yeah, But they had readable copies of the
16:18
Speaker 1: Rosetta Stone, so when they did give it up to
16:21
Speaker 1: the British, it wasn't entirely lost to them, that's right,
16:24
Speaker 1: and give it up as in not here have this.
16:28
Speaker 1: It was more like here, we're taking this in the
16:31
Speaker 1: Treaty of Alexandria. We're gonna take this in a bunch
16:33
Speaker 1: of other stuff. So now basically you have the French
16:38
Speaker 1: and the British both have the Rosetta Stone. The one
16:42
Speaker 1: group that doesn't are the Egyptians. We'll get to that later. UM.
16:47
Speaker 1: And both of them recognized that this is a very
16:51
Speaker 1: very important something. They know that it's some sort of decree.
16:56
Speaker 1: They recognize that it's in three different languages, and I
16:58
Speaker 1: think it becomes obvious to them that this could be
17:01
Speaker 1: the key to understanding hieroglyphics, which people have tried to understand.
17:07
Speaker 1: This is not new people going back to a fellow
17:12
Speaker 1: named um Horapolo, who was a fifth century scholar. Supposedly
17:19
Speaker 1: he may not have actually existed. Um he created basically
17:24
Speaker 1: what was a translation for hieroglyphics, right, but it was
17:29
Speaker 1: a false translation, as we'll see. But you know, dating
17:32
Speaker 1: back basically from the moment that hieroglyphics were lost to history,
17:38
Speaker 1: people have tried to understand them. So these this this
17:41
Speaker 1: was the British and the French were aware of this,
17:44
Speaker 1: like this may be the key to these mysterious hieroglyphics,
17:47
Speaker 1: and this is important, so we're going to try to
17:49
Speaker 1: translate it. Yeah. Well it became a race really because
17:53
Speaker 1: they didn't like each other very much and they both
17:55
Speaker 1: wanted to be the first ones to figure out what
17:57
Speaker 1: these hieroglyphics meant and how to unlock this history and
18:02
Speaker 1: um so they sent their best, in their brightest on
18:04
Speaker 1: the English side, the British side, it was a scholar
18:07
Speaker 1: named Thomas Young, and then on the French side we
18:10
Speaker 1: had Jean Francois Champollon who he was sort of born
18:16
Speaker 1: to do this. Apparently he was way into Egypt as
18:19
Speaker 1: a kid even and as a young child said I'm
18:22
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna figure out hieroglyphics one day. Yeah. He
18:25
Speaker 1: was even called the Egyptian because he had dark skin
18:28
Speaker 1: and dark hair. And um, I think a magician like
18:32
Speaker 1: foretold his fame one day. Yeah, when he was born.
18:35
Speaker 1: Supposedly a magician said this guy's can be famous, and
18:38
Speaker 1: and he was and um, yeah, he was a very
18:41
Speaker 1: talented linguist. He studied under a guy named Um Sylvester
18:49
Speaker 1: de Sassy. Yeah, Antoine Isaac Sylvester de Saucy. Uh he um,
18:55
Speaker 1: who would take a crack at the Rosetta stone. But
18:57
Speaker 1: he trained uh Champolion. Is that how we're saying it. Yeah,
19:02
Speaker 1: sure he trained him. Um, but Champolion quickly became went
19:08
Speaker 1: from student to master. He applied for he applied to
19:11
Speaker 1: be a student at an institute in Paris, and they
19:14
Speaker 1: were impressed enough with his application that they said, how
19:18
Speaker 1: about you just skipped the school part and come beyond
19:19
Speaker 1: the faculty. That's pretty good. Yeah, that's a talented linguist. Yeah.
19:23
Speaker 1: They did the same thing when I applied to Georgia.
19:26
Speaker 1: Is that right? Like you just want to go and
19:27
Speaker 1: be an English teacher? Na, Oh really you turned it down. Huh. Sure,
19:31
Speaker 1: I wanted to be a student. Oh gotcha. Um. So
19:35
Speaker 1: before all this happens, Um, we we have the Greek
19:38
Speaker 1: inscription transcribed, which that was Reverend Stephen Watson in eighteen
19:42
Speaker 1: o two. And I don't want to say it was
19:44
Speaker 1: no big deal, but there were quite a few people
19:48
Speaker 1: that could have done this. It wasn't like unlocking hieroglyphics,
19:51
Speaker 1: but it was a necessary part of the process. Right,
19:54
Speaker 1: So we want to give him his due. So we
19:56
Speaker 1: have a we have a translation and accurate translation of
19:59
Speaker 1: what the says exactly. So that's step one. And if
20:03
Speaker 1: you have one translated, then if you're a linguist, I guess.
20:07
Speaker 1: I mean it sounds really difficult to do too. I
20:09
Speaker 1: mean it's I can't imagine the painstaking the process of
20:14
Speaker 1: figuring out and alphabet. Yeah, I mean, I think about
20:17
Speaker 1: how hard it is to translate a well known language
20:20
Speaker 1: and a language that you speak. Imagine translating uh, language
20:25
Speaker 1: that's totally lost into something understandable. Um. So we had
20:30
Speaker 1: the Greek and then eventually we had the demotic as well. Um. Yeah,
20:34
Speaker 1: thanks to Yeah Antoine Uh and that same year at
20:39
Speaker 1: the same time as Swedish diplomat named Aker balade Um
20:44
Speaker 1: also translated the demotic um and they both went about
20:48
Speaker 1: it two different ways. I thought this was pretty interesting. Yeah,
20:51
Speaker 1: so do saucy Um figured out that there were two
20:54
Speaker 1: proper names at least in there, Ptolemy and Alexander, and
20:58
Speaker 1: he used those two match up sounds and symbols. Um
21:02
Speaker 1: Awker Blode probably had the bigger breakthrough. He used a
21:07
Speaker 1: different technique. He recognized that there was something similar between
21:12
Speaker 1: demotic and coptic, and he was well schooled and coptic,
21:15
Speaker 1: which helped obviously. Yeah, that that was his big breakthrough.
21:19
Speaker 1: He he figured out what words spelled love, temple, and Greek,
21:23
Speaker 1: and he used that to form basically this rough uh
21:27
Speaker 1: structure for Demotic based on his awareness of coptic. Yeah,
21:31
Speaker 1: that's only eleven letters. It's pretty impressive. Yeah, but I mean,
21:34
Speaker 1: if you've got eleven letters, it's a decent I think
21:37
Speaker 1: they called it a skeletal outline. I guess that's what
21:39
Speaker 1: you'd have. Well, yeah, I mean, especially since Coptic was
21:42
Speaker 1: only what twenty two plus a couple more from hieroglyphics.
21:45
Speaker 1: It's like a big wheel of fortune game. Yes after that, right.
21:48
Speaker 1: So the thing is though, this established connection now between
21:52
Speaker 1: coptic and demotic and then demonic and hieroglyphics, since they're
21:56
Speaker 1: side by side, that kind of opened up this meant
22:00
Speaker 1: reality that would be needed to finally crack the hieroglyphics
22:03
Speaker 1: for for um, the Rosetta stone. And Thomas Young was
22:08
Speaker 1: the first to really try it. He was the British guy,
22:11
Speaker 1: and he got somewhat far, but he gave up. Yeah,
22:16
Speaker 1: he in eighteen fourteen. His big breakthrough was figuring out
22:19
Speaker 1: what a cartouche was, and that is um, it's they
22:24
Speaker 1: say oval, but it's a little more squared away with
22:27
Speaker 1: round edges, but it's a loop basically with hieroglyphic characters
22:31
Speaker 1: in it. And he figured out that these are not
22:35
Speaker 1: only proper names, but royal names. Anything in pain and
22:38
Speaker 1: containing a cartouche is a royal name, which was a
22:41
Speaker 1: big breakthrough because he identified Tolemy, the pharaoh's name in
22:45
Speaker 1: one of the car cartouches cartouche cartouches, and uh, his
22:53
Speaker 1: Queen Baronica was in there as well, so he said
22:56
Speaker 1: you know what again, I've got these two names now
22:58
Speaker 1: to work with hum but he was still working on
23:02
Speaker 1: Roppolo's false premise that hieroglyphics was not phonetic in nature
23:07
Speaker 1: and that it was based just on symbols. Right, That's
23:09
Speaker 1: what Horopolo's big contribution was to confuse a centuries worth
23:15
Speaker 1: of scholars bad for young because he was onto something
23:19
Speaker 1: and if he wasn't using that the fake or or
23:22
Speaker 1: not fake but just the poor system, then he might
23:24
Speaker 1: have figured it out. Right. So this is the thing
23:26
Speaker 1: like everyone believed for Apolo, because Popolo claimed that his
23:31
Speaker 1: translation was a direct translation from hieroglyphic. It was written
23:36
Speaker 1: in the fifth century a d. Right around the time
23:39
Speaker 1: we lost hieroglyphics, so it was considered to be a
23:44
Speaker 1: primary source and basically completely reasonable. Yeah, but it was wrong.
23:51
Speaker 1: It was wrong because it said that hieroglyphics are symbolic.
23:56
Speaker 1: So like, if you see a cart a picture that
24:00
Speaker 1: looks like a cart next to a cat and then
24:02
Speaker 1: a lizard, what that should say under a Hiropolos translation
24:07
Speaker 1: is cart, cat lizard. This kept throwing everybody off because
24:13
Speaker 1: it didn't make sense, especially right, especially when compared to
24:16
Speaker 1: the Greek translation and the translation of Demotic that didn't
24:19
Speaker 1: make any sense whatsoever. So, like you said, Young gave up,
24:23
Speaker 1: but he published his findings, and you can really strongly
24:26
Speaker 1: make a case that had it not been for Young's breakthrough, Uh,
24:29
Speaker 1: Champolion would not have cracked the Rosetta Stone. No, which
24:35
Speaker 1: uh we should mention here that like they should just
24:38
Speaker 1: accept each other as as co workers and colleagues and
24:42
Speaker 1: get along. But there was a competition that exists to
24:45
Speaker 1: this day of who what country claims that they translated
24:50
Speaker 1: the Rosetta Stone. The French still say that Champagnan was
24:52
Speaker 1: really the one. The Brits obviously say no, it was
24:55
Speaker 1: really Young. And even when they displayed it in nineteen
24:58
Speaker 1: seventy two with the one of the times it's left
25:00
Speaker 1: England or maybe the only time they let France display
25:04
Speaker 1: it for like a year, um, they argued about the
25:09
Speaker 1: size of the photos of the two on both sides
25:11
Speaker 1: of it, when in fact the photos were the same
25:14
Speaker 1: size of Young and Champion. Yeah, not photos but portraits. Yeah.
25:19
Speaker 1: But the French were like, well, no, Young's is bigger.
25:21
Speaker 1: The Brits were like, no, his is bigger, And they
25:23
Speaker 1: were the same size, so they were really just they
25:26
Speaker 1: never came to a common ground on who did it,
25:29
Speaker 1: when in fact they both did. And there were rumors
25:31
Speaker 1: apparently during that time that France was gonna to steal
25:35
Speaker 1: the Rosetta stone and keep it and not turn it
25:37
Speaker 1: back to England. And this is in the nineteen seventies,
25:39
Speaker 1: so it's not like a long time ago. Um. So
25:42
Speaker 1: Champagnon picked up in eighteen fourteen where Young left off
25:46
Speaker 1: and started to think, you know what, I need to
25:48
Speaker 1: think more about this, this simple thing that Harapolo like,
25:52
Speaker 1: I don't know if he he was on base after all.
25:55
Speaker 1: And that was actually the breakthrough he um. He got
25:58
Speaker 1: some old cartouches and he figured out, um, that the
26:03
Speaker 1: last two letters and one of them were identical. So
26:06
Speaker 1: that's a good thing because you know that it's the
26:08
Speaker 1: same letter. He figured out that it was the letter
26:11
Speaker 1: S and um. Then the first character was a circle,
26:14
Speaker 1: and he said, maybe that's the sun and in ancient Egypt,
26:17
Speaker 1: the sun god was raw and coptic. Yeah, and so
26:21
Speaker 1: basically figured out that that name was Ramseys. Yeah. Then
26:26
Speaker 1: that was a huge breakthrough. He figured out the the
26:28
Speaker 1: identical letters, the last two were S S, the first
26:31
Speaker 1: one was raw and since he knew that it was
26:34
Speaker 1: in a cartouche, that it was a royal name from
26:37
Speaker 1: that era, the only person it could have been was Ramsey.
26:40
Speaker 1: So that's how we cracked the code like you say yea,
26:42
Speaker 1: and cracked it in like, hey, this is a phonetic thing.
26:46
Speaker 1: He was wrong the whole time, and apparently he fainted
26:49
Speaker 1: on the spot, which is dramatic, kind of cute. He
26:53
Speaker 1: was French. Sure. Um. So out of that moment, Egyptology
26:59
Speaker 1: was fully born, Like now we had a way to
27:02
Speaker 1: understand all this stuff that hadn't been destroyed and re
27:05
Speaker 1: used as building material. Just took a long time though.
27:08
Speaker 1: It wasn't like they could just read it. It still
27:10
Speaker 1: took a lot of translating. Oh yeah, but they had
27:13
Speaker 1: the basis. Um. Yeah, all they've done is transcribe one
27:17
Speaker 1: single stella. They had millennia worth of things to like
27:22
Speaker 1: papyrus is and papyri um and building inscriptions and sarcopha
27:29
Speaker 1: guy and all that letters. Yeah whatever. Yeah, um, And
27:34
Speaker 1: so Egyptology is born. And now that it's understood, at
27:38
Speaker 1: that moment, there's also a great desire to protect Egypt
27:42
Speaker 1: and all of its treasures. Yeah, and to get things
27:45
Speaker 1: right because previous to that in Napoleon and gang did
27:47
Speaker 1: a pretty good job. But they also speculated a lot. Yeah,
27:50
Speaker 1: because they couldn't read hyard glyphics. Yeah, so they ended
27:53
Speaker 1: up correcting a lot of things about what they thought
27:55
Speaker 1: about Egypt. And Um, like you said, they wanted to
27:59
Speaker 1: protect things because Egypt at the time was I mean,
28:02
Speaker 1: they were selling these things off to collectors left and
28:05
Speaker 1: right because a they did another true value and be
28:08
Speaker 1: there was a market for it. Sure, doctors during the
28:11
Speaker 1: Middle Ages who were just big dummies would use mummies
28:15
Speaker 1: from Egypt. Uh, they grind it up and use it
28:17
Speaker 1: to cure disease, which didn't work. Um. And so there
28:22
Speaker 1: was this move to protect Egyptian antiquities from Egyptians. There
28:30
Speaker 1: was kind of this patriarchal mentality, especially among the British,
28:34
Speaker 1: that we need to get everything out of Egypt and
28:36
Speaker 1: into museums and into like the hands of us who
28:39
Speaker 1: will preserve them and not sell them to Middle Age
28:42
Speaker 1: or Middle Middle Ages doctors for cure alls. But to
28:49
Speaker 1: his credit, in my opinion, Champoleon argued very strongly in
28:53
Speaker 1: favor of keeping them in founding a museum in Egypt
28:57
Speaker 1: to store these keeping them in Egypt. Yeah. I think
29:00
Speaker 1: he was a little bit of a control freak, like
29:02
Speaker 1: he knew that he could care for things in the
29:04
Speaker 1: proper way and he I don't think he trusted even
29:07
Speaker 1: other museums at the time to care for things in
29:09
Speaker 1: the right way. And he was kind of right because
29:11
Speaker 1: a lot of it was destroyed. Yeah, Like apparently to
29:13
Speaker 1: preserve an ancient papyrus you have to store it in
29:16
Speaker 1: a low humidity um area. Yeah, in a chamber and
29:23
Speaker 1: in a bamboo box container. And they didn't know this,
29:26
Speaker 1: and they shipped them by seed to the UK and
29:28
Speaker 1: they all like crumbled the nothingness on the way. Um. Yeah.
29:34
Speaker 1: So the Rosettason still sits in the museum in London,
29:39
Speaker 1: where it's been since eighteen o two, except for the
29:41
Speaker 1: time it went to France briefly. Uh. And in two
29:44
Speaker 1: thousand three Egypt it was like, you know what, I
29:47
Speaker 1: want this thing back, not I we want this thing
29:51
Speaker 1: back and it's ours and it's I don't care who
29:54
Speaker 1: found it, it's ours. And England said in two thousand
29:58
Speaker 1: five took him two years to build a replica and say, hey,
30:02
Speaker 1: how about this, this is just like it I guess
30:05
Speaker 1: at least they didn't try to pass it off. Well, yeah,
30:08
Speaker 1: that's true. UM sind him a replica and they're like,
30:11
Speaker 1: I appreciate this, this is nice, but we really would
30:14
Speaker 1: like the real thing. And England said no, and not
30:18
Speaker 1: just England, but a lot of the big museums, the
30:21
Speaker 1: LOUVERA and UM, a bunch of the world museums kind
30:25
Speaker 1: of all got together in support of one another and said,
30:28
Speaker 1: you know what repaid repatriotation is. We're not into it.
30:34
Speaker 1: We're just not gonna give things back anymore because we
30:36
Speaker 1: can care for it best. It belongs to the world now.
30:38
Speaker 1: And they just sort of banded together and said, we're
30:41
Speaker 1: keeping our stuff, and that's I think we're it's probably
30:45
Speaker 1: gonna stay. They are trying to get it for a
30:49
Speaker 1: I think in two thousand twelve they tried to get
30:51
Speaker 1: it for a the grand opening of the Grand Egypt Museum.
30:54
Speaker 1: Sounds didn't happen, but even then they said now they
30:58
Speaker 1: wanted for like three weeks and they said nope, under
31:01
Speaker 1: the guys of I don't know if it's guys, but
31:03
Speaker 1: they said, would be too dangerous to transport it. That's
31:05
Speaker 1: the story they have at least well. Yeah, uh so
31:09
Speaker 1: that's uh how museums work, pillage and deny village and deny.
31:16
Speaker 1: Um you got anything else? That is the Rosetto stone, everybody.
31:20
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about it, you should
31:21
Speaker 1: type that word. Those words are O S E T T.
31:25
Speaker 1: A stone in the search bar house to works. Uh,
31:28
Speaker 1: and it will bring up this article. And since I
31:30
Speaker 1: said search bar means it's time for a messagery. Uh, now, Chuck,
31:40
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail. Oh no, how about instead? Okay,
31:54
Speaker 1: all right for those of you don't know, this is
31:56
Speaker 1: at the point where we read off the people who
32:00
Speaker 1: we're nice enough to send us little gifts and trinkets
32:02
Speaker 1: and music and letters and all sorts of things, and um,
32:07
Speaker 1: here we go go ahead, all right, Sarah send us
32:10
Speaker 1: some cool graphic prints, one of which was you Can't
32:13
Speaker 1: Take the Sky from Me from one of my favorite shows, Firefly. Yeah,
32:18
Speaker 1: very cool prints. Uh. Amy sent us a lovely carved
32:22
Speaker 1: wooden cicada from Timber Green Woods. Yeah, yeah, it's very cool. Uh.
32:26
Speaker 1: And McDonough sent us a snoopy postcard and a handwritten
32:30
Speaker 1: letter of things. Very nice. Uh. Liz from New Zealand
32:33
Speaker 1: sent us a lot of stuff that's New Zealand candy,
32:37
Speaker 1: New Zealand chocolate, New Zealand chifs, surfboard postcard, really lovely
32:42
Speaker 1: framed photos from her dad Rudy Goldstein Photography. But on Facebook,
32:47
Speaker 1: Uh it's our Goldstein photography, so check it out. Yeah,
32:51
Speaker 1: it's very cool. I have those on my desk. Um
32:53
Speaker 1: Sean Antonia sent us some custom vinyls, some stickers from
32:57
Speaker 1: eight one one Graphics dot com. He and his brother. Yeah,
33:00
Speaker 1: I have this company. It's cool stuff like skater style stuff. Right.
33:04
Speaker 1: Um buy Costumes dot com. It's b u y Costumes
33:08
Speaker 1: dot Com sent us a full size adult gremlin costume
33:11
Speaker 1: which Ben Bowling wore all day yesterday in the office here. Yeah,
33:15
Speaker 1: Ben Bowling from stuff they don't want you to know
33:17
Speaker 1: and car stuff. He's weird. Did you see that? He
33:20
Speaker 1: emailed me they did that? Did you actually see that?
33:22
Speaker 1: I haven't seen a picture of him yet. I put
33:24
Speaker 1: on the hand one day and try to creep out
33:25
Speaker 1: strict wind, but he was played. That's not the first
33:27
Speaker 1: Grimlin hand I've had him shoulder. Uh. Cat tpe Megan
33:33
Speaker 1: sent a cat tpe my way because I have two
33:35
Speaker 1: cats and uh my big boy Lauren gets in it now.
33:38
Speaker 1: We call it his spirit tent and he just hangs
33:40
Speaker 1: out in there, and uh, it's pretty neat. I mean
33:43
Speaker 1: it's what you think. It's just like a little small
33:45
Speaker 1: TP for your kiddie though. It's very cute. So if
33:48
Speaker 1: you have a cat, I would suggest you buying one. Um,
33:51
Speaker 1: let's see, Susan sent you a birthday card. It's a
33:53
Speaker 1: dog drinking beer. Yeah, yeah, that was nice. Yeah, Kellum
33:57
Speaker 1: Clark sent us some T shirts. Um, and he is
34:01
Speaker 1: a handyman in Brooklyn, and he gifted us two hours
34:04
Speaker 1: of handyman work to give to someone we know in Brooklyn.
34:08
Speaker 1: That's very really cool. So I've actually texted our buddy
34:11
Speaker 1: Joe Randazzo said, hey, you need any work done, we
34:14
Speaker 1: have two three hours of handyman work. So if you're
34:17
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn, you can go to not just Handyman dot
34:20
Speaker 1: com and uh, give kill him a call. He'll fix
34:23
Speaker 1: your sink or do whatever what you need around the house.
34:26
Speaker 1: I guess what's he gonna do for I don't know.
34:28
Speaker 1: Joe didn't respond. What We'll go to Hodgeman next, I guess,
34:31
Speaker 1: and just work our way down the list all the Hodgeman.
34:33
Speaker 1: You can afford to pay people, we should give it
34:35
Speaker 1: to like someone else. Okay, all right, we'll figure it out. Uh.
34:39
Speaker 1: Clive Fennessy gave us some really cool Panama Canal postcards. Yeah,
34:44
Speaker 1: it was your neat Rachel from Uber. Have you heard
34:47
Speaker 1: of Uber. It's a it's sort of like a taxi
34:50
Speaker 1: cab service now but it's town cars and they have
34:53
Speaker 1: an app and you can like say just come get
34:55
Speaker 1: me now that. Yeah. They sent us Uber gift cards. Um,
35:00
Speaker 1: and I will see you your gift code for us
35:01
Speaker 1: a hundred bucks and free. Thanks a lot. I know
35:05
Speaker 1: somebody's going to be going to the airport for free. Yeah.
35:08
Speaker 1: Kristen Curran has been taking us along with her on
35:12
Speaker 1: a tour of Europe. It seems like we've got postcards
35:15
Speaker 1: from her from Edinburgh, Bruges, Amsterdam, Slovakia, Berlin all over
35:21
Speaker 1: the place. Yeah, so thanks for those. Um. We also
35:24
Speaker 1: got something from Threadless self designed t shirt bigfoot cradling
35:28
Speaker 1: and alien lockness monsters in the background. Yeah. There was
35:32
Speaker 1: also like men in black and an abduction going on,
35:34
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff. Very cool. Uh. And then Kira
35:37
Speaker 1: Newron sent the wives and jewelry um and you can
35:41
Speaker 1: visit her store. Thank you very much, Kira at um
35:44
Speaker 1: Cariboo Classics dot Etsy dot com. So that's that's our
35:49
Speaker 1: administrative details for now, right, Yeah, part one. We'll have
35:52
Speaker 1: a part two, I guess on the next episode. Yes
35:54
Speaker 1: we will, where we'll cover music in books. Nice. If
35:57
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us, you can
35:59
Speaker 1: tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You
36:02
Speaker 1: can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you
36:04
Speaker 1: Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff
36:07
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36:10
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36:12
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