Ancient Egypt was a dumb mystery with alll those shinlng great pyramids and sphinxes., A question
also wrappped in gold. In a timelne, more tan 40 centuries separe us from the Gizaeh Pyramids. The great Sphynx
was asking her questions since the dawn of History. Nalapeleon
himself knew that when his addrress to
his tropos in his failed campaign
near Cairo and the Nile….the huge blood
vesssel of Egypt .
The area
called Ancient Egypt has varied over the centuries, but it is generally
accepted that it ranged from the Nile Delta in the north to Elephantine at the
First Cataract of the Nile in the south. It also controlled the eastern desert,
the Red Sea coastline, the Sinai Peninsula, and a large western territory
dominating the scattered oases. Historically, it was made up of Upper and Lower
Egypt, to the south and north respectively, which preceded the creation of a
unified state. In its period of greatest expansion, it controlled the Amorite
kingdoms of Palestine and northern Syria, reaching as far as the middle
Euphrates, and the Nubian chiefdoms of the Sudan, as far as Jebel Barkal, on
the fourth cataract of the Nile. It exerted an important cultural influence
among the neighboring towns, and even in regions as far away as Cyprus, the
Anatolian coast and the Hellenic peninsula.
The
Egyptian civilization developed for more than 3,500 years. It began with the
unification of some cities in the Nile Valley, around 3200 BC. C.,3 and
conventionally it is finished in the year 31 a. C., when the Roman Empire
conquered and absorbed Ptolemaic Egypt, which disappeared as a state. This
event did not represent the first period of foreign domination in Egypt, but it
led to a gradual transformation in the political and religious life of the
valley of the Nile, marking the end of the independent development of their
cultural identity. This, however, had begun to gradually dissolve after the
conquests of the Persians (6th century BC) and the Macedonians (4th century
BC), especially during the period of the Ptolemies. The arrival of
Christianity, and its spread among the native Egyptians, cut off one of the
last survivals of ancient Egyptian culture. In 535, by order of Justinian I,
the cult of the goddess Isis was prohibited in the temple of Philae, thus
ending a religion of more than four millennia. However, the Egyptian language
(called Coptic) continued to be used, written in an alphabet derived from
Greek, and the native Egyptians fully identified with Christianity, especially
the Monophysite doctrine. Then a Coptic literature arose, of a Christian
nature, which collected myths, customs and beliefs of the ancient traditional
religion. The disappearance of Coptic and its replacement by Arabic, within the
framework of the Islamization of the country after its conquest, marked the
definitive end of the last remains of Ancient Egypt.
Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta
Stone is a fragment of an ancient Egyptian granodiorite stela inscribed with a
decree published in Memphis in 196 BC. C. in the name of Pharaoh Ptolemy V. The
decree appears in three different scripts: the upper text in Egyptian
hieroglyphics, the middle part in demotic script and the lower part in ancient
Greek. Because it presents essentially the same content in all three
inscriptions, with minor differences between them, this stone provided the key
to the modern decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
The stela
was carved in the Hellenistic period and is thought to have originally been on
display inside a temple, possibly in nearby Sais. It was probably moved at the
end of Antiquity or during the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt and finally used as a
building material in a fort near the town of Rashid (Rosetta), in the Nile
delta. There it was found on July 15, 1799 by soldier Pierre-François Bouchard
during the French campaign in Egypt. As the first ancient multilingual text
discovered in modern times, the Rosetta Stone aroused public interest in its
potential to decipher the hitherto unintelligible Egyptian hieroglyphic script,
and consequently its lithographic and plaster copies began to circulate among
museums. and European scholars. The British defeated the French in Egypt and
the stone was transported to London after the signing of the Capitulation of
Alexandria in 1801. It has been on public display since 1802 in the British
Museum, where it is the most visited piece.
The first
complete translation of the ancient Greek text appeared in 1803. In 1822, the
French Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion announced in Paris the
decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphic texts, but it would take linguists
some time to read with certainty other inscriptions and texts of the ancient
Greek. Ancient Egypt. The main advances in decoding were the recognition that
the stele offers three versions of the same text (1799), that the demotic text
uses phonetic characters to write foreign names (1802), that the hieroglyphic
text also does so and has general similarities with the demotic —Thomas Young in
1814— and that, in addition to being used for foreign names, phonetic
characters were also used to write native Egyptian words —Champollion between
1822 and 1824—.
Later, two
fragmentary copies of the same decree were discovered, and several bilingual and
trilingual Egyptian inscriptions are known today, including two Ptolemaic
decrees, such as the Decree of Canopus of 238 BC. C. and the Memphis Decree of
Ptolemy IV, c. 218 BC For this reason, although the Rosetta Stone is no longer
unique, it was an essential reference for the current understanding of the
literature and civilization of Ancient Egypt and the term "Rosetta
Stone" itself is today used in other contexts as the name of the essential
key to a new field of knowledge.
The
Mystery warpped in linen and gold
Ancient Egypt was a dumb mystery with alll those shinlng great pyramids and sphinxes., A question
also wrappped in gold. In a timelne, more tan 40 centuries separe us from the Gizaeh Pyramids. The great Sphynx
was asking her questions ssince the dawn of History. Nalapeleon
himself knew that when his addrress to
his tropos in his failed campaign
near Cairo and the Nile….the huge blood
vesssel of Egypt .
The area
called Ancient Egypt has varied over the centuries, but it is generally
accepted that it ranged from the Nile Delta in the north to Elephantine at the
First Cataract of the Nile in the south. It also controlled the eastern desert,
the Red Sea coastline, the Sinai Peninsula, and a large western territory
dominating the scattered oases. Historically, it was made up of Upper and Lower
Egypt, to the south and north respectively, which preceded the creation of a
unified state. In its period of greatest expansion, it controlled the Amorite
kingdoms of Palestine and northern Syria, reaching as far as the middle
Euphrates, and the Nubian chiefdoms of the Sudan, as far as Jebel Barkal, on
the fourth cataract of the Nile. It exerted an important cultural influence
among the neighboring towns, and even in regions as far away as Cyprus, the
Anatolian coast and the Hellenic peninsula.
The
Egyptian civilization developed for more than 3,500 years. It began with the
unification of some cities in the Nile Valley, around 3200 BC. C.,3 and
conventionally it is finished in the year 31 a. C., when the Roman Empire
conquered and absorbed Ptolemaic Egypt, which disappeared as a state. This
event did not represent the first period of foreign domination in Egypt, but it
led to a gradual transformation in the political and religious life of the
valley of the Nile, marking the end of the independent development of their
cultural identity. This, however, had begun to gradually dissolve after the
conquests of the Persians (6th century BC) and the Macedonians (4th century
BC), especially during the period of the Ptolemies. The arrival of
Christianity, and its spread among the native Egyptians, cut off one of the
last survivals of ancient Egyptian culture. In 535, by order of Justinian I,
the cult of the goddess Isis was prohibited in the temple of Philae, thus
ending a religion of more than four millennia. However, the Egyptian language
(called Coptic) continued to be used, written in an alphabet derived from
Greek, and the native Egyptians fully identified with Christianity, especially
the Monophysite doctrine. Then a Coptic literature arose, of a Christian
nature, which collected myths, customs and beliefs of the ancient traditional
religion. The disappearance of Coptic and its replacement by Arabic, within the
framework of the Islamization of the country after its conquest, marked the
definitive end of the last remains of Ancient Egypt.
Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta
Stone is a fragment of an ancient Egyptian granodiorite stela inscribed with a
decree published in Memphis in 196 BC. C. in the name of Pharaoh Ptolemy V. The
decree appears in three different scripts: the upper text in Egyptian
hieroglyphics, the middle part in demotic script and the lower part in ancient
Greek. Because it presents essentially the same content in all three
inscriptions, with minor differences between them, this stone provided the key
to the modern decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
The stela
was carved in the Hellenistic period and is thought to have originally been on
display inside a temple, possibly in nearby Sais. It was probably moved at the
end of Antiquity or during the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt and finally used as a
building material in a fort near the town of Rashid (Rosetta), in the Nile
delta. There it was found on July 15, 1799 by soldier Pierre-François Bouchard
during the French campaign in Egypt. As the first ancient multilingual text
discovered in modern times, the Rosetta Stone aroused public interest in its
potential to decipher the hitherto unintelligible Egyptian hieroglyphic script,
and consequently its lithographic and plaster copies began to circulate among
museums. and European scholars. The British defeated the French in Egypt and
the stone was transported to London after the signing of the Capitulation of
Alexandria in 1801. It has been on public display since 1802 in the British
Museum, where it is the most visited piece.
The first
complete translation of the ancient Greek text appeared in 1803. In 1822, the
French Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion announced in Paris the
decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphic texts, but it would take linguists
some time to read with certainty other inscriptions and texts of the ancient
Greek. Ancient Egypt. The main advances in decoding were the recognition that
the stele offers three versions of the same text (1799), that the demotic text
uses phonetic characters to write foreign names (1802), that the hieroglyphic
text also does so and has general similarities with the demotic —Thomas Young in
1814— and that, in addition to being used for foreign names, phonetic
characters were also used to write native Egyptian words —Champollion between
1822 and 1824—.
Later, two
fragmentary copies of the same decree were discovered, and several bilingual and
trilingual Egyptian inscriptions are known today, including two Ptolemaic
decrees, such as the Decree of Canopus of 238 BC. C. and the Memphis Decree of
Ptolemy IV, c. 218 BC For this reason, although the Rosetta Stone is no longer
unique, it was an essential reference for the current understanding of the
literature and civilization of Ancient Egypt and the term "Rosetta
Stone" itself is today used in other contexts as the name of the essential
key to a new field of knowledge.
