The legend of the four ancient civilizations has attracted countless descendants to explore, in addition to the ancient Babylonian kingdom does not have many cultural relics, the other three major civilizations have many cultural relics handed down, proving the glory and loneliness of the ancient civilization. So the historical value of cultural relics is very important, through the study of cultural relics in a relic,
We can obtain a lot of useful historical information, and even speculate on the rise and fall of a local civilization. Today we will learn about a cultural relic that is crucial to the study of ancient Egyptian civilization , the Rosetta Stone.
From France to England, the displaced Rosetta Stone has become a rare treasure
The Rosetta Stone was buried underground for more than two thousand years until it was discovered by the French army in 1799. At that time, France was in the period of the Great Revolution, the national strength was relatively strong, the French army fought everywhere in Europe, defeated many other European countries, and the iron hooves of France came all the way to Egypt in the Sahara Desert. In a small village near egypt's Mother River, the French dug out a strangely shaped black stone stele from under the ground.
Since the name of the small town is Rosetta, the name of this stone tablet is rosetta Stone. Although large black stones are common here, this stele is engraved with strange words that the French who were racking their brains at the time could not understand, so everyone talked about this stele.
After realizing that the stele may be the remnant of an ancient civilization, Napoleon quickly decided to send the stele to scholars who specialized in the study of ancient history, but unfortunately until the defeat of France, no one could crack the secret of the stele. In 1801, the French army officially surrendered to England, and it was agreed that France would hand over the cultural relics harvested in Egypt to the British.
The surrender regulations set by the British were naturally to get the Rosetta Stone, but this stone monument was already world-famous at that time, and france was naturally reluctant to give, so after transferring most of the cultural relics to the United Kingdom, the Rosetta Stone was secretly hidden in the ship and transported to a secret location, but unfortunately it was cut off by the British halfway, so until now, the Rosetta Stone was still stored in the United Kingdom.
After the British obtained the Rosetta Stone, they stored it in the most luxurious collection in Britain at that time, and the Rosetta Stone has been there until now, as a treasure of the town hall, only a rare opportunity is possible to be displayed. Although many Egyptologists have called for the stele to be returned, because it belongs to ancient Egypt and should be kept by the National Museum of Egypt, it is conceivable that this is impossible.
However, the research rights of the Rosetta Stone are shared by the world, because the Rosetta Stone has a total of three different languages describing the same thing, so it has attracted the curiosity of countless linguists, through the Rosetta Stone, you can compare the connections and differences between different scripts, which has a great effect on the study of the origin of The Egyptian script and the Greek language.
Countless scholars have devoted themselves to research, but they have not been able to solve the mystery of the stone stele
After the British obtained the Rosetta Stone, they immediately summoned domestic scholars to study it. A scholar named Stephen Weston was the first to find a string of ancient Greek characters under the stele, and through the translation of Greek, everyone understood the specific content of the stele.
According to the current common saying, the birth time of the Rosetta Stone should be around two hundred years BC, when the Egyptian pharaoh was Ptolemy V, because he did a lot of good things that benefited the national economy and the people's livelihood during his reign, so the priests in order to thank him, carved a hymn for him on the stone tablet, which is the main content of the Rosetta Stone.
Since the Ptolemaic dynasty was not established by the Egyptians themselves, but by the Greeks who migrated south, in addition to the ancient Greek script, there are two other scripts on the stele - the local Egyptian hieroglyphs and the cursive script commonly used by the common people, and according to scholars, the content of the three scripts should be the same.
The most difficult point in deciphering the Rosetta Stone is to identify the hieroglyphs on it, because the current Egyptian and ancient Egyptian cultures are very different, so the identification method of hieroglyphs has been lost as early as a thousand years ago. It's hard to match the meaning of the text to the hieroglyphs above.
Later, britain invited experts and scholars from Germany, Italy and other countries to decipher the hieroglyphs on the stele, but because the information and knowledge of Egyptian hieroglyphs were too lacking, it lasted for more than ten years and still did not gain anything. It wasn't until around 1820 that a genius from France brought hope to the study of the Rosetta Stone.
Linguistic geniuses, Chinese thinking, brings hope for cracking rosetta stone
The genius' name was Champollion, and he was not only a literary scholar who was proficient in various different genitive languages, but also a historian who also studied the history of ancient Egypt. Chambollion differed from other linguists in that he was not only proficient in Greek, but also studied Chinese.
As we all know, Chinese is the most difficult language in the world to understand, and its vocabulary is not the same as the Western language school, but it is similar to the Egyptian hieroglyphs. After carefully studying the Rosetta Stone, Shang Bolian believed that the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs on the stone tablets were very similar to the phonetic characters in Chinese.
After that, Shang Boliang used the relevant knowledge of Chinese phonetic characters, and it did not take long to almost translate the hieroglyphs on the stone tablets. Experts accustomed to the European language and writing system cannot decipher the hieroglyphs on the stone tablets, which is actually forgivable, after all, the language habits are completely different, and it is as difficult to crack it.
epilogue
Later, Shang Bolian used his knowledge of Chinese and Western languages to decipher many ancient Egyptian scripts that had long been lost, and in order to commemorate his contributions to Egyptian history and literature, people honored him as the "father of Egyptology". The Rosetta Stone is also of great significance to Europe and is still revered today.
Every cultural relic is a rare and precious heritage, should be vigorously protected and cherished, the study of ancient characters and ancient civilizations, although there is not much value of economic interests, but these faded civilizations are the root system of people can grow and develop, study the past history, for us to open up the future has an important reference and reference significance, I hope that in the future we can explore more meaningful and valuable cultural heritage!
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