In this era of "global archaeology", those ancient artifacts excavated from the soil are all showing people how brilliant and vigorous human civilization was thousands of years ago. But can you imagine that? In the West, this act of demonstrating the vitality of ancient civilizations has been used by some suspicious politicians as a means of increasing the history and culture of the country.
For example, the Rosetta Stone, which is regarded by the British Museum as the "treasure of the town hall", is very likely to be a "new cultural relic".
In 1799, a French captain on an expedition to Egypt found the stele in a small egyptian town called Rosetta. Because the stele was full of "symbols" that he could not understand, coupled with his knowledge of the egyptian state, the French captain subconsciously believed that the stele was a cultural relic handed down from ancient Egypt. So the captain reported the incident. In this way, the Rosetta Stone appeared in people's sights.
After hundreds of years of wandering, this stone stele, which was found by French soldiers in Egypt, eventually fell into the hands of the British.
Logically, this kind of stone stele discovered hundreds of years ago cannot be anything wrong. If the stele were fake, wouldn't it have been recognized long ago?
But in fact, neither Britain nor France, nor even Egypt, has been able to directly prove that the Rosetta Stone is indeed genuine. All the information we can find today about the Rosetta Stone is a relatively simple explanation. More directly, the West has studied the Rosetta Stone for hundreds of years, but it has still not been able to decipher the content of the inscription on the stele. Aside from being able to get an overview of which part might be what content, no one could recognize what was written on it.
Of course, some people will say that the reason why the West cannot interpret the writing on the stele is only because the ancient Egyptian civilization was broken one or two thousand years ago, and the writing and interpretation of the ancient Egyptian script have not been passed down. But if so, then why is it that the text on this stele can be interpreted by linguists using hieroglyphs of Chinese characters?
In the early 1820s, a French Chinese-speaker named Jean-François Chambord came into contact with work on deciphering the Rosetta Stone inscriptions. The poor Shang Boliang knew that if he could decipher the contents of the Cairo Seta Stone, he would certainly be able to walk in peace and prosperity, and never have to live such a day of ups and downs. In fact, it is also true that Shang Boliang spent several years of effort, and after trying various methods, finally used ancient Chinese hieroglyphs to decipher the contents of the Rosetta Stone. And Chambollion himself also jumped from a poor boy to become a professor at Noble University in France.
However, we must know that the ancient Egyptian script developed to the second hundred years BC where the Rosetta Stone is located, and it has long since developed from the most basic hieroglyphs to a completely different phonetic script. And due to the difference in geographical environment and cultural composition, there can be no interconnection between the ancient Chinese and ancient Egyptian scripts. Therefore, the inscription on this stone stele, regardless of whether the Rosetta stone is used in hieroglyphs or phonetic scripts, the method of deciphering the Rosetta stone tablet using the ancient script of the mainland is not feasible.
A text and another may look similar, but they can never mean the same thing. This phenomenon is particularly evident in different cultures. For example, in our Chinese, the words "grape" and "raisin", but any Chinese can relate to the relationship between these two foods. However, in Western languages, grapes are "Grape" and raisins are "Raisins". If there is no connection between the two, there is no relationship at all.
In this case, how could Champollion interpret ancient Egyptian script through hieroglyphs in the Chinese character system?
Let's talk about the man of Chamborh. The Chamborian family, together with him, had seven children, while his father was a small farmer who bought and sold goods by walking the streets. How could Champollion, who was born in such a family, read books for more than ten years like the upper class in France? Of course, if Eighteenth-century France already had perfect compulsory education and economic power comparable to today's, then this article is all nonsense.
However, this was obviously impossible, because France at that time had not yet had time to enjoy the changes brought about by the first industrial revolution.
From this point of view, Shang Boliang may not have even heard of Chinese names, how can he possibly know the Chinese character system from China? Not to mention that China at this time was still under feudal rule, and it was not aware of the existence of hieroglyphs.
In fact, these things that the West is engaged in "new cultural relics" have long been nothing new in the international community. But as people's doubts have become less and less, the West's actions in this regard have become more and more outrageous.
The stone stele from 200 BC is as new as ever? On counterfeiting, we must also look at the "new cultural relics" of the West
The Rosetta Stone, a "new cultural relic", was deciphered in hieroglyphs