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how did they decipher the heiroglyphics?

• Message 1. 

  Posted by just plain ole tigger (U9123813) on Friday, 20th March 2009

  Good evening
  this may seem like a stupid question but i have always wondered how they worked out what the heiroglypics meant on the walls of ancient egypt. Can someone tell me how they new that a picture meant this. i am not being beliggerant just i am amazed at how they solved them.
  i would like to thank people now for their time and effort in explaining this to me
  n

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  Posted by LairigGhru (U5452625) on Saturday, 21st March 2009

  In 1799 two French soldiers found a large stone buried in the sand at Rosetta (now Rashid) in the Nile delta. It had been carved by priests in 196 BC and its purpose was to extoll the works and achievements of the pharaohs. So that it could be understood by all, the same message had been written in three scripts - hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek.
  
  In Paris in 1822, Jean-Francois Champollion succeeded in deciphering some of the hieroglyphs, and educated guesswork enabled him to come up with meanings for most of the others. He managed to do this because he had sufficient knowledge of Greek and coptic to enable him to work out the demotic signs. Armed with this, he was able to successfully tackle some of the hieroglyphs.

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  Posted by LavenderBlueSky (U13842100) on Saturday, 21st March 2009

  I believe the breakthrough came when Campollion managed to translate "Ramses". By working with proper nouns, they learned to decipher other words.

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  Posted by just plain ole tigger (U9123813) on Saturday, 21st March 2009

  thank you both for your replies, i do apprieciate it as it had often made me wonder how the hell they did it and if it was all guess work. again thank you both for your time and information.
  n

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  Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Saturday, 21st March 2009

  To add a bit to this ---
  
  Earlier attempts at deciphering had failed because people interpreted the hieroglyphs as pictograps or ideograms, i.e. sought to connect meaning with the images themselves. This resulted in some nonsensical translations.
  
  But appearences were misleading. Egyptian hieroglyphs are a largely but not exclusively phonetic writing system. Most symbols represent sounds, but the reader also must read some symbols as pictograms, while other symbols 'silently' accompany the text as aid to the reader, providing hints to interpretation or pronunciation. In addition, hieroglyphs are a highly formal and decorative form of writing, and scribes indulged in substitutions and rearrangements for esthetic reasons or to amuse the reader. This makes it a complex system of writing indeed.
  
  The first step was the recognition of the names of royals on the Rosetta stone, based on the assumption that these would be in the "cartouches" in the script. The Rosetta stone dates from the Ptolmeic period, and it could be assumed that the (Greek) names of the royalty would have been spelled phonetically. This gave a hint to the phonetic meaning of a few of the hieroglyphs.
  
  The important breakthrough was the realization that the rest of the hieroglyphic text was mostly phonetic too. The Egyptian language on the stone, also used in the Demotic text, was closely related to Coptic, a language still used by Egyptian Christians for ritual purposes. So given the phonetic meaning of a handful of symbols, the rest could be worked out.
  
  
  

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  Posted by just plain ole tigger (U9123813) on Saturday, 21st March 2009

  thank you so much for you info i do apprieciate the time and effort you have made to answer my question
  again thanks
  n

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