Facts and Figures

It might have looked like this – the stone with its three inscriptions, on top perhaps a depiction of the Egyptian king, pharaoh Ptolemy V offering gifts to the gods.

In 196 BCE, the year of the synod and the decree, he was only 13 years old. The Rosetta Stone originates in the city of Rosetta in the Western Nile Delta, today‘s Al-Rashid— hence the name. There, it was found integrated in the wall of a fortress.

It is made of granodiorite, a hard and almost black stone, most probably cut from a rock in Southern Egypt. It weighs around 760 kg (1675 lb) and measures 114,1 cm in height, 72,3 cm in width, and 27.93 cm in thickness. The original height must have been around 150 cm.

The inscription contains 14 lines of hieroglyphs, 32 lines Demotic, and 54 lines Ancient Greek text. None of the versions is completely preserved. The upper part is missing 14 or 15 lines of hieroglyphs and the supposed relief of the so-called „lunette“ of the stela.

Today, the Rosetta Stone is housed in the British Museum in London under the inventory number BM EA 24.

Three Languages – one Decree I

The Rosetta Stone shows how the crown and religious leaders informed the Egyptian population about decision-making: by decree. In general, those are executive orders of a sovereign or a head of state, which supplement existing laws. That‘s why the stone is also known as the “Decree of Memphis“. The decisions were made before at a priestly synod in Alexandria. At this event, pharaoh Ptolemy V and his legal custodians met with selected priests from the most influential temples of Egypt. In conclusion, the Rosetta Stone is a joint product of king and clergy: both parties wanted to be understood in a harmony of “checks and balances“, and they wanted to speak with one voice – in three languages.

Those are the most important points of the text:

• tax deductions for certain temples/priests and army/veterans
• remission of debts and amnesty for certain people
• upgrading of the fortress of Shekan/Lykopolis
• fight against enemies of Egypt, killing them e.g. by impaling
• offerings, good deeds, building of temples for gods and sacred animals
• implementation of a ruler cult, consecrating a statue of the pharaoh, festival days

The City of Rosetta on the Nile

Outside of today‘s city of Rosetta, in Arabic (Al-)Rashid in the Western Delta of the Nile, was the location of the Fort Saint Julien. There, French troops under the command of Pierre François Xavier Bouchard found the stone in 1799 as part of a wall. Subsequently, they brought it to the house of the governor in Alexandria. When France lost their hold on Egypt to Britain under king George III, the monument fell to them and was brought to London.

In Rashid, you can visit a copy of the Rosetta Stone in the city center. The Rosetta Stone must have had the same fate as most of the decrees: the massive monuments were reused in later buildings and fortifications. This explains why so few of them have been found.

History of Acquisition

It might have been like on this picture when experts laid their eye for the first time on the massive, dark stone with the three scripts: the well-known Ancient Greek whose missing passages could have been restored rather quickly – and the Egyptian signs that have been deciphered after 1822.

Immediately after the shipping of the stone to London, four high-quality copies were made which still exist in Oxford, Cambridge, London, and Edinburgh. Further plaster casts have been created and sold all over the world. And in the digital age, we are producing 3D models.

One aspect of the history is rarely told: The cargo load of the ship to Britain contained not only the Rosetta Stone, but also heavy sarcophagi from the time of Nectanebo I as well as precious vessels and objects from burials. This story will be told in the special exhibition of the British Museum in 2022.

Norm Data for the Rosetta Stone

linked open data on information about the Rosetta Stone in standard databases (for experts)

• Trismegistos entry for the text: TM 8809
• inventory on the British Museum, with bibliography: BM EA 24
• findspot: Fort Saint Julien, (Al-)Rashid (Rosetta) near Bolbitine: Town in Pleiades
• material: Granodiorite
• type of object: Stela
• issuer of the decree: Ptolemy V Epiphanes; GND entry; VIAF entry

3D model of the Rosetta Stone

The British Museum has created a 3D model which you can see on the left. The image has been compiled by photographs taken while the glass showcase was closed. A click on the details of this model leads you to further information and the raw data. For an in-depth study of the inscriptions, the resolution of this model is not high enough.

Video of the Scan

Here you can watch a short video of scanning of the Rosetta Stone.

The scan was executed in the morning before visitors could have access. Here you can see what happens when the British Museum opens its gates and the guests enter the building.

production by risolviamo, Turin

Before-After-Pictures

To the left, you can see a normal photograph with light coming from one direction. To the right, you can see a combination of four photographs with light coming from four directions – and therefore, with four different illuminations and shadows. The method called ”shape from shading“ is very helpful for surfaces with reliefs not cut too deep in stone. The Rosetta Stone is an example for this: its inscriptions are only a few millimeters deep.

With these images, more models can be created such as the depth map. On the website of Monica Berti you can easily switch between the high-quality photograph and the depth map by using your computer‘s mouse or touch pad: Just slide the line in the middle of the display to the left or the right.

The Stone as a Smartphone App

You can easily view, turn, and zoom in the depth map of the Rosetta Stone on your smartphone or tablet. Have a look at the screenshot at the end of this exhibition.

The Digital Rosetta Stone Project

While working for the project "Digital Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum" (DFHG), Monica Berti digitized the Greek version of the Rosetta Stone. She was interested in assembling the two Egyptian versions of the decree as well. This is how the collaboration with Franziska Naether started, and after a successful application for funding, Miriam Amin and Josephine Hensel joined the team. The new images of the Rosetta Stone were created in cooperation with the British Museum (especially with Ilona Regulski) as well as with Eleni Bozia and Angelos Barmpoutis from the University of Florida. The aim was to set up a new digital edition with the determination of the grammar and the comparison of the three versions side by side. For this, digital tools have been used, evaluated and refined.

What is Alignment?

When word by word, expression by expression, or line by line of two languages are put next to each other for comparisons, this is called alignment. Many people learn languages by memorizing vocabulary or formulations of a known and an unknown language in books, slip boxes or apps. The technical possibilities of alignment facilitate the usage and show the words and expressions in context of the whole sentence.

For the Rosetta Stone, it was possible to display three languages – Middle Egyptian, Demotic, and Ancient Greek. The Egyptian languages are presented in their scientific transliteration, all together with an English and a German translation.

You can access the Alignment here or by clicking on a passage on the 3D image.

Visualization of the three Versions

If you hover with your computer‘s mouse (or your finger on a smartphone or tablet) over the 3D image of the Rosetta Stone, certain passages will be highlighted in blue. To make this happen, something operates in the background of the website. For this reason, the image of the stone was separated in three zones. Those are activated by coordinates – like with a map. The picture displays how this is hierarchically structured in the HTML version of the website.

You can try this on your own by clicking on this link!

What is Treebanking?

Treebanking – never heard before? No worries! This has to do with grammar and sentence structures – and how this could be displayed in a graphical way in order to improve the understanding of texts. The idea behind this is that a sentence could look like a tree – with branches and twigs as main and subordinate clauses of all kinds.

The Rosetta Stone comprises of large trees – generally, a sentence of the Greek version has 52 words! This is because of the standard formulae in such decrees: many small subordinate clauses (twigs) relate to each other. Digital treebanking serves to encourage the learner: if he or she fully understands the grammar and morphology of a sentence and determines every word correctly, a tree will be displayed on the screen.

For treebanking, we are using a software called “Arethusa“. The Greek version (and later the Demotic one) could be explored here in detail – and especially zoomed in to word-level.

One text, three Versions?

Scholars of ancient linguistics have assumed for a long time that the Rosetta Stone bears not “only“ one text in three translations: every version has its individual peculiarities. The first version was presumably in Ancient Greek. Not every word, every term could be expressed exactly in Egyptian. Vocabulary and grammatical constructions differ within the three versions. Sometimes, there are periphrases, sometimes additions, but also omissions – and even contradicting passages. Might there be errors in some paragraphs? Further studies will show this.

This is how Champollion started: The picture shows table 4 from his over 50-pages-long letter to Professor Bon-Joseph Dacier, the secretary of the French Academy of Letters and Fine Arts. We can see the Greek letters with their Demotic and Hieroglyphic counterparts next to each other (full text: "Lettre à M. Dacier relative à l'alphabet des hiéroglyphes phonétiques", full text available here).

Research and Teaching

Methods such as Alignment, Treebanking and their visualization help us learn languages. Many apps – and maybe you have used one of them – are based on such technologies. Software such as “Ugarit“ enable us to link the languages of the world with each other. By this, modern technology optimizes the understanding and learning processes in the 21st century. What we developed in the “Digital Rosetta Stone Project“ together with students and implemented in classes, can of course be achieved with any other languages. You can try it out here!

The Rosetta Stone continues to fascinate people – as a symbol of languages and understanding, even in an ancient culture. Competences in intercultural communication belong to the challenges of humanity.

It was the digitization of ancient languages and scholarship in general which re-introduced the Rosetta Stone to our attention – a monument intertwined with the birth of the academic discipline of Egyptology. There is still a lot of potential in deciphering and interpreting ancient sources, especially in dealing with the Demotic language and script. Current and future scholars have a couple of tough nuts to crack! Furthermore, the Rosetta Stone is part of discourses about ancient and modern discussions on handling artifacts in the 21st century. It remains exciting!

More than 200 years of tablets?

A very bulky tablet …

More information (online)

If you want to know more, check out the following videos (all in English):

• Digital Classicist Seminar, Digiclass 2018, 5, London (one day after the creation the new images of the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum)

• Sunoikisis Digital Classics Seminar, Summer 2018, Common Session 12

• Lecture by Richard Parkinson at Gresham College (2015)

• Our project‘s website