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Hieroglyphic Writing - College Essay

Hieroglyphic Writing

Right from the beginning the deciphering of the mysterious Egyptian writing fascinated everybody. In 1799 a certain Captain Bouchard of the French Army was supervising work on the fortifications of Fort St. Julian, situated a little more than four kilometers outside the town of Rosetta when hi workmen discovered a stone which was destined to achieve great fame in archaeological history. It was in fact the �Rosetta Stone� which led to the deciphering of the hieroglyphs.
As a result of the fortunes of war this precious stone fell into the hands of the British who gave it a place of honor in the British Museum. On one face of the stone, a tablet of extremely hard black basalt, there is a ...

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with a formal instruction that �this decree, engraved on a tablet of hard stone, in three scripts, hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek, shall be engraved in each of the great temples of Egypt�.
The honor of deciphering the hieroglyphs fell to two scholars, the Englishman Thomas Young and the Frenchman Francois Champollion who started work on it almost the same time and who were to see their efforts crowned by success. What Young achieved by instinct Champollion achieved by scientific method and with such success that by his death in 1832 he could leave behind him a grammar and a very substantial dictionary of ancient Egyptian. But what did this writing that the Greeks called hieroglyphic, from �hiero glyphica� that is �sacred signs� actually consist of? The ancient Egyptians themselves called their written texts �the words of the gods�. In fact according to tradition men were taught to write by the god Thot himself during the reign of Osiris. Down through the centuries the writing ...

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Hieroglyphic Writing. (2005, April 2). Retrieved November 28, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Hieroglyphic-Writing/24711

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 4/2/2005 07:55:52 AM
Category: World History
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 455
Pages: 2

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