Did you know?

Egyptian hieroglyphics are in great abundance throughout Egypt, but were essentially indecipherable until 1799 when the trilingual Rosetta Stone was discovered in Alexandria!

Written in the two languages (Greek and Egyptian but three writing systems (hieroglyphics, its cursive form demotic script, and Greek, it provided the key toward the deciphering of hieroglyphic writing.

The inscriptions on it were the benefactions conferred by Ptolemy V Epiphanes (205 - 180 BCE) were written by the priests of Memphis. The translation was primarily due to Thomas Young (1773 - 1829) and Temple at Al Karnak Jean Francois Champollion (1790-1832) (1790-1832), who, very early in his life was inspired to Egyptology by the French mathematician Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768 - 1830).

 Champollion completed the work begun by Young and correctly deciphered the complete stone. An Egyptologist of the first rank, he was the first to recognize the signs could be alphabetic, syllabic, or determinative (i.e. standing for complete ideas).

He also established the original language of the Rosetta stone was Greek, and that the the hieroglyphic text was a translation from the Greek. 

An unusual aspect of hieroglyphics is that they can be read from left to right, or right to left, or vertically (top to bottom).  It is the orientation of the glyphs that gives the clue; the direction of people and animals face toward the beginning of the line.

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