Front Matter

The Center Text on the Rosetta Stone

Essays

By

Risto Stefov

The Center Text on the Rosetta Stone

March 21, 2022

Part 1 – Introduction

The aim of these essays is to highlight, for the English speaking reader, the most recent developments with regards to the Rosetta stone center text translation by Academics Tome Boshevski and Professor Dr. Aristotel Tentov.

Much more work has been done on the translation since these essays were written in 2006, so if you wish to find out more please visit he website: http://rosetta-stone.etf.ukim.edu.mk/

The Rosetta stone was discovered in 1799 in Egypt. It is called the Rosetta stone because it was discovered in a town called Rosetta (present day Rashid).

As the story goes, in August 1797 thirteen French ships led by Napoleon Bonaparte landed in Aboukir Bay near Alexandria in Egypt and the army they carried marched inland towards Cairo. A battle between the British and French ensued at the foot of the pyramids and while the French won on the ground, they lost to the British fleet in the water.

Napoleon has no idea how long he would be stranded there so he made good use of the thousand or so civilians he brought with him to study Egypt. Among his civilians he also had one-hundred and sixty-seven artists, scientists, mathematicians, technicians and other skills which he put to work studying Egypt’s architecture, art, culture and other “mysteries”. Their work resulted in the publishing of nineteen volumes all dedicated to describing Egypt. These publications, which came out between 1809 and 1828, contained drawings and illustrations of what the French had seen and were circulated throughout Europe creating interest in Egyptian antiquities.

While stranded the French soldiers began to build defenses by digging, extending and re-enforcing previously built fortresses. One such fortress was Fort Julien near Rosetta, a town near Alexandria. While digging there on July 15, 1799, a French soldier, a young army engineer Captain named Pierre-Francois Bouchard, found a block of black basalt stone with writing on it. The stone measured

three feet nine inches long, two feet four and half inches wide, and eleven inches thick. The young officer noticed three distinct bands of writing on it, one of which he recognized to be the Koine writing or what we today call “Greek writing”.

The young officer immediately understood the stone’s importance so he showed it to General Jacques de Menou who sent the artifact to the Institut de l'Égypte in Cairo, where it arrived in August 1799. The Courrier de l'Egypte, a French language newspaper carried the story of its discovery in September 1799.

After Napoleon returned to France in 1799, he left his one-hundred and sixty-seven scholars behind to continue their research. He also left a small security force to protect them.

The French managed to stave off Ottoman and British attacks until March 1801, when the British landed a larger force at Aboukir Bay and began to move inland. While the British invasion force was busy fighting the French army on the ground, the French scholars carried off the stone along with other artifacts from Cairo to Alexandria. Unfortunately the French in Alexandria capitulated and a dispute arose over the fate of the loot as well as the French documentation. General de Menou refused to hand it over claiming it belonged to the Institute.

Unfortunately, being on the losing side, the French had no choice but to give up their treasures which the British declared the property of the British Crown.

Upon hearing of this, the French scholar Etine Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire became furious and publicly proclaimed that he would rather see his work burn than let it fall into British hands. Hearing of this, Hutchinson, one of the British scholars, agreed that some items such as the biology specimens would be the scholars’ private property. As for the stone, de Menou regarded it as his own private property and hid it.

How exactly the stone came to British hands is in dispute. One story claims that Colonel Tomkyns Turner seized it from de Menou and escorted it to Britain on a gun carriage. Edward Clarke, another

British scholar, stated in his memoirs that a French scholar and an officer had quietly given up the stone to him and his companions in a Cairo back street. French scholars departed later with only imprints and plaster casts of the stone.

Turner brought the stone to Britain aboard the captured French frigate L'Egyptienne in February 1802. Then on March 11, 1802 the stone was given to the Society of Antiquaries and later was taken to the British Museum where it has remained ever since.