Ancient Civilisations - The Rosetta Stone

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

In 1799, French soldiers in Egypt unearthed what would become one of the world’s most famous artefacts. After a desperate race to decipher its symbols, the Rosetta Stone provided the key to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphs, casting new light on the culture and history of this lost civilisation. But why was the Rosetta Stone made in the first place? How did it end up in the hands of the French occupiers, thousands of years after it was created? And when the battle to decode was over, what secrets did it reveal? A Noiser production, written by Kate Harrison. With thanks to Richard Bruce Parkinson, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford. For ad-free listening, exclusive content, and early access to new episodes across the Noiser network, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is July 1799. On the western bank of the River Nile, French soldiers are preparing for an attack. Their base, the 300-year-old Fort Julien, is a squat fortress, resembling a child sandcastle, with high walls surrounding a rudimentary blockhouse. But it's showing its age. The ruined structure will offer little protection against Turkish and British artillery. So now the men are urgently strengthening what they have. Using pickaxes and shovels, the soldiers break up the walls made of a patchwork of rock looted from ancient Egyptian temples, ready to be rebuilt into new, stronger defences.

French engineer Pierre-François Bouchard is in charge. He strides over to show one group how high the new bastions need to be, then pauses to drink tepid water from a goat-skin carrier. He glances down at the wide river where wooden, triangular-sailed felucca boats buzz in and out of the port of Rosetta, carrying food and supplies. Here, where the Nile Delta meets the Mediterranean, the landscape glows green with palms and crops, in contrast to the rest of this arid country. More importantly, it's a crucial waypoint between Europe and India, on the British trade routes that Napoleon is so eager to dominate. 29-year-old newlywed Bouchard was originally here to help document the country's countless treasures before shipping them back to France. But now defeat is now a real possibility. He has been moved to the front line. Already the temperature has hit 30 degrees, and sweat stings the soldier's eyes.

They're used to hardship, having marched through the desert in thick woolen uniforms. Thousands of their compatriots have died of disease and starvation. At least here they have food and food. water. But for how long? Suddenly, work stops in one corner of the sight. When Bouchard marches across to discover why, one of the soldiers explains that when he struck the rock, his pickaxe bounced back off. He's hit something incredibly hard. Bouchard kneels down. In the breached wall, he glimps a lump of polished gray stone. As sunlight falls onto the rock, fine grains glint like christmas. The top and sides are jagged broken edges, but the front is a different story.

He pears in, unsure if he can trust what he sees, but when he touches the rock, his fingertips confirm it. The mirror smooth surface is covered in indentations. But this isn't damage. The notches form tiny letters. The hairs on the back of Bouchard's neck stand up as he recognises the sharp angles of ancient Greek at the bottom. He orders his men to down tools, and using only his bare hands, he digs away at the earth at the edges of the rock. More words appear, but these letters are completely different, more fluid with curved characters and lines, a little like Arabic writing. And now, at the top of the slab, he encounters the biggest surprise of all.

Tiny images. A monkey, a bird, a human eye. Some clusters of pictures are encircled, others are carved back to front. He knows what these characters are. Hieroglyphs. Bouchard dispatches a messenger to tell his superiors about the discovery. He tasks his most trusted men to unearth the entire slab, but slowly. He doesn't want them to cause any more damage to what will soon be known around the world as the Rosetta Stone. It will take them three days to dig it out. The teardrop-shaped stone weighs three-quarters of a ton and stands just over a meter high, but it's a mere fragment of a much larger slab. Soon, two empires will be battling to possess this piece of broken rock, and the arguments over its

ownership continue to this day. But within a few decades of its discovery, the Rosetta Stone will become one of the most famous artifacts in the world, providing the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. It will shine an unprecedented light on this lost civilization, enriching our understanding of its culture and history. But why was the Rosetta Stone made in the first place? How did it end up in the hands of the French occupiers, thousands of years after it was created. And who won the frenzied race to decode its mysterious symbols, revolutionizing what we know about an entire ancient people? I'm John Hopkins, and this is a short history of the Rosetta Stone. As soon as it's unearthed, the potential of the slab is recognized by those in the know. But Lieutenant Boucher is one of only

160 scholars and scientists among an army comprising 37,000 men. Richard Bruce Parkinson is Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford. It was very lucky that it was found by the French expedition at that time, because the expedition was a military one, but it was also there to try and survey the whole of the country, both natural history, modern history, modern customs, and also the antiquities. And the scholars that Napoleon brought with him were an incredibly varied team. Everybody was familiar with ancient Greek, the classical language of Europe, and also with the mystery that surrounded Hieroglyphs.

So if it had been perhaps discovered just by French navvies rebuilding, it might have escaped attention. Within days of Bouchard's discovery, the Rosetta Stone hits the headlines. But to the untrained eye, it's no work of art. When it was discovered, the stone will have looked more or less exactly as it does today in the British Museum. It is a lump of grey granite inscribed on one face, the back and the sides are blank. The top is quite badly broken. It's not a very attractive piece of sculpture.

but of course its significance goes beyond mere aesthetic concerns. It was found already reused. It had a text in three different scripts, and so it immediately made people think that this could be the key to the longstanding mystery of the hieroglyphic script. And the hieroglyphic script that wrote the texts of ancient Egypt had not been read for centuries. And many people had been trying to decide,

of the script, from medieval Arabic scholars, through the Renaissance, through the Enlightenment period. And this stone was immediately seized on as potentially very valuable. Immediately, soldiers take the stone to Cairo to be examined by the French Institute of Scholars. Copies are also made to send back to universities in France. Technicians pour black ink onto its surface, lay paper on top and then peel it off, creating mirror image prints of the delicate letters and images. Meanwhile, the governor of Rosetta, General Menu, orders a translation of the 54 lines of Greek. They reveal when and why the stone was produced, the first step towards unraveling the mystery.

It is the 26th of March 196 BC in the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis. Enormous crowds have gathered for the coronation of their new king. Ptolemy the fifth is just 13 years old, but as his chariot rides past the enormous white walls surrounding this city, he knows that his country's future rests on his slim shoulders. Technically, he has been pharaoh since the tender age of five when his father died in a suspicious fire at the royal palace in Alexandria. Shortly afterwards, a courtier murdered his men.

mother. But instead of facing justice, the killer took over as Ptolemy's guardian and regent, seizing the power to make decisions that the boy could neither understand nor oppose. Now that he's 13, Ptolemy has been deemed old enough to rule on his own terms. A natural athlete, the young man is more comfortable playing field hockey or wrestling with friends at the palace. But today, he wears the ceremonial dress of a pharaoh. He does his best, to look the part, despite the youthful curls that escape from under his headdress. The vast procession moves slowly. As the crowds surge forward to catch a glimpse of their new king, one of the horses pulling the royal chariot rears up.

The horsemen have to fight hard to regain control. The crowd roars louder and Ptolemy has to force himself to remain calm. But he can't help remembering his first public event only six years ago when he was tricked by a bodyguard into authorizing the execution of his mother's killer in front of an entire stadium of spectators. Today, although the crowds are smiling, not baying for blood, Ptolemy has seen first-hand how easily the public mood can turn. Soon they're approaching the temple of Pata, the god of craftsmen and architects, and pagan priests come forward to greet the new ruler. For the last 2,000 years, pharaohs have been crowned here in Memphis.

and laid to rest in the city's mausoleum. Vast statues of gods and sacred animals look down on the humans. Alongside them, packed lines of hieroglyphic characters are carved into the temple's stones, expressing the myths and proclamations from over 150 previous pharaohs. Now, the new monarch dressed in the traditional kilt and pleated linen headdress worn by generations of Egyptian kings, enters the relative cool of the temple. Though any adolescent facial hair has been shaven away, like the statues at the entrance, he wears a false beard and heavy gold necklaces decorated with deep blue lapis lazuli. The ritual gets underway, and the priests use a succession of ornate crowns in a ceremony that continues for many hours. The most

important double crown represents the upper and lower regions of the kingdom. In the closing moments, the high priest of the Ptar Temple presents Ptolemy to the crowds as the son of Isis, goddess of healing and magic, and Osiris, god of the underworld. Finally, the coronation ceremony ends, though the feasting and celebrations will last for an entire year. Royal residents nearby, servants circulate with dishes of roasted meats, goat, ostrich, gazelle, along with fresh pomegranate, stewed figs, and honeycake. And there's drinking, too, fine wines for the dignitaries, and beer outside as the crowds start partying in earnest. But Ptolemy himself needs to keep a very clear head. Because even though the splendor of his

coronation has confirmed his divine right to lead the country, his position is weak. Not least, because this latest pharaoh isn't Egyptian at all. In fact, Ptolemy and his ancestors speak Greek, look like foreigners and have only been in power for a hundred years. After Alexander the great entered Egypt and conquered it, he was succeeded by a dynasty of Macedonians named Ptolemy and famously of course Cleopatra as the queens. And they ruled Egypt as Egyptian pharaohs.

They were not, of course, Egyptian. They were governing in Greek. They were of Greek culture. And so there was a very uneasy alliance between them and the native Egyptian elites. In the years before the Rosetta Stone was created, there were revolts in the south of Egypt. And so as part of the cultural bargaining between the essentially Greek kings and the Egyptian temples, which were the strongholds of traditional Egyptian culture, it was decided that the king would support the temples,

if the temples would support the king, and they did this by creating a royal cult. With all the key figures gathered together in Memphis, it's time for Ptolemy to strike bargains, beginning with the priesthood. They have the power to undermine the king if he doesn't give them what they want. Then, as now, money talks. Sir Ptolemy V agrees to reduce the priest's tax bills and increase contributions to restoring and expanding their temples. In a grand gesture of conciliation,

the Pharaoh also releases some rebels from prison. In return, the clergy promise to issue a decree celebrating the young king's achievements and gifts, mythologizing their generous rulers, and establishing his cult. That decree will literally be set in stone. The words those priests compose now are the ones inscribed onto the Egyptian steeler,

unearthed by Napoleon's army two millennia later. The Rosetta Stone is at the end of a very long tradition of Egyptian monumental texts. From the start of Egyptian history, royal decrees were carved in stone, and placed in public spaces where they would last as eternal messages. They were placed in tombs, they were placed in temples. So a stela is essentially an inscribed slab of this sort.

What is unusual about the text on the Rosetta Stone is it is a decree, but it is not issued by the king. The priests of Memphis get to work in secret, preparing the decree that will venerate Ptolemy as a god and hopefully secure his position. They don't have to start from scratch. They recycle old proclamations of previous rulers, written to flatter and please. Despite his youth, they write that Ptolemy V has already defeated rebels and enemies, restoring order and avenging his father's death.

Once their decree has been written on papyrus, it's copied onto the stone. The decree must be displayed in Egypt's temples alongside a sculpture of Ptolemy, hailed as the ever-living king. Craftsmen use a very hard granite stone for the slabs, quarried from the south of Egypt in Azwan. It'll take weeks for the masons to inscribe these steelers with tiny characters in tightly packed lines on the polished surface. What makes their task even harder is that they must repeat the decree in three languages. The Greek spoken by Ptolemy, the everyday language used by the Egyptians, and the ancient hieroglyphic script. Nobody knows which language these decrees were first composed in. At the top, there is the text of the decree in Egyptian hieroglyphs. It goes back thousands of years. In the middle, there is a later

version of the same script that is known as Demotic. It is a slightly later phase of the of the Egyptian language and a much later style of script. It's essentially hieroglyphs written so cursively, so quickly in such an abbreviated form that it looks entirely different. But then, at the bottom, the same text is issued in Greek, because that is the language of the government and the royal court at this period. It's no accident that the Greek is placed at the bottom. In that order, you can get a sense of the potential cultural and political

tensions of the period. The stealer are transported across the country by donkey before they displayed upright next to new statues of the young king. The decrees are designed to last forever. But even as the workers hauled the stones into place, the days of the Egyptian kings and the hieroglyphs themselves are numbered. Tolemy V will be murdered before his 30th birthday. Exactly 150 years later, the final member of his dynasty, Queen Cleopatra, will lose the Battle of Actium and Egypt will become a province of Rome. At first, the Roman emperors make efforts to support traditional Egyptian culture, but it doesn't last.

As time goes on, knowledge of the hieroglyphic script becomes more and more restricted. And the death blow is really the closure of the pagan temples under Christian rule. The institutions that supported and protected the hieroglyphic script are closed, and the hieroglyphic script itself is so embedded in the traditional religion of Egypt that it is really held as an anathema by the Coptic monks, and there are many accounts of Coptic monks deliberately destroying not only pagan idols, but also hieroglyphic inscriptions. It simply dies because the culture,

of which it was an integral part ceased as Egypt became Christian. The last known hieroglyphs are written in the year 394 AD, but already the language is barely understood. The destruction continues, with successive occupiers competing to do the most damage. For centuries, the ancient temples and palaces are valued so little that builders use rubble from the ruins as foundations for new houses, or in fortresses, like the one built at Rosetta. Yet visitors to Egypt are entranced by the mysterious symbols. They marvel at carvings at the entrance to Luxor Temple, in the pillars of Karnak,

and framing the portraits of pharaohs at Edphu. Early Roman and Greek tourists are told by local guides that the images represent ideas and objects, unlike a modern alphabet where each character is a letter that spells out a word. By the Renaissance, people believe the script represents much more than a lost way of communicating. Perhaps it holds the deepest mysteries of the universe, or encodes magic powers or spells. As the mythology grows,

the misunderstandings about hieroglyphic writing set in, which will prove a huge barrier to deciphering it. It was assumed that it was a set of symbolic images that conveyed meaning without recording the language itself. And so each had a glyphic sign was assumed to represent a concept of a word, and simple names like the name Samtec would be translated by some Jesuit Renaissance scholars as a great long pronouncements about the mystical nature of the universe. The enigmatic nature of the Egyptian civilization and its hieroglyphs is one inspiration to Napoleon

as he launches his campaign at the end of the 18th century. As well as dominating the region, he wants to explore its treasures. He even models himself on Alexander the Great, whose conquest led directly to the Ptolemaic dynasty. But ultimately, Napoleon's military mission is doomed. As the Rosetta Stone is being unearthed, Napoleon's position is weakening. His army suffers severe losses in battles elsewhere in Egypt,

and many soldiers succumb to the plague and harsh desert conditions. Just a month later, Napoleon flees Egypt in secret. At best, he's leaving to take charge of a divided France, still unsettled after its revolution. At worst, he's deserting his own failing mission. In a British cartoon, published in 1800, Napoleon boards a ship with companions clutching sacks of cash and thin, desperate soldiers calling for help back on the shore. The caption calls him the Great Deserter. Those left behind to fight on include General Jacques Francois Menou. The 50-year-old has made a comfortable life for himself as governor of Rosetta, marrying the young daughter of a

wealthy banker. He even converts to Islam, becoming Abdullah Menou. Plump and balding, he soon dragged away from married bliss to become the reluctant commander of the entire French army in Egypt. The British and Ottoman troops have joined forces to recapture the country, the gateway to trade routes between east and west. What the French need is tactical brilliance. But what they get in General Menou is an uninspiring leader, with a talent for bureaucracy, not battle. When his soldiers sound the alarm about his weaknesses, he has them arrested. To divert attention, he blames others for a long list of catastrophic military defeats. After Cairo falls to the British, the academics transport the Rosetta Stone and other valuable finds to the last French stronghold, Alexandria.

But it's another strategic error. The British now lay siege to the city, and two months later, General Menou surrenders. Napoleon's Egyptian adventure is over. just three years and two months after it began. By September 1801, 10,000 defeated French soldiers are waiting to travel home. The lucky ones occupy tents, but many camp in the open. They're malnourished, battle-weary and disillusioned. As a final humiliation, they know that when they're finally allowed to return home, they'll travel on French ships seized by the British victors.

General Manu has signed a treaty that a war. the spoils of war to the winners. And that's not just military equipment, it's also the huge bounty of Egyptian treasure, catalogued and confiscated by the French Cultural Task Force. The collection is incredible, with statues, maps, manuscripts, drawings, dried plants, stuffed birds and animals.

But the Rosetta's stone is the jewel in the crown. The stone already had attracted controversy, and it was regarded as something highly valuable. And there was a great debate and struggle over the stone. Part of the treaty was that the French scholars would keep their notes and manuscripts as long as the antiquities they had collected, including above all the Rosetta Stone, would be handed over to the British. It doesn't occur to either side that the objects might belong in the country where they were found.

The man tasked with getting the stone out of French hands and safely back to Britain is Colonel Tompkins Hillgrove Turner. A round-faced, blonde man, 15 years General Menou's junior, Turner has been a member of the Society of Antiquities in London, and he knows what's at stake. If he can out-maneuver the French general, he'll win the ultimate prize and enhance his own reputation. But General Menou is back in his bureaucratic comfort zone. And, humiliated by defeat, he's working himself up in a frenzy of righteous anger to challenge the terms of the treaty he himself agreed to. Desperate to regain ground, Menou senses that the stone may be the most significant legacy of the French mission in Egypt. It's the one artifact he doesn't want to give up. It's both personal and political for him.

He did, after all, meet and wed the love of his life in Rosetta, where the stone was. was unearthed. Messengers hurry between the French and British sectors of the damaged city, carrying bad-tempered letters from both sides. First, Menou argues that all the antiquities are the private property of the experts who discovered them. The British agree to let scientists keep animals they've stuffed and preserved, but everything else, including the cultural and original artifacts the French have seized during their expedition, must be handed over. When one of Turner's team visits Menou in his tent near the inner gates of the city, a mention of the stone sends the general into a rage. He accuses the British of robbery. The commander-in-chief,

Menou shouts, has as much right to make this demand as a highwayman has to ask for my purse. Menou refuses to reveal the whereabouts of the stone, while the British insist it must be shipped to London, not Paris. Meanwhile, the French academics who risked their lives collecting and concealing their treasures, are threatening to set fire to their finds rather than hand them over. They even accused the British of committing acts of destruction on the same scale as the burning of the ancient library of Alexandria by Julius Caesar. But this war-torn city is nothing like the grand metropolitan capital, Ptolemy V, ruled. In the last two millennia, Alexandria has been occupied and expanded by different cultures,

from the Romans to the Ottomans. The buildings form a strange cityscape of mosques, forts, grand houses and cramped bazaars, and the walls that surround the ancient centre show the signs of conflict and time. Colonel Turner knows that there are thousands of hiding places, and that even an artifact the size of the Rosetta Stone could be smuggled out. The clock is ticking, so he redoubles his efforts to find it, to preserve Britain's pride and his own. Like so many disputes between France and Great Britain, accounts of exactly how the stone passes from one empire to another vary.

One English Egyptologist, writing at the time, insists that his French counterparts are more focused on getting the artifacts back to Europe in one piece, rather than letting them be lost or damaged in petty disputes. But according to Colonel Turner, it takes skill, determination, and brute force to get hold of the stone. not to mention a large dose of luck. A treasure hunt is underway on the streets of Alexandria. Knowing it's going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack, Turner has divided the city into sectors, sending soldiers and academics to search methodically.

He and his team comb the back streets before heading out to a hive of cavernous queside warehouses. Any of the buildings might conceal the stone or even greater uncatlogged prizes. But when Turner is finally alerted to the whereabouts of the famed Rosetta Stone, it's not spirited away in a secret vault, but at the residence of General Manu himself. Arriving on the scene, Turner discovers that plans for its return to France are already advanced. The stone is packed up, ready for the voyage, covered in protective cotton sheets and thick carpets,

which also serve as a useful disguise. But once those guarding the Rosetta Stone realized, Turner intends to take it. He watches aghast as they tear off the protection and throw it face down onto the ground. To Turner, it's too great a risk. Worried the irreplaceable piece might be destroyed, he leaves. But once he's out of earshot, he vows to his men that they will take it by brute force, and they'll do it tonight. As the sun sets and the city cools, Alexandria feels like an exotic place. Minarets spike the sky, the shattered remains of statues stand guard, and some of the shabbiness is disguised in the moonlight. Turner rounds up a squad of the toughest British gunners he can find, along with a gun carriage known as a devil cart. Their torches light the way along the rough streets as they pass men playing cards and cooking meagre rations on small fires.

As always, the atmosphere is tense. The frustrations between the occupiers and the occupied could erupt in violence at any time. But the fighters accompanying Turner know how the land lies and relish a fight. Arriving back at the General's house, Turner thumps on the heavy wooden door and when it finally opens, he states his demands. The Rosetta Stone belongs to Britain and must be handed over. Now. The gunners stand behind him, and it's clear that they're ready to take the slab by

force if necessary. The French guards finally understand they can't say no. They step aside, and the British soldiers move the gun carriage into position. Then, very carefully, they lift the stone, groaning under its brutal weight, before finally laying it on the carriage. With the French soldiers still hurling insults, Turner and his men leave, hauling the massive, priceless artifact with them. Though the journey back to the British camp is painstakingly slow, the stone is safe. For now. As the carriage weaves along the narrow alleys, Turner knows the threat hasn't gone away. One French officer warns him it should be well hidden,

in case Napoleon's academics try to seize it back, or even destroy it. So when the men unload the stone in Turner's quarters, he orders it to be guarded round the clock until he's ready to leave Alexandria. days later he takes it with him when he boards the French frigate egyptien en route for Portsmouth. Turner embarked on a ship heading back to Britain with the stone. It arrived in Britain in February 1802. It made its way to the British Museum. And I think what is remarkable is the fact the nationalistic sentiments of the time were literally written on the stone.

If you look at the stone on the two sides, there are the painted legends, captured in Egypt by the British Army in 1801 and presented by King George III. On a slightly more optimistic note, when copies were made of the stone, plaster casts, prints were made by the British, as they had been also by the French scholars, these were circulated internationally. And so even with this European war going on and on, there's also a sense that a greater good was perceived beyond these conflicts. It is believed that at last the experts have all they need to decipher hieroglyphs. Academics across Europe immediately begin to try to decode the characters, but they're held back by preconceptions and misunderstandings.

One of the problems with the Rosetta Stone as an easy key to decipherment was the fact it was broken. And so people couldn't match easily and exactly the three different versions of the same text. But it was fairly clear just by counting the signs that each hadoglyphic sign could not represent a single word because there were too many signs for the number of words in the text. One thing hasn't changed. The rivalry between the French and the British as both sides tried to make a breakthrough. The animosity between the British and the French

over the handing over of the stone later persisted in all the controversies over the role of the decipherers. Was it the British, was it the French who first had the insights that led to the understanding of the hieroglyphic script? frenzied work continues on both sides of the channel. The French want to reclaim the intellectual and moral high ground.

For the British, with easy access to the stone, it's a matter of pride. The two dominant scholars were the Englishman Thomas Young and the person whom history has cast as his rival, Jean-François-Champolion. The difference between the two was that Young was very much an English gentleman and polymath, He is said to be responsible for the invention of the light bulb. He had a wide range of interests. He's been called the last man who knew everything, whereas Champolian was very focused on ancient Egypt.

It is said he was inspired in this interest by accounts of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone itself. And so he trained himself with various orientalists. He studied Chinese. And crucially, he learnt the Coptic language. And the Coptic language is the language of the Egyptian church, which people guessed was the descendant of the language spoken in ancient Egypt. So he was very well prepared.

Jean-François Champolion is just a child when the Rosetta Stone firsts arrive in Europe. And early on, there's little in his background that suggests he could be the one to crack the code. The seventh child of his heavy drinking bookseller father and illiterate mother, he teaches himself to read, comparing the mass he hears in church with the words in the prayer book. It's his brother, Jacques Joseph, 12 years his senior, who first sees something special in the young boy. He takes him to live in Grenoble, where he keeps an eye on his education. There, the young Jean-François meets Joseph Fourier, a passionate Egyptologist, who was a key member, of Napoleon's failed expedition. When he shows the child his own copy of the inscription from

the Rosetta Stone, it sparks a passion that will shape Champollion's destiny and the decipherment of hieroglyphs. Aged 16, Champoyon gives his first speech about Egyptian history, then studies six Eastern languages at university. But the one that excites him most is Coptic, the language of Egyptian Christians. He writes to his brother that he loves to speak in the tongue of the Egyptian gods. He even dreams in the language. But 20 years after the arrival of the stone, academics still haven't deciphered the hieroglyphs. Might the script of the pharaohs stay a secret forever? It is the 14th of September 1822, and the 32-year-old Champoyon has been up all night. In the attic of a Parisian house, formerly an artist studio,

he's been working on his theories about hieroglyphic script. Light floods through the bank of windows, and the strange characters seem to dance in front of his tired eyes. He barely notices when his brother leaves for work. The solution seems so close to him now, though it has done many times before. Banging on the door interrupts his thoughts. Irritated, he heads down.

stairs and finds his friend Jean-Nicola Wiyott waiting with a package. He's just returned from Egypt with copies of inscriptions from a temple. The same documents have been sent to Champoyon's English rival, Thomas Young, who has apparently made progress as a result. Thanking him, Champon hurries back upstairs, excited by the possibilities the fresh material might offer. He still never had the money to visit the country that has fascinated him all these years, but that's never dulled his obsession. Back at his desk, he tears the package open and gets to work. The drawings show the longest list of pharaohs ever discovered, dating back at least a thousand years before the Rosetta Stone was inscribed. Soon, he's lost in concentration again, comparing

the new images with his huge collection of books and notes. For years, experts have guessed that hieroglyphs represent ideas rather than letters. The only exception are those enclosed in a circle, known as a cartouche, the French word for cartridge, which are the names of gods and pharaohs. But to Champoyon, that doesn't make sense. He's counted up the characters on his treasured copy of the inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone. There are nearly 500 words in Greek, but more than 1,400 hieroglyphs. Using the basic alphabet, he has compiled himself, he studies one particular cartouche from the new documents. Outside, the sounds of the city fade away, as Champon tries to tune into his intuition

about what spoken Egyptian might have sounded like 2,000 years ago. Something is falling into place in his head. Though this section he's studying has several unknown signs, he can identify some familiar symbols. He gets to his feet. eyes wide. He believes he can decipher a name. His excitement growing, he moves onto the next name, and the next. He can read them. He gasps. This is the key to it all. He gathers the papers, and stopping only to pull on his shoes, he races out of the door. He has to share this news with

his older brother. Without Jacques Joseph's support and encouragement, he wouldn't have been able to reach this critical point. Champagne tears down the stone stairs of the apartment, swings open the wooden door and runs into the busy street. Blinking in the daylight, he races past traders and pedestrians barely seeing them. When he reaches his brother's office at the nearby institute, he shows him his work and exclaims, I've done it. And now, exhausted and overcome with emotion and exhilaration, he collapses. His brother tries to revive him, fearing he's suffered a stroke or worse.

But according to some accounts, he can't be fully revived for several days. When he does come round, he explains the detail of how he'd made the breakthrough to his brother. What Champolian had was an alphabet that was used, he thought, to write only Macedonian foreign names. It was not used to write ancient Egyptian, and it was not used to write ancient Egyptian names. what he saw in these drawings was a royal name in a cartouche, which was composed of a group of signs. The last two of those signs he knew from his alphabet, the alphabet used to write foreign names, were S's. Above it, there was a sign nobody knew the meaning of, and at the top there was a picture of a circle. Now, the circle is the Egyptian way of representing the sun.

Champolin knew from Coptic that the word for Sun could be Ra. He knew from the Bible that one of the most famous names in ancient Egypt was Ramazas. So he had Ra, he had two S's, the middle sign was obviously an M. What this decipherment of the name meant, though, was that not just foreign names were written phonetically with sound signs, Egyptian names were. And if Egyptian names were written like this, the whole of the Egyptian language could be. And if Ra is the word for sun, and it is written with a picture of a sun combined with sound signs, suddenly the fact you have a language, you have an alphabet, and other signs, they come together,

their pieces forming a jigsaw. The breakthrough is dramatic, but the striking story of Champoyons race through the streets and his collapse is the part many experts struggle with. It's an entirely ridiculous account. It underplays the hard work, the collaboration, the constant researches that went on. But what happens slightly later in the year is on the 27th of September in 1822. He reads a formal letter at the Academy of Inscriptions and Belletre in Paris, which is the famous letter and Monsieur Dacier,

in which he presents his alphabet. And in this he hints that he thinks he can understand the writing system. Young was in the audience, young was his rival, Young was impressed, but I don't think realised quite what the implications were. This is the event that is celebrated as the anniversary of decipherment, but it is still only the first step.

Across the world, Egyptologists scramble to get hold of the document. Champagne has included illustrations showing the letters and sounds represented by the images of lions, birds, fish, insects, objects, and many more hieroglyphic characters. He has revealed the alphabet at last. The discovery changes everything, for Egyptologists and for Champoyon himself. Within two years, he's traveling to Italy to see Egyptian relatives, at first hand. He becomes curator of the Egyptian collections at the Louvre Museum.

Then, in the summer of 1828, he finally sails to Egypt to see the sights he's dreamed of, the temples, pyramids, and tombs. Speaking fluent Arabic, and dressed as a Bedouin, Champagne explores the ancient sights and revels in the beauty. It's like coming home. He describes running like a madman between colossi, obelisks and colonnades? That, I think, is the moment that many scholars would most like to have witnessed when somebody enters the country of Egypt and sees the monuments covered with texts and for the first time can read them. He could see, he could understand, he could read King's names, he could read songs recited by workmen on tomb walls, thousands of years old. That really is the

culmination of his achievement. To go from that one moment of revelation reading a single name leads wonderfully, almost inevitably, to being able to enter a country and understand its writings in its own words for the first time for thousands of years. Though the trip had been his dream, the intense work and difficult conditions leave him exhausted and unwell. Less than two years After his return, he suffers paralysis and dies of a stroke aged only 41. But in his last days, he urges his brother to continue to work on his book, which he calls My Visiting Card to Posterity. And that book, the beautifully illustrated grammar and dictionary of ancient Egyptian, is published

six years later. Champoyon's name lives on, across the world and beyond. A street in Cairo is named after him, as well as two French museums and a crater on the moon. He becomes known as the father of Egyptology. What Champolian's decisement showed is that translation is possible, but translation is about dealing with another culture. The texts are not abstract things, they are artifacts created by a culture embedded in a culture, part of its life, part of its heritage. And partly through this, the Rosetta Stone has become a great icon of the idea we can understand one another across cultures, countries and vast periods of time. Champoyon's breakthrough opened up the world by allowing us to read and understand carvings, papyrus records, and so much more.

Egyptologists can now chart the reigns of pharaohs from the ancient kingdom all the way through to Ptolemy's own dynasty. They can read poetry and accounts of everyday life. Working alongside archaeologists, they've uncovered and understood so much more about this incredible civilization. That work continues today. The Rosetta Stone has been on display in the British Museum since its arrival in England in 1802, except when it was stored 50 foot underground to protect it during bombing raids on London in World War I. Six million people visit the museum each year, and for some it is the single item they most want to see.

Many cue to touch a replica of the stone, wanting to make a connection. Even though it's over 2,000 years old, the Rosetta Stone still has the power to surprise. When I was a curator in the British Museum at first, the stone was displayed at an angle, and it was black and white. It had been covered with a layer of wax, which had become black. And the letters, the Greek letters, the Demotic and the Egyptian hieroglyphs were picked out in white. What was done in preparation for the anniversary of its discovery was to clean it. And when the black wax was removed, it was very obviously a wonderful bit of grey and pink granitoid stone.

It wasn't black basalt, as it had been frequently claimed. It wasn't basalt and it wasn't even black, which was a bit embarrassing. Even after cleaning, the slab isn't spectacular to look at, yet it still has the same mysterious power that struck French engineer Jean-François Bouchard when he first set eyes on it in the ruins of an Egyptian fortress. It's a lump of stone, it's rather battered. The texts are beautifully inscribed, but rather small.

There's nothing aesthetically appealing about it. It was wonderful to see how people would see it, react to it and smile. And I found it very reassuring in some ways to see that people were fascinated not because it was gold, not because it was beautiful, spectacular or exotic, but because it somehow represented for them this idea of translation. It is now 200 years since Champagnon's breakthrough. The anniversary in September 22 inspired exhibitions and events across the world. But it also highlighted the conclusion. traversy about whether London is the right place for this iconic exhibit. More than two and a

half thousand archaeologists have signed a petition urging the Steeler to be returned to the country where it was inscribed and rediscovered. The British Museum says it has not received a formal request for it to be returned, and there's debate about where it could be displayed instead. One option might be to house it at the recreated version of the Library of Alexandria, on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The significance of the Rosetta Stone is so bound up with its modern history regrettable as that colonialist modern history is, that it is hard to separate it from its journey into Europe.

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina would be a wonderful home for this fragment of text that has somehow come to represent not only the translatibility of every culture to every other culture, but also the endurance of the Egyptian textual tradition that is so much part of Egyptian history. It belongs to the world, but it also is quintessentially Egyptian as well. In the next episode, we're in the Mongol lands on the step of Central Asia in the late 12th and early 13th centuries.

This is a land of tough nomadic herders and warriors, a region divided between tribes, But soon, one man will emerge to unite them. In the year 1162, a baby boy is born into a mid-ranking Mongol clan. By sheer force of will, and armed with the greatest military mind of his or perhaps any age, he will bring the Mongol peoples under his command and to his enemies. He builds a reputation unmatched to cruelty and barbarism. So how does a boy from such humble origins come to rule an empire twice the size of ancient Rome's?

The Genghis Khan story. That's next time.