E. A. Wallis Budge

The Rosetta Stone (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek. Because it presents essentially the same text in all three scripts (with some minor differences among them), the stone provided the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs. The stone is believed to have originally been displayed within a temple, possibly at nearby Sais. It was probably moved during the early Christian or medieval period, and was eventually used as building material in the construction of Fort Julien near the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta. It was rediscovered there in 1799 by a soldier named Pierre-Francois Bouchard of the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt. It was the first Ancient Egyptian bilingual text recovered in modern times, and it aroused widespread public interest with its potential to decipher this previously untranslated ancient language. Study of the decree was already under way when the first full translation of the Greek text appeared in 1803. It was 20 years, however, before the transliteration of the Egyptian scripts was announced by Jeas-Francois Champollion in Paris in 1822; it took longer still before scholars were able to read Ancient Egyptian inscriptions and literature confidently. Major advances in the decoding were recognition that the stone offered three versions of the same text (1799); that the demotic text used phonetic characters to spell foreign names (1802); that the hieroglyphic text did so as well, and had pervasive similarities to the demotic (Thomas Young, 1814); and that, in addition to being used for foreign names, phonetic characters were also used to spell native Egyptian words (Champollion, 1822–1824).

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Harmakis Edzioni
• Erscheinungstermin: 30. Januar 2016
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9788898301416
• Artikelnr.: 44506571

Autorenporträt

Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge, often cited as E. A. Wallis Budge, was a renowned English Egyptologist, Orientalist, and philologist who made significant contributions to the study of ancient Egypt. Born on July 27, 1857, and passing away on November 23, 1934, Budge was a prolific author whose scholarly work included translations, dictionaries, and a vast corpus of writings on Egyptology, Assyriology, and the history of the Middle East. Among his most notable works is 'The Rosetta Stone,' which provides an informative exploration of the crucial artifact that helped decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs, ultimately unlocking the long-lost language of ancient Egypt. Budge's literary style was characterized by a meticulous attention to detail and a commitment to making the knowledge of ancient civilizations accessible to a broader audience. Despite some of his translations and theories being later critiqued and superseded by modern scholarship, Budge's texts continue to serve as valuable resources for historical study and remain popular among enthusiasts of Egyptology. He served for much of his career at the British Museum, where he was responsible for numerous acquisitions of key artifacts, and his influence is still recognized in the fields of archaeology and philology today. His contributions have fostered a deeper understanding and appreciation of near eastern antiquities across the scholarly community and the world at large.