The Rosetta Stone And The Rebirth Of Ancient Egypt

Author : John Ray
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674024931
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt written by John Ray and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-02 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Read the Bldg Blog interview with Mary Beard about the Wonders of the World series(Part I and Part II) The Rosetta Stone is one of the world's great wonders, attracting awed pilgrims by the tens of thousands each year. This book tells the Stone's story, from its discovery by Napoleon's expedition to Egypt to its current--and controversial-- status as the single most visited object on display in the British Museum. A pharaoh's forgotten decree, cut in granite in three scripts--Egyptian hieroglyphs, Egyptian demotic, and ancient Greek--the Rosetta Stone promised to unlock the door to the language of ancient Egypt and its 3,000 years of civilization, if only it could be deciphered. Capturing the drama of the race to decode this key to the ancient past, John Ray traces the paths pursued by the British polymath Thomas Young and Jean-Francois Champollion, the "father of Egyptology" ultimately credited with deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. He shows how Champollion "broke the code" and explains more generally how such deciphering is done, as well as its critical role in the history of Egyptology. Concluding with a chapter on the political and cultural controversy surrounding the Stone, the book also includes an appendix with a full translation of the Stone's text. Rich in anecdote and curious lore, The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt is a brilliant and frequently amusing guide to one of history's great mysteries and marvels.

Author : John Ray
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674069110
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt written by John Ray and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Rosetta Stone is one of the world’s great wonders, attracting awed pilgrims by the tens of thousands each year. This book tells the Stone’s story, from its discovery by Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt to its current—and controversial— status as the single most visited object on display in the British Museum.

Author : John Ray
Publisher : Profile Books
ISBN 13 : 184765066X
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Rosetta Stone written by John Ray and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2014-08-07 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does the Rosetta Stone tell us about the past? What treasures of Egyptian literature can now be read, thanks to its decipherment? What does it tell us about the history of writing and the story of our own alphabets? How do decipherments work and how can we know if they are right? Who owns the Rosetta Stone and what happens if we start to return pieces of the past to countries who claim them? These are some of the fascinating questions which are explored in this introduction to one of the true Wonders of the World.

Author : Edward Dolnick
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1501198947
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.46/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Writing of the Gods written by Edward Dolnick and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-11-22 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fast-paced and “engrossing account” (The New York Times Book Review) of “one of the greatest breakthroughs in archaeological history” (The Christian Science Monitor): two rival geniuses in a race to decode the writing on one of the world’s most famous documents—the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone is one of the most famous objects in the world, attracting millions of visitors to the British museum every year, and yet most people don’t really know what it is. Discovered in a pile of rubble in 1799, this slab of stone proved to be the key to unlocking a lost language that baffled scholars for centuries. Carved in ancient Egypt, the Rosetta Stone carried the same message in different languages—in Greek using Greek letters, and in Egyptian using picture-writing called hieroglyphs. Until its discovery, no one in the world knew how to read the hieroglyphs that covered every temple and text and statue in Egypt. Dominating the world for thirty centuries, ancient Egypt was the mightiest empire the world had ever known, yet everything about it—the pyramids, mummies, the Sphinx—was shrouded in mystery. Whoever was able to decipher the Rosetta Stone would solve that mystery and fling open a door that had been locked for two thousand years. Two brilliant rivals set out to win that prize. One was English, the other French, at a time when England and France were enemies and the world’s two great superpowers. Written “like a thriller” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis), The Writing of the Gods chronicles this high-stakes intellectual race in which the winner would win glory for both himself and his nation. A riveting portrait of empires both ancient and modern, this is an unparalleled look at the culture and history of ancient Egypt, “and also a lesson…in what the human mind does when faced with a puzzle” (The New Yorker).

Author : R. B. Parkinson
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520223066
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Cracking Codes written by R. B. Parkinson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deciphering the Rosetta Stone -- Reading a text: the Egyptian scripts of the Rosetta Stone -- Towards reading a cultural code: the uses of writing in ancient Egypt -- The future: futher codes to crack.

Author : R. B. Parkinson
Publisher : Objects in Focus
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 68 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Rosetta Stone written by R. B. Parkinson and published by Objects in Focus. This book was released on 2005 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Rosetta Stone is one of the most popular artefacts in the British Museum. Containing a decree written in Greek, Demotic and hieroglyphics, it proved to be the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics. This concise study traces the history of `the most famous piece of rock in the world' to become a modern icon and tells the story of the race to use it to decipher Egypt's ancient script by Jean-François Champollion and Thomas Young. Also includes a translation of the text.

Author : Daniel Meyerson
Publisher : Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN 13 : 0345448723
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Linguist and the Emperor written by Daniel Meyerson and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2005-02-08 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recounts the story of the race between Napoleon and linguist Jean-Francois Champollion to break the code of the Rosetta Stone, from its discovery and the early efforts to secure it, to the impact the stone had on the lives of everyone who encountered it.

Author : Vanessa Davies
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190083735
Total Pages : 721 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Egyptian Epigraphy and Palaeography written by Vanessa Davies and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-28 with total page 721 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The unique relationship between word and image in ancient Egypt is a defining feature of that ancient culture's records. All hieroglyphic texts are composed of images, and large-scale figural imagery in temples and tombs is often accompanied by texts. Epigraphy and palaeography are two distinct, but closely related, ways of recording, analyzing, and interpreting texts and images. This Handbook stresses technical issues about recording text and art and interpretive questions about what we do with those records and why we do it. It offers readers three key things: a diachronic perspective, covering all ancient Egyptian scripts from prehistoric Egypt through the Coptic era (fourth millennium BCE-first half of first millennium CE), a look at recording techniques that considers the past, present, and future, and a focus on the experiences of colleagues. The diachronic perspective illustrates the range of techniques used to record different phases of writing in different media. The consideration of past, present, and future techniques allows readers to understand and assess why epigraphy and palaeography is or was done in a particular manner by linking the aims of a particular effort with the technique chosen to reach those aims. The choice of techniques is a matter of goals and the records' work circumstances, an inevitable consequence of epigraphy being a double projection: geometrical, transcribing in two dimensions an object that exists physically in three; and mental, an interpretation, with an inevitable selection among the object's defining characteristics. The experiences of colleagues provide a range of perspectives and opinions about issues such as techniques of recording, challenges faced in the field, and ways of reading and interpreting text and image. These accounts are interesting and instructive stories of innovation in the face of scientific conundrum.

Author : Robert Solé
Publisher : Thunder's Mouth Press
ISBN 13 : 9781568582269
Total Pages : 184 pages
Book Rating : 4.69/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Rosetta Stone written by Robert Solé and published by Thunder's Mouth Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Follows the saga of the Rosetta stone, from its discovery in 1799 by a French officer serving in Napoleon's Egyptian expedition, to the remarkable competition that ensued for possession of the stone, to the intellectual quest to decode its inscription.

Author : Jed Z. Buchwald
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691233969
Total Pages : 576 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Riddle of the Rosetta written by Jed Z. Buchwald and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-24 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major new history of the race between two geniuses to decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century Europe In 1799, a French Army officer was rebuilding the defenses of a fort on the banks of the Nile when he discovered an ancient stele fragment bearing a decree inscribed in three different scripts. So begins one of the most familiar tales in Egyptology—that of the Rosetta Stone and the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. This book draws on fresh archival evidence to provide a major new account of how the English polymath Thomas Young and the French philologist Jean-François Champollion vied to be the first to solve the riddle of the Rosetta. Jed Buchwald and Diane Greco Josefowicz bring to life a bygone age of intellectual adventure. Much more than a decoding exercise centered on a single artifact, the race to decipher the Rosetta Stone reflected broader disputes about language, historical evidence, biblical truth, and the value of classical learning. Buchwald and Josefowicz paint compelling portraits of Young and Champollion, two gifted intellects with altogether different motivations. Young disdained Egyptian culture and saw Egyptian writing as a means to greater knowledge about Greco-Roman antiquity. Champollion, swept up in the political chaos of Restoration France and fiercely opposed to the scholars aligned with throne and altar, admired ancient Egypt and was prepared to upend conventional wisdom to solve the mystery of the hieroglyphs. Taking readers from the hushed lecture rooms of the Institut de France to the windswept monuments of the Valley of the Kings, The Riddle of the Rosetta reveals the untold story behind one of the nineteenth century's most thrilling discoveries.