Hieroglyphics
Overview
Interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphics, begun by J.F. CHAMPOLLION, is virtually complete; the other hieroglyphics are still imperfectly understood. Hieroglyphics are conventionalized pictures used chiefly to represent meanings that seem arbitrary and are seldom obvious. Egyptian hieroglyphics were already perfected in the first dynasty (3110-2884 B.C.), but they began to go out of use in the Middle Kingdom and after 500 B.C. were virtually unused. There were basically 604 symbols that might be put to three uses (although few were used for all three purposes): as an ideogram, as when a sign resembling a tree meant tree; as a phonogram, as when an owl represented the sign m, because the word for owl had m as its principal consonant; or as a determinative, an unpronounced symbol placed after an ambiguous sign to indicate its classification (e.g., an eye to indicate that the preceding word has to do with looking or seeing).
Rosetta Stone
Rosetta Stone, black basalt slab bearing an inscription that was the key to the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphics and thus to the foundation of modern Egyptology. Found by French troops in 1799 near the town of Rashîd (Rosetta) in Lower Egypt, it is now in the British Museum, London. The stone was inscribed in 196 BC with a decree praising the Egyptian king Ptolemy V. Because the inscription appears in three scripts, hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek, scholars were able to decipher the hieroglyphic and demotic versions by comparing them with the Greek version. The deciphering was chiefly the work of the British physicist Thomas Young and the French Egyptologist Jean François Champollion.