Ancient Egypt unleashed: how the gods, pharaohs, monsters and murderers shattered their silence

As a new show at the British Museum celebrates the monumental discovery that blew a 3,000-year-old mystery apart, our writer finds magic and malice on a code-cracking ride into antiquity

We are speeding north out of Cairo, careering along fast, wide roads through a desert landscape and out into antiquity. After three hours, we reach Rashid, once known as Rosetta, a port city on the Nile delta, and enter Fort Julien, walking clockwise around its interior until we reach the first corner and the reason for our journey.

At this spot in 1799, a discovery was made that would shake the world. Among the rubble of the fort’s foundations, a dark slab of granite-like rock caught the eye of Pierre-François Bouchard, a lieutenant in Napoleon’s invading army. Bouchard had served under Nicolas-Jacques Conté, inventor of the pencil, and he quickly gleaned the significance of the lettering etched into the slab.

This 762kg chunk of granodiorite, recycled from elsewhere into use as a building block, was inscribed with a decree issued in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. Although the message is somewhat dull, crucially it was written three times: in hieroglyphs (the beautiful ancient Egyptian pictorial script that could no longer be understood), in demotic (the joined-up lettering used for everyday writing), and in ancient Greek (a known language).

Here, at long, long, long last, was the key to deciphering hieroglyphs, those perfect outlines of people, animals and objects scratched into stone or written on to papyrus millennia ago. The code was finally cracked in 1822 by Jean-François Champollion, who rushed into his brother’s office, shouted “I’ve got it!” then fainted and wasn’t himself for five days. The scale of his achievement can hardly be overstated: thanks to this French philologist, and a few other scholars including Britain’s Thomas Young, 3,000 years of Egyptian history, one of the world’s oldest civilisations, came cascading out into the light.

“This is not just Egyptology,” says Ilona Regulski excitedly, standing by a replica that sits where the stone was discovered. “This is the birth of Egyptology!” It’s an evocative spot, now shaded by the huge spreading branches of a royal poinciana, or flame tree, named for its crimson blossom.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of this seismic unravelling, a major show about hieroglyphs, curated by Regulski, is about to open at the British Museum in London, where the Rosetta Stone now resides, the British army having taken it off the French when they cut short their campaign in 1801. A globally recognised symbol of all attempts to fathom the mysteries of the past, the stone is the museum’s most visited object – and its most commodified. A huge swathe of the sizeable gift shop is devoted to the stone, its world-shattering hieroglyphs gracing ties, nail files, mint tins and snow globes.

Hieroglyphs: Unlocking Ancient Egypt will put this rock star centre stage, with a supporting cast of 240 exhibits including the Enchanted Basin, a granite sarcophagus whose hieroglyphs were believed to have magical powers, giving anyone who bathed in it relief from the torments of love. Along the way, hieroglyphs will provide insights into life in ancient Egypt, from poetry and international treaties to shopping lists and tax returns.

For a grand finale, we take the minibus to Giza to see the pyramids and the Sphinx, baking in the late-morning sun. Regulski leads us to what’s lurking between the latter’s massive lion paws: the Dream Stele, a commemorative slab bearing hieroglyphs you can no longer get close enough to read. “We have the first copy ever made of this stele,” she says. “It’s super accurate. The stele tells the story of Thutmoses IV, who came here as a young royal to hunt – there were lions and hyenas in those days. He fell asleep and, in a dream, the Sphinx said to him, ‘I will make you king of Egypt, if only you will clear the sand from around my body.’” Thutmoses, who wasn’t next in line to the throne, did as asked and became king, then had this story placed between the paws.

And there it stood in the restless sand for millennia, in plain sight but rendered silent, its meaning lost, like the great library, to antiquity – until the code was cracked and the Sphinx’s voice could be heard again for all eternity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K_ICdryKyk

(via The Guardian): https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/oct/10/ancient-egypt-gods-sphinx-pharaohs-monsters-hieroglyphs-rosetta-stone-british-museum