The Rosetta Stone

In Our Time: Culture

BBC

History

4.6 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2021

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most famous museum objects in the world, shown in the image above in replica, and dating from around 196 BC. It is a damaged, dark granite block on which you can faintly see three scripts engraved: Greek at the bottom, Demotic in the middle and Hieroglyphs at the top. Napoleon’s soldiers found it in a Mamluk fort at Rosetta on the Egyptian coast, and soon realised the Greek words could be used to unlock the hieroglyphs. It was another 20 years before Champollion deciphered them, becoming the first to understand the hieroglyphs since they fell out of use 1500 years before and so opening up the written culture of ancient Egypt to the modern age.

With Penelope Wilson Associate Professor of Egyptian Archaeology at Durham University

Campbell Price Curator of Egypt and Sudan at the Manchester Museum

And

Richard Bruce Parkinson Professor of Egyptology and Fellow of The Queen’s College, University of Oxford

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You don't need us to tell you there's a general election coming.
0:04.7	So what does it mean for you?
0:06.7	Every day on newscast we dissect the big talking points, the ones that you want to know more about.
0:12.4	With our book of contacts, we talk directly to the people you want to hear from.
0:16.8	And with help from some of the best BBC journalists,
0:19.5	we'll untangle the stories that matter to you.
0:23.0	Join me, Laura Kunsberg, Adam Fleming, Chris Mason and Patty O'Connell for our daily
0:28.4	podcast.
0:29.4	Newscast, listen on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:38.0	Thanks for downloading this episode of in our time.
0:40.0	There's a reading list to go with it on our website and you can get news about
0:44.0	our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC in our time I hope you enjoy the
0:48.8	programs hello the Rosetta Stone may be the most famous museum object in the world, though perhaps not the most imposing.
0:56.0	It's a damaged dark granite block about the height of a child starting school, and on it you can faintly see three texts engraved in Greek
1:04.1	Demotic and Hieroglyphs. Napoleon soldiers found it in an Egyptian fort and
1:09.4	realized the Greek words could help unlock the Hieroglyphs, then silent mystery and so it proved, revealing
1:15.5	to us three millennia of Egyptian culture.
1:18.5	With me to discuss the Rosetta Stone are Penelope Wilson, associate professor of Egyptian Archaeology at Durham University,
1:25.4	Campbell Price, Creator of Egypt and Sudan at the Manchester Museum,
1:29.4	and Richard Bruce Parkinson, Professor of Egyptology and Fellow of the Queen's College University of Oxford.
1:36.8	Richard Parkinson, you were once a curator of the Rosetta Stone, the British Museum.
1:42.1	Can you tell us more about it rather than I did?
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.