The Rosetta Stone is one of the most significant artifacts known to have been found in the Mediterranean Basin. Dr. Jed Z. Buchwald, Doris and Henry Dreyfuss Professor of History, Caltech, joins the show to discuss the stone.
Some topics explored
- The significance of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone
- Napoleon’s French army ruling Egypt
- Ottoman’s role in the stone being found
- How the Rosetta Stone was found
- How large and the material the stone
- When it’s believed the stone was
- How the Rosetta Stone got back to Britain
- The inscriptions including the languages
- Bouchard discovering the stone
- Thomas Young (British) and Jean-François Champollion (French), including their working relationship and their differing theories at the time of how to decipher the stone
- Young’s major contributions to deciphering the stone
- Champollion’s major contributions to deciphering the stone
- Basics of how to understand Egyptian hieroglyphic writing
Listen to the episode
The episode can be streamed below and is available on major podcast apps: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music.
Show Notes
- Dr. Jed Buchwald is co-author of the book The Riddle of the Rosetta: How an English Polymath and a French Polyglot Discovered the Meaning of Egyptian Hieroglyphs (Princeton University Press)
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.