Rosetta Stone
- Title:
- Rosetta Stone
- Collection:
- Cornell Cast Collection
- Creator:
- Unknown
- Photographer:
- Mihaloew, Andreya
- Date:
- ca. 1900-1930
196 BCE
2014 (image)
- Site:
- el-Rashid (Rosetta), Egypt (discovery site) (original)
- Location:
- White Hall (mounted on wall outside Room 413), Cornell University
el-Rashid (Rosetta), Egypt (discovery site) (original) - ID Number:
- CCC_0829
- Accession Number:
- 766
- File Name:
- CCC_0829.tif
- Original Measurements:
- 112.3 (H) x 75.7 (W) x 28.4 (D) cm
- Culture:
- Egyptian
- Style/Period:
- Ptolemaic Period
- Work Type:
- casts (sculpture)
- Materials/Techniques:
- plaster cast (sculpture)
granodorite inscription (original) - Subject:
- Ptolemies, Kings of Egypt
- Image View Type:
- overall
- Image View Description:
- from front
- Measurement:
- 94 x 75 x 3.5 (centimeters, height x width x diameter)
- Description:
- This is a well-preserved cast of the Rosetta stone, a bilingual inscription recorded in three scripts on an incomplete granodorite stele and displayed in the British Museum since 1802. It records a decree in the hieroglyphic and demotic scripts of ancient Egyptian, and in ancient Greek. Remaining on the stone are 14 lines of hieroglyphics, 32 lines of demotic, and 54 lines of Greek. Many of the lines are damaged or incomplete. This cast has been painted black with letters highlighted in dull white to approximate the appearance of the original at the time the cast was produced. It has also been filled in around the edges to form a rectangle. The decree, issued by priests, affirmed the royal cult of Ptolemy V. The stone was discovered in 1799 during Napoleon's campaigns in Egypt in reuse in a fifteenth century fortress. The stone is of great importance to the study of ancient Egypt since it offered the key to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs by Jean-François Champollion in 1822. This royal and priestly form of writing had gone out of use at the end of the fourth century CE and knowledge of its meaning had disappeared soon after.
- Notes:
- Items in the Cornell Cast Collection are meant for inventory and reference purposes. Metadata may not be complete in all cases.
no. EA24 - Bibliography:
- Richard Parkinson, The Rosetta Stone (London: British Museum, 2005)
John Ray, The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007)
See also bibliography in the British Museum Collection Online (BritishMuseum.org) - Related Work:
- ID no. 588 is a duplicate of this cast.
- Repository:
- Cornell University (current)
London, British Museum (original) - Collecting Program:
- Cornell Collections of Antiquities
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- The images in the Cornell Collection of Antiquities: Casts are protected by copyright, and the copyright holders are their creators, generally Cornell University Library, Annetta Alexandridis, and Verity Platt. This collection of plaster casts owned by Cornell University was photographed by Cornell University Library, Alexandridis, Platt, and Andreya L. Mihaloew from 2010-2015, with funding from a Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences Grant to Annetta Alexandridis. Cornell is providing access to the materials for research and personal use. The written permission of any copyright and other rights holders is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use that extends beyond what is authorized by fair use and other statutory exemptions. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item. Please contact Annetta Alexandridis and Verity Platt for more information about this collection, or to request permission to use these images.