It's All Egyptian to Me Trivia Quiz

Answer: Coptic

The hieroglyphics of Ancient Egypt were being developed over 5,000 years ago. The language was in use for thousands of years, but was waning for centuries; Christian influence shutting down the pagan temples that it was mainly used in caused its extinction. The last known hieroglyphic inscriptions were written around the year 400, and came from the island of Philae in Egypt.

The same Christian influence that "shut down" the Ancient Egyptian language gave rise to Coptic language. Coptic was created in order to give Greek Christian instructions to Egyptian Christian converts; it was mostly derived from Greek, but had elements of Ancient Egyptian incorporated into it. The connection between Coptic and Ancient Egyptian became important in the eventual translation of both Demotic and hieroglyphics.

Answer: Arabs

Attempts to decipher the hieroglyphics of old may have started less than a century after they fell into disuse, by a person using the name Horapollo. Little is known about this person, the translations given are almost entirely wrong, and even the authenticity of the work has been questioned.

Better-established translation attempts were made by Arabic historians Dhul-Nun al-Misri and Ibn Wahshiyya during the 9th and 10th centuries. By comparing hieroglypics to Coptic (which was in use at the time), they were able to correctly identify a handful of symbols. Further attempts over the centuries were also able to link Coptic with hieroglyphics, and a little bit of progress was made in translating them.

Answer: the walls of a fort

When Napoleon was on a military campaign in Egypt, his soldiers came across Fort Julien. The fort was not far from the city of Rosetta, and had been built by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century. While doing renovations on the fort, soldiers unearthed the stone. The stone was immediately recognized as a potentially important artifact, and was transported to Cairo for study.

Shortly afterwards, French forces were defeated by the British and Ottomans. Part of the terms of surrender were for the French to surrender all Egyptian artifacts they had discovered to the British. The Rosetta Stone came into British possession in 1802; copies of its inscriptions were made, and the original stone was transferred to the British Museum.

Answer: Greek

Ancient Greek and Latin were widely known to scholars, which was why the discovery of a trilingual decree was of such great significance. However, translating the Greek wasn't a simple matter of getting out the dictionary. The Greek inscription on the Rosetta Stone was written in local dialect, the details of which were unknown at the time. Furthermore, the right corner of the Greek text was missing, leaving scholars guessing at its contents.

Eventually, Richard Porson suggested a widely-accepted reconstruction for the missing corner. With the efforts of Hubert-Pascal Ameilhon and Christian Heyne, the Greek inscription in its entirety was translated by 1803.

Answer: True

When the Rosetta Stone was discovered, only a small number of inscriptions in what is now known as Demotic had been discovered. At the time, Johan David Akerblad was working on translating the then-unknown text. After the discovery of the stone, Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy received a copy of its inscriptions and recognized it as the same language that Akerblad was working on. Working in tandem, the two were able to identify several names and correctly deduce the meanings of many of the characters.

Answer: Ptolemy

With the Greek inscription translated, it was known that the decree was made by Ptolemy. On a suggestion from de Sacy, who had stopped working on the translation, Young focused his attention on a group of hieroglyphics surrounded by a cartouche, believing that those could signify a proper name. Assuming that a famous name like Ptolemy would be pronounced approximately the same across most languages, he correctly determined the pronunciation of the symbols in the cartouche with an equivalent for Ptolemy.

By comparing the inscriptions, Young was able to fully translate the partially-understood Demotic text, and correctly identified other proper names in the hieroglyphic inscription. However, he lost interest in translating the hieroglyphics and falsely concluded that the progress he had made was incorrect.

Answer: as a kid

The Rosetta Stone was discovered around the time that Champollion was 8; he first set sight on hieroglyphics when he was 10. Champollion was a prodigy linguist and learned a dozen languages as a kid, including Coptic.

Champollion became an assistant professor at Grenoble University, and it was during his tenure there that the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone was brought to his attention. He started his attempts in 1822.

Answer: "ra"

A disc with a dot you say? Why, that looks a bit like the sun, the deity of which is Ra! Champollion knew that the last two letters were a repeated SS, and that some languages had implied vowels. Putting all this together, he reasoned that the cartouche he was examining, RA?SS, could only be one famous name: Ramesses.

This was Champollion's first major breakthrough in his attempts, and he became so excited that he collapsed from exhaustion from his efforts.

Answer: they were a phonetic alphabet

The old, incorrect translations that were supposedly proposed by Horapollo turned out to have caused a major hindrance in the proper translation of the hieroglyphics. It turned out that hieroglyphics were pronounced phonetically, rather than alphabetically.

After this crucial discovery, Champollion was able to connect hieroglyphics to his knowledge of Coptic and decipher most of the hieroglyphics. He first published his work in 1823.

Answer: False

The Rosetta Stone is neither unique nor complete. All three of the inscriptions on the stone are missing parts. The lower right corner of the Greek text is missing, as is the upper right corner of the Demotic text. The hieroglyphic inscription is the least complete, with each of the fourteen existing lines missing parts. Additional fragments of the Rosetta Stone decree have been discovered, as have other multi-lingual decrees from around the same time. Nonetheless, the Rosetta Stone remains the most famous of its kind.