Week 5 - Enia - The key from Rosetta Stone

The project during this week is to giving some response to something. It means that we need to think about what can we read from these objects and how to use these elements in another way. So we went to the British Museum to find something which we are inretest in. During the short visit, Rosetta Stone left me a deep impression.

The Rosetta Stone is an Ancient Egyptian artifact which was instrumental in advancing modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. The stone is a Ptolemaic era stele with carved text made up of three translations of a single passage: two in Egyptian language scripts (hieroglyphic and Demotic) and one in classical Greek. It was created in 196 BC, discovered by the French in 1799 at Rosetta and contributed greatly to the deciphering of the principles of hieroglyph writing in 1822 by the British scientist Thomas Young and the French scholar Jean-François Champollion. Comparative translation of the stone assisted in understanding many previously undecipherable examples of hieroglyphic writing. The text on the stone is a decree from Ptolemy V, describing the repeal of various taxes and instructions to erect statues in temples. Two Egyptian-Greek multilingual steles predated Ptolemy V's Rosetta Stone: Ptolemy III's Decree of Canopus, 239 BC, and Ptolemy IV's Decree of Memphis, ca 218 BC.

Through the discussion with Simon, I decided to focus on the Rosetta stone. As we know, this stone contributed a lot to the deciphering of the principles of hieroglyph writing. However, what I want to know is whether there are still some secrets which have not been found yet. In other words, if we consider this stone as a treasure, how many wealth are left.

Firstly I tried to collect some general information.

1. It is incomplete and broken due to the long time and war.

2. There are three main languages on this stone.

3. It is added some words by another people in different time. This is important because they are the evidence of the time and the history.

4. The role of the word

Then I tried to figure out the meanings that I can obtain from the stone.

1. It’s just like a book, or a treasure. Some information of it has been found,however, maybe there are aslo something else are left.

2. It represents the power and wealth. As a result, it was tributed as a gift.

3. I want to know the key to decipher the secret.

So I need to find the key. Maybe It sounds simple but I wondered whether I could create a device which can be used to decipher the secret in this stone.