Prior to the revolution that would change the system of governance in France, the people had suffered under the mismanagement of King Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette, who, along with the aristocracy, refused to acknowledge the economic plight of the lower classes. 
Both political and socioeconomic factors contributed to the French Revolution as the ambitions of the rising bourgeoisie were allied with aggrieved peasants, wage-earners, and individuals of all classes. The influence of the ideas that rounded out the revolutionary movement, rooted in Enlightenment philosophies were also paramount to the desire for change in what was felt to be a stagnant system of government.
The King, his wife Marie Antoinette, and their children attempted to escape from Paris in 1791 after months of popular dissatisfaction and the increasing threat to the monarchy. The King and his family did not make it out of Paris and were instead captured and held in Paris and in 1792 the King was sent to the guillotine. For three years, between 1792 and 1795, a committee was established to rule the country headed by Georges-Jacques Denton, Jean-Paul Marat, and Maximilien Robespierre. They ruled in what became known as the Reign of Terror, sending thousands of Royalists to the guillotine including Marie Antoinette and other Royalists, dissidents of the Revolution, and even moderate thinkers who sought to mediate the excesses of the revolutionary movement. The Revolution succeeded in overturning generations of autocratic monarchic rule but became a symbol of excessive force and revolt without sufficient stabilizing elements to fundamentally change conditions for the French people. In 1799 a young General named Napoleon Bonaparte helped overthrow the government, called the Directory, and by 1804 had risen to such power that he etablished himself as “Napoleon I, Emperor of the French.”
For over two thousand years, the secrets of the ancient Egyptians were lost to history. All the tombs, trinkets, statues and cenotaphs were pretty but indecipherable, covered as they were in a pictographic script that had no meaning. It wasn’t decades of research, the intricate technologies of archaeology or the explanation of some ancient king risen from the dead that unlocked the lost language of the ancient Egyptians. In fact, it was the accidental discovery of some half buried rock that came to be known as the Rosetta stone, by a French soldier that would change the face of Egyptology and provide a much needed window into the language and belief systems of the most celebrated ancient culture.
It was 1799 and Napoleon’s troops were preparing to defend against the encroaching Ottoman Army as they grew closer and closer to the city of Rosetta on Egypt’s West bank just miles from the sea. As they cleared away rocks to improve their fortifications, a small group of soldier engineers led by 28 year old Lieutenant Bouchard discovered a large polished rock with a dark surface and what seemed to be some engraved text.
On closer inspection, Bouchard noticed three separate texts on the rock: hieroglyphs at the top, an unknown text in the middle and Greek at the bottom. It was not just the middle text that didn’t make sense; it was the stone’s location inside an Arab fort far from the ancient tombs in Luxor’s Valley of the Kings. Speculation as to possible ancient structures below the fort were quickly dismissed and the stone sent to Cairo for further research by Napoleon’s famed Commission of Arts and Sciences.
The stone was almost a meter high with missing pieces at the top and bottom right. After a thorough cleaning the group of French scholars was able to read the Greek inscription. It was nothing sensational, just an inscription of an anniversary. That was until they read the last sentence.
“This decree shall be inscribed on stelae of hard rock, in sacred characters, both native and Greek, and they shall be erected in each of the temples of the first, second and third category, next to the image of the king living eternally.”
The realization that what was written in Greek was also written in hieroglyphics was a revelation. Finally, here was the chance to understand what the ancients had been whispering for all these centuries. A group of notable scholars and archeologists gathered in Cairo to work on the stone, including trying to figure out what the middle language on the Rosetta stone actually was.
Disappointedly the Egyptian elite had little interest in the stone, perhaps due to the constant influx of Greeks, French and British in their country with every new ‘discovery’ of the ancient Egyptian world. For Islamic Egyptians, pyramids were pagan relics of the past with little bearing on their advanced culture.
Copyists went to work, reproducing the text on the stone and disseminating it to colleagues around the world. Although other texts had been discovered, the connecting language, the middle language on the stone, remained a mystery. It wasn’t Aramaic and it wasn’t Coptic. And in 1801, the British stole the stone making its middle text even more elusive for its French discoverers.
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By 1802, the Rosetta stone would find its permanent, if not definitely legal, home in the British Museum. It would be another thirty years before hieroglyphics would be understood enough for full decipherment and the middle text would be designated as hieratic, a simple version of the hieroglyphs.
Through the dedicated efforts of Jean Francois Champollion, a French scholar who was only nine years old when the stone was first discovered by Bouchard, the text and dictionary of ancient Egyptian |
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languages was first published. His work showed that the ancient text didn’t contain vowels and used pictures to represent both sounds and statements.
To this day, the Rosetta stone sits in the British Museum, a highlight of the Egyptian collection and a testament to perseverance and scholarship. The ability to read hieroglyphics helped archaeologists and Egyptologists to understand the succession of dynasties, the religion and cults of the dead, the ancient gods and their followers and of course, the secret world of one history’s most fascinating cultures - Ancient Egypt.
Tags: ancient egypt, Ancient Egypt Store, Archaeology, British Museum, Bust of King Akhenaton, Bust of Queen Nefertiti, Cairo, Cenotaphs, Coptic, Egypt, egyptology, Greek, Heiratic, hieroglyphics, hieroglyphs, History of the Rosetta Stone, Lieutenant Bouchard, Luxor, Napoleon, Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon in Egypt, Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign, Ottoman Empire, Ptolemaic Relief - Painted, Rosetta Stone, Rosetta Stone Bookends, Rosetta Stone Museum Replica, Rosetta Stone Museum Reproduction, Rosetta Stone Replica, Rosetta Stone Reproduction, The Rosetta Stone History, The Rosetta Stone Remembered, Valley of the Kings
Positions of authority and power often are enhanced by costume and accessories that distinguish the wearer’s bearing among other people and set him/her apart visually. A crown, diadem, or tiara is one such accessory that has been a display of authority throughout history and one that is particularly notable in the history of Western European monarchies is the Iron Crown of Lombardy.
It was first worn by Theodelinda, Queen of the Lombards from 588 to 628, who was influential in promoting a branch of Christianity throughout Italy that would later prevail as the dominant tradition. The Iron Crown of Lombardy thus became a symbol of Christian faith tied to monarchy and rights to rule. Queen Theodelinda donated the Iron Crown to the Italian church in Monza in 628 and it remained there as a religious relic and as one of the oldest crowns of monarchy in preservation.
