NAPOLEON, THE ROSETTA STONE, AND THE DECIPHERING OF ANCIENT EGYPT
Chris Danziger, lecturer
Wednesday 18–Friday 20 January
9.15 am
COURSE FEES R330
In 1798 the French government encouraged the rising star Napoleon Bonaparte to attack Egypt as a first step towards crippling Britain’s trade with India. One unexpected result of the expedition was the discovery at Rosetta of a granite block on which was carved in hieroglyphs a Pharaonic decree from the second century BCE. But what was special about the Rosetta Stone was that it had a parallel translation in Greek, offering the prospect of decoding the previously indecipherable Egyptian script. It became the Holy Grail of scholars all over the world. Lithographic copies circulated everywhere. The French may have lost the stone to the British as part of the surrender terms of 1802, but twenty years later French scholars won the race to crack one of the most celebrated codes in all history.
Lecture titles
1. Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign: the myth and the reality
2. The Rosetta Stone: a window on a lost world
3. Decoding the stone and the recovery of ancient Egypt
Recommended reading
Allin, M. 1998. Zarafa. London: Headline Press.
Buchwald J.Z., 2020. The Riddle of the Rosetta. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Robinson, A. 2012. Cracking the Egyptian Code. London: Thames and Hudson