Was the intention of the Rosetta Stone to preserve history?
I just finished reading 1984 and realized that the Rosetta Stone may have been created to preserve known history.
It had never occurred to me that an entire language and it's nuances are necessary to maintain historic integrity. We may have been able to decipher hieroglyphs without a translator, but could we do it with precision enough to learn anything truthful. Can we do that now is a thoughtful question as well i guess.
I'm certain this is not an original thought, and only want to talk about the book. I think i heard somewhere that the stone was created for trade purposes as well.
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The stone was a part of a steele that was displayed in a temple.
The translated text is essentially an announcement or decree for a new Egyptian regime, and wasn't necessarily written with the intent to preserve history.
The reason why it's in three languages is because each of those languages served a different purpose.
"hieroglyphs (suitable for a priestly decree), Demotic (the cursive Egyptian script used for daily purposes, meaning 'language of the people'), and Ancient Greek (the language of the administration – the rulers of Egypt at this point were Greco-Macedonian after Alexander the Great's conquest."
You can read more about it here or do your own research. https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/everything-you-ever-wanted-know-about-rosetta-stone
Thank you for that. It may have simply been a reminder about the knew 13 year old ruler, but there is always a conspiracy to fantasize about.
What happened in the 3rd century? Why did they choose to only make a prototype? How deep does this go?
Not sure - you'd have to do some research on what that article is referencing. Search "Decree of Memphis" - that's essentially what's written on the Rosetta Stone.
For the history of those decrees you may want to look into "Ptolemaic decrees"