The Rosetta Stone — Reading Notes

Discovery and Early Ownership

Budge recounts two conflicting accounts of the stone's discovery: one says it lay on the ground, another that it was built into a wall. He names the finder as a French officer of engineers, spelling his name both Boussard and Bouchard, and notes he later became a general. The stone was taken to General Menou's house in Alexandria, where it remained for two years as private property. Napoleon then ordered it to Cairo's Institut National. Budge emphasizes the French effort to distribute copies: two lithographers, 'citizens Marcel and Galland,' made ink impressions by rolling paper over the inked stone. These were sent to scholars across Europe. The narrative then shifts to the stone's seizure by British forces after Abercromby's campaign, a transition that occupies several paragraphs.

Decipherment and Champollion's Method

Budge's explanation of decipherment is brief and technical. He shows how Champollion compared variant signs, using the name Ptah as an example: the hieroglyphs for Ptah on the Rosetta Stone are a variant of another form, and by comparing texts and using Coptic, Champollion deduced that one sign group equals 'mer.' Budge states that Champollion 'succeeded in formulating the system of decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs that is, substantially, that in use at the present day.' The excerpts do not detail the process further; instead, they move quickly to the inscription's contents. The catalog subject 'Egyptian language -- Writing, Hieroglyphic' is thus addressed only in a condensed passage, leaving the reader wanting more on the actual mechanics of the breakthrough.

The Decree's Political and Economic Provisions

The inscription is a decree of the General Council of Egyptian priests at Memphis, celebrating the first commemoration of Ptolemy V's coronation in 196 BC. Budge lists eighteen benefits the king conferred, including gifts to temples, remission of taxes, forgiveness of debts, release of prisoners, and abolition of the press-gang for sailors. The priests responded by ordering statues of Ptolemy as 'Saviour of Egypt' in every temple, gold shrines to be carried in procession, and annual festivals on his birthday and coronation days. The decree also added a new priestly title. Budge's list format—numbered items—makes the political transaction explicit: the stone records a quid pro quo between the king and the priesthood, a fact that the catalog subjects do not capture.

Budge's booklet, though titled after the stone, is as much about the politics of antiquities collection as about hieroglyphic writing. Readers should note that the excerpts break off before the full text of the decree is given; the surviving portions emphasize the stone's modern history and the decree's list of benefits. For those interested in the decipherment itself, the text offers only a summary. The stone's role as a document of Ptolemaic statecraft, rather than a key to Egyptian language, is the more fully developed theme in the available pages.

Holding Budge’s account of the Rosetta Stone, I thought of sitting in my grandfather’s study, turning pages of Mesopotamian Archaeology An introduction to the archaeology of Mesopotamia and Assyria — A Reader’s Guide. Both books feel like quiet doorways—not to grand discoveries, but to the patient hands that brushed away dust. That same hush, that same awe.