Loading...The Rosetta Stone, discovered in 1799, became world famous when it turned out to be the key to cracking one of the biggest linguistic challenges of all time: translating ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Egyptian hieroglyphs are an interesting mix of phonetic symbols, pictographic symbols, and concept-specific symbols, and that made the language incredibly hard to crack. But when the Rosetta Stone was discovered, we finally had a toehold into the language, and that toehold ended up allowing us to painstakingly translate the language.
In this great video by Tom Scott, on his eponymous YouTube channel, Tom explains exactly how the Rosetta Stone was used to decipher the meaning behind hieroglyphs. Not only that, but he gets to do it in the British Museum, where the actual Rosetta Stone currently resides. Altogether, the video is very interesting, explaining the details behind one of the most famous archeological relics ever.