Dr. Ilona Regulski

It's because of the Rosetta Stone that people are going to look for these other objects.

And the fact that Thomas Young asks Banks to look for the cartouche of Ptolemy and Cleopatra on other monuments...

Because Cleopatra was known, even though they didn't have her name, of course, she was a known king from classical sources.

Many of these kings were known from the Bible.

So there was an awareness that these names must have been somewhere.

But I think because of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, there is this need to find parallels for these names that were first read in the text on the Rosetta Stone.

So it's a very important object to set that whole process in motion, if you want.

Yeah, definitely.

There is a huge interest in Egypt already starting from Napoleon's expedition and the reports and the drawings and the travel accounts also that arrive in Egypt.

But I think with the decipherment of hieroglyphs, it's another wave of excitement.

But there were many different reactions to this.

So once Champollion reads his letter in 1822, there is not an immediate reaction.

acceptance that all of this was correct so there were also a lot of critics who said well you know actually he's just building on what predecessors have done how is it correct how important is this so there was also some hesitation by many scholars who still found it difficult that

To acknowledge that there is an ancient culture like the Egyptian one who would precede ancient Greece and Rome in being our predecessors, like in being the predecessor of this classical culture that had always been understood as the foundations of European culture.

Greece and Rome being part of Europe very much.

So to understand that there's this ancient civilization that is older, much older, not just a little bit older, that is in Africa also in a different place, was really quite shocking.

And there was a lot of resistance to acknowledging that our human history goes back further in time to something that is perhaps not European.

That took some time.

But then very soon afterwards, also Champollion himself refined his own system.

And then there's other scholars who also confirm that he really laid the ground and the system works as he says it works.