Tristan Hughes

And Rosetta, let's focus on Rosetta.

I know that you went to modern Rashid, Rosetta, not too long ago.

Whereabouts are we talking with Rosetta in Egypt today?

so much more to the story as you revealed in your exhibition, where you mentioned the French there.

So let's therefore go on in time to the early 19th century, or was it the late 18th century?

Talk to me about the discovery or the rediscovery of the Rosetta Stone.

Because Demotic, that hadn't also been translated at that time.

It's not just the hieroglyphs, is it?

And I mean, focusing a bit more on that.

So it seems as if before this stone is discovered, is there already attempts by people across the known world to try and decipher this hieroglyphic, this Egyptian ancient script?

Was that a key part of the exhibition you were keen to highlight?

Because so often we think of Champollion, Young, maybe William Banks as well, but the story of the actual attempt to decipher hieroglyphs, it actually starts much, much earlier than the actual finding of the Rosetta Stone.

And I guess it's also important to highlight, as we'll get into, the importance of cooperation at that time, isn't it?

The sending back and forwards of descriptions, of reliefs, of drawings, and so on and so forth.

So that library keeps growing and growing and growing, which by the time of the early 19th century, I'm guessing, even with the Napoleonic War raging, that library is starting to grow.

The amount of information is starting to grow alongside the Rosetta Stone.

And a slight tangent on the hieroglyphs, hieroglyphic system itself.

So you mentioned all of these symbols, all of these images.

Would you mind just kind of explaining how the hieroglyph system, how it works?

It's a massive alphabet.