Inferencing · Level 3

The river's annual flooding fertilises the farmlands of the plains with its deposits of silt. Although the river supports such a huge population, it also takes its toll.

Thousands of years ago, the ancient Egyptians used a hieroglyphic writing system, consisting of pictures, lines and geometric shapes. With the passing of time, the meaning of this writing was lost, and remained so for many centuries. Travellers to Egypt could gaze at the gigantic pyramids, and puzzle over the undecipherable hieroglyphs in them, but they couldn't tell how the structures were built or learn about the lives of the people who had built them.

Then in 1798 the French, led by General Napoleon Bonaparte, invaded Egypt. Bonaparte was not only a soldier; he was extremely interested in learning more about the history of Egypt. With his army, there travelled scholars and scientists.

In the course of their investigations, whilst the soldiers were dismantling an ancient fort in the town of Rosetta, a black stone slab, covered with writing in three different scripts was unearthed. The Rosetta Stone proved to be of great historical importance. The French language experts could see that while one of the languages on the stone was Egyptian hieroglyphs and the second was also unknown to them, the third was Greek, a language with which they were familiar.

The Greek writing turned out to be a message from an Egyptian Pharaoh, and revealed that the same message was etched on the stone in the three languages. This meant that now the secrets of the ancient hieroglyphs could be revealed. The second unknown script proved to be Coptic, also from Ancient Egypt, but of a later period than the more familiar hieroglyphs.

Even with the knowledge that they now had, it took a succession of scholars more than a century to decipher all three languages on the Rosetta Stone. It was the efforts of those scholars that enabled later researchers to learn so much about Egyptian history.