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John Ray's previous book [[Reflections of Osiris: Lives from Ancient Egypt]] provided a learned but accessible introduction to the civilisation of Ancient Egypt. In ''The Rosetta Stone'' he turns to the most famous artefact of this civilisation and uses it as a starting point for a tale of discovery and interpretation: how the hieroglyphic alphabet was deciphered and how this ''most glamorous of civilisations'' was given voice again, after being mute for more than a thousand years.
I used to want to be an archaeologist when I was a young teenager. I read [[''Gods, Graves and Scholars: The Story of Archaeology]] '' (arguably, the most exciting archeology book of all time) and I dreamed of discovering another Troy, as Heinrich Schliemann (the boy who said 'I will dig out Troy' at the age of nine, when Troy was considered to be a figment of Homer's imagination; and went on to do it 30 years later) became my personal idol. Champollion, the French scholar who deciphered hieroglyphs without ever having visited Egypt, was another notable and fascinating personality from the early romantic era of archaeology and Ray gives a vivid portrait of him, contrasted with Thomas Young, the English polymath and a man of impatient but unquestionable genius who paved the way for Champollion's discovery.
There is also a translation of the stone's text, and some vignettes of Egyptian literature and life that were opened to us thanks to the stone being deciphered; as well as more general information on the deciphering of forgotten languages and alphabets, including a bullet-pointed list of how to go about it! The book closes with an eminently sensible chapter on ownership of the artefacts and claims for return of the historical loot.
