In 1799, a stone tablet was discovered at Rosetta, in the Nile Delta. On this stone, (which came to be known as the Rosetta Stone), the same message appears in three languages: hieroglyphics, demotic, and Greek. Greek was well known, so the key to hieroglyphics seemed at hand. Scholars worked furiously, but made little progress. In 1822, French scholar Jean-Fran-cois Champollion (1790-1832) hit on the key concept that hieroglyphic writing is neither purely ideographic (each sign standing for an idea) nor purely phonetic (each sign representing a sound). It is a combination of both.
A word was spelled out in phonetic symbols. At the end, a final picture was added. This last
Symbol was not supposed to be read with the other signs, but was an ideogram—a pictorial clue to the word's meaning. Vowels were not written. So the word deshret (desert), for example, was written with the pictograms for d-sh-r-t.
Hieroglyphics are beautifully designed drawings of birds, animals, people, buildings, and everyday objects. Throughout most of Egyptian history, 600 to 700 individual hieroglyphic symbols were in use. The last known hieroglyphic inscription was carved on a temple wall at Philae in the year 394. Knowledge of hieroglyphics was then lost—until 1822. Today, the phrase "Rosetta Stone" is used to refer to anything that is key to unlocking a mystery of communication.
Tools Without Iron
For most of the dynastic era, Egyptians used tools and weapons made of flint, wood, copper and some bronze. Copper, from Nubia and the Sinai, was their primary industrial metal. By the New Kingdom, the Egyptians had learned to make bronze by adding tin to copper. They did not use iron as an industrial metal until the Twenty-first Dynasty, long after it had come into common use in the Near East.
Clay-heavy Nile mud was the raw material for most pottery. Beer and wine jars, oil vessels, mugs, plates, cosmetic pots, canopic jars, figurines, ushabtis, and most coffins were made of mud “coarseware.” The types and styles of coarseware found at ancient sites provide important clues for establishing dates and chronologies.
Faience (quartz or clay covered with a fired glaze) was popular in Egypt as far back as the Early Dynastic Period. The Step Pyramid of Djos-er has inlaid faience tiles. It was used for amulets, small objects such as bowls and statuettes, and inlays. The most popular colors were blue and greenish blue, recalling the Egyptians’ favorite gemstones, lapis lazuli and turquoise.
Beginning in the Eighteenth Dynasty, artisans cut and molded glass to create beads, amulets, perfume jars, vases, and figurines in a rainbow of colors. Glassblowing, forming molten glass into intricate shapes, was unknown in dynastic times.
Jewelry for the wealthy was made of gold, hammered, cut, or shaped, and adorned with gemstones: amethysts, turquoise, rock crystal, malachite, lapis lazuli, onyx, peridot, hematite, jade, coral, carnelian, garnet, jasper, agate, beryl, and rare emeralds from the eastern desert. Amulets and ornaments of faience, bone, and pottery were mass-produced for ordinary folks. Silver was rare and little used. Electrum, a rare, highly-prized natural alloy of gold and silver, came mostly from Upper Egypt and Nubia. Much of the work of Egyptian jewelers was sealed up in tombs, stolen, and melted down by looters. The surviving pieces only hint at the fabulous treasures that were lost.
World History
