"What Is...?" Wednesday

The Rosetta Stone is a stone with writing on it in two languages (Egyptian and Greek), using three scripts (hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek) and was originally carved in 196 BC, during the reign of Pharaoh Ptolemy V. The stone is typical of the period, in which complimentary inscriptions praising the Pharaoh for his virtues were common. 

Because Egypt had recently been conquered by the Greeks, the Rosetta Stone's inscription was written in both Egyptian and Greek. The Egyptian portion was written in both demotic -- a type of common, everyday alphabet -- and the more ancient and formal hieroglyphs.

The Ptolemic pharaohs were all descendants of General Lagus, friend and ally of conqueror Alexander the Great. Therefore, they were ethnically Greek rather than Egyptian. At the time of the Rosetta Stone's inscription, both Greek and Egyptian languages were used in Egypt. Interestingly, Alexander the Great is buried in the Egyptian city named for him, Alexandria.


When Egypt became a vassal state of the Roman Empire, ruled by a Roman governor, hieroglyphs fell into disuse, and by the fourth century AD the writing system was lost. At the time that the Rosetta Stone was rediscovered, hieroglyphs were indecipherable. Some people even thought they weren't a language at all, but some iconic form of decoration. With the Rosetta Stone, it was possible to decipher the demotic from the Greek, and then the hieroglyphs from the demotic.


The Rosetta Stone was translated and deciphered by Jean François Champollion, a French linguist of amazing ability. He began work on the translation in 1808, when he was eighteen, and in 1822 published his translation of the Rosetta Stone. His breakthrough was in realizing that the images that made up hieroglyphs were used not only as pictures to represent ideas, but also as letters that represented specific sounds, much like American Sign Language. 


Thus words that did not have a pictorial representation in the alphabet could be spelled out. Proper names of individuals were spelled out in this way, and names were differentiated from other text by being enclosed in a rectangle with rounded corners, called a cartouche. The Rosetta Stone has led to the translation of hieroglyphs and all the inscriptions in the myriad tombs and monuments of ancient Egypt.

Flaming Feathers Flock Together

The Benu Bird

The Benu Bird is the Egyptian likeness of the Phoenix. Both are birds of the sun... both are self created rather than being born from other creatures and both die and rise anew becoming symbols of regeneration. The Egyptian sunbird is identified with Ra, the Sun God. The word Benu in Egyptian means both purple heron and palm tree. The Benu was identified with the Temple of the Sun God at Heliopolis, which was revered by the Egyptians as the sacred mound from where the Sun god, in his aspect of the Benu Bird, rose again and again to renew Egypt... another thing the Phoenix and the Benu Bird had in common.

The Phoenix

The Greeks knew the Egyptian Benu Bird as the Phoenix. A legendary bird without parents and offspring... it nurtured itself on sunlight and sea spray. Brilliant in appearance, its feathers were gold, red and white; its eyes were green as the sea. A semi-immortal being, the Phoenix had a lifespan of 500 years and when about to die, it drew new life from the primal elements of fire and water and was born again. It would build its nest in the form of a funeral pyre and a single clap of its wings would ignite it. Then, when consumed by the flames, a young Phoenix would arise from its own ashes. The Greeks considered the appearance of the Phoenix as a herald of important events to come.

Many think that the myths surrounding the Phoenix were simply a misunderstanding of the Egyptian myths of the Benu Bird. It is possible that the legend comes from what Herodotus wrote of the Benu Bird. “I have not seen a Phoenix myself, except in paintings, for it is very rare and visits the country (so at least they say in Heliopolis) only at intervals of 500 years... on the occasion of the death of the parent bird. To judge by the paintings, its plumage is partly golden, partly red, and in shape and size it is exactly like an eagle.

There is a story about the Phoenix: it brings its parent in a lump of myrrh all the way from Arabia and buries the body in the Temple of the Sun. To perform the feat, the bird first shapes some myrrh into a sort of egg as big as it finds, by testing, that it can carry; then it hollows the lump out, puts its father inside and smears more myrrh over the opening. The egg-shaped lump is then just the same weight as it was originally. Finally, it is carried by the bird to the Temple of the Sun in Egypt.”



The Benben Stone

The Benben stone was a massive, sacred solar obelisk in the Egyptian Old Kingdom temple of Heliopolis. It was designed to catch the first rays of the rising sun.  Legends had the Phoenix (the Benu Bird) living either on the stone or in a sacred willow tree.

The Benben stone was the basis for the design of later obelisks as well as the capstones on the pyramids.  The point at the top of  the obelisks and the cap stones of the pyramids themselves were gilded to also catch the first rays of the rising sun.

The Muses

Traditionally a poet...especially an epic poet...would invoke the aid of a muse to guide and assist him in his creative endeavor. This invocation to the muse became a literary convention in epic poetry... usually coming at or near the beginning of the poem as in the "Iliad," the "Odyssey," and "Paradise Lost" and in its earliest stages the invocation was essentially a prayer... a request that the goddess being invoked to inspire and quite literally "breathe into" the artist. The idea was that the artist did not himself "create" the work of art but merely served as a mortal channel through which the divine voice of the muse could speak.

The muses were believed to reside on Mt. Helicon, in Boeotia Greece, and in fact they were the center of a cult there. The muses as we know them today are of relatively recent origin, in their most ancient form they were probably not distinguished from each other or even named.... they were the patronesses of poets since poets were also musicians.... and accompanied themselves with instuments like the lyre. Over the centuries they became associated with all of the arts and sciences, which is why the word "museum" is used for a repository of works of art or of scientific collections.

The eighth century BC poet Hesiod provides a list of the muses with specific names for each... other lists from early times are not consistent with Hesiod's list but the names he gives the muses have become the standard. The association of specific muses with specific arts actually comes from Roman rather than Greek times.

*Calliope was the muse of epic poetry.

*Clio was the muse of history.

*Erato was the muse of love poetry.

*Euterpe was the muse of music.

*Melpomene was the muse of tragedy.

*Polyhymnia was the muse of sacred poetry.

*Terpsichore was the muse of dance.

*Thalia was the muse of comedy.

*Urania was the muse of astronomy.

The muses would entertain the gods on Mount Olympus together with the Graces and were said to have won against the Sirens in a song competition and got their feathers as a price. In art the muses were often depicted with these feathers in their hair.