[1] In 1799, during Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, French soldiers uncovered a slab of black granodiorite near the town of Rashid (Rosetta). This artifact, carved in 196 BCE, featured a royal decree written in three distinct scripts: Ancient Greek, Demotic, and hieroglyphs. Because the Greek text was easily read, scholars immediately realized that the stone could serve as a translation key, yet deciphering the complex Egyptian hieroglyphic script would prove to be a monumental challenge that spanned decades.
[2] Today, the Rosetta Stone remains one of the British Museum's most famous acquisitions, symbolizing the triumph of historical linguistics. Visitors from around the world gather to view the artifact, reflecting on how a single stone bridged the gap between an ancient civilization and the modern world.
[3] Early progress was made by the English polymath Thomas Young, who focused on the cartouches—oval loops enclosing groups of hieroglyphs. Young correctly hypothesized that these symbols spelled out the names of royalty, such as Ptolemy, phonetically rather than representing abstract concepts. However, Young's work stalled because he believed that phonetic hieroglyphs were only used for foreign names, leaving the rest of the script a mystery.
[4] Building upon these initial insights, French linguist Jean-François Champollion dedicated himself to cracking the remaining code. By comparing the Rosetta Stone’s inscriptions with another bilingual obelisk from Philae, Champollion realized that hieroglyphs were not merely symbolic or purely phonetic, but a sophisticated combination of both. In 1822, he famously rushed into his brother’s office, shouted "Je tiens mon affaire!" ("I've got it!"), and collapsed from exhaustion.
To make the essay's structure most logical, Paragraph 2 should be placed:
- Ain its current position
- Bprior to Paragraph 1
- Cfollowing Paragraph 3
- following Paragraph 4Answer