Why is the Rosetta Stone important?
1 Answer
It allowed hieroglyphics to be deciphered.
Explanation:
The stone itself is in 3 parts in 3 different "languages". One of the parts is Greek, and another part is in Egyptian script and the last part in hieroglyphics. The Greek and Egyptian script parts are almost identical, therefore we assumed (correctly) that the hieroglyphics where also the same text and so we could interpret hieroglyphics for the first time.
The part that initially confused me was if there was an Egyptian script why did the Egyptians use hieroglyphics at all. I think that hieroglyphics were a much earlier form of language than the Egyptian script. Remember that the Egyptians dynasties lasted for about 3000 years. Think about how much the English language has changed over even the last 500 years.
