Cecil's staff got it almost entirely right. The one important point
about the Rosetta Stone that they missed is that the Rosetta Stone by
itself was not sufficient for deciphering the hieroglyphs, because (by
accident) only one pharaoh's name (Ptolemy) was preserved -- only when
Champollion got hold of Cleopatra's cartouche (probably provided to him
by Young) was he able to cross-check which symbols went with which
consonant sounds. Thereafter, all he needed to do was apply his
knowledge of Coptic.
(The great surprise was that not only Greek names -- Ptolemy, Cleopatra
-- could be written phonetically, but even Egyptian ones: Rameses was
the first to appear, since he knew the Coptic for 'sun' and had the <m>
from <Ptolemy>.)
--
Peter T. Daniels
grammatim@...