Riddle of the Rosetta - How an English Polymath a French Polyglot Discovered Meaning of

"In 1799, a French officer was clearing debris from a military installation when he discovered a stele bearing three scripts: ancient Greek, hieroglyphic, and a third that could not be definitively identified. This artifact, which came to be known as the Rosetta Stone, has traditionally played the starring role in the history of decipherment, which has until now been understood as an instance of code-breaking, a kind of Bletchley Park avant la lettre. In The Riddle of the Rosetta, Buchwald and Josefowicz delve into a wide array of British and French sources as well as archival material to produce a comprehensive new history of the decipherment"--

About the author

Jed Z. Buchwald is the Doris and Henry Dreyfuss Professor of History at the California Institute of Technology. He lives in Altadena, California. Diane Greco Josefowicz is a writer, editor, and activist. She has served for more than a decade as science and technology editor for the Victorian Web (victorianweb.org). She lives in Providence, Rhode Island. Buchwald and Josefowicz are the authors of The Zodiac of Paris: How an Improbable Controversy over an Ancient Egyptian Artifact Provoked a Modern Debate between Religion and Science (Princeton).

Summary

Taking readers from the hushed lecture rooms of the Institut de France to the windswept monuments of the Valley of the Kings, The Riddle of the Rosetta reveals the untold story behind one of the nineteenth century's most thrilling discoveries.

Additional text

"The Riddle of the Rosetta is a towering achievement in its minute, subtle, and lucid reconstruction of the decipherment of the hieroglyphics, and it will undoubtedly remain an indispensable reference for the history of Egyptian studies in the foreseeable future."---Henning Trüper, Journal of Modern History

Product details

• Authors: Jed Z Buchwald, Jed Z. Buchwald, Jed Z. Josefowicz Buchwald, Buchwald Jed Z., Diane Greco Josefowicz, Josefowicz Diane Greco
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.09.2020
• EAN: 9780691200903
• ISBN: 978-0-691-20090-3
• No. of pages: 576
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Natural sciences (general); England, Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900, France, European History, HISTORY / Ancient / Egypt, SCIENCE / History, HISTORY / Europe / France, HISTORY / Modern / 19th Century, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Archaeology, HISTORY / Modern / 18th Century, History of Science, British & Irish history, Archaeology, Ancient History, Ancient history: to c 500 CE, Ancient Egypt