RE: Ask A Historian
May 20, 2015 at 6:44 pm
(This post was last modified: May 20, 2015 at 6:46 pm by Pyrrho.)
My guess is that the Rosetta Stone was used to decipher inscriptions from its era, and then they could work backwards from there, to earlier times. Much like one could use a modern dictionary to try to figure out words of the past, though one would not be able to trust it completely, and it would get less and less trustworthy as one moved back in time.
If I recall my history correctly, they had almost no idea what Egyptian hieroglyphs meant before the Rosetta Stone, so it got them started on figuring things out. (Imagine how hard it would be to try to get started without it.) I would not be surprised if there are some Egyptian hieroglyphs that they don't presently understand, and some that they may have gotten wrong. But the Rosetta Stone is something that would be extremely helpful when one was trying to figure out the older writings. Just as a knowledge of modern English would be helpful in figuring out English of several hundred years ago, though the changes would present difficulties. Still, an understanding of modern English would be far more useful in understanding old English than an understanding of Mandarin would be for understanding old English.
If one wants to understand very old English, if one has the time, it might be helpful to gradually work one's way backward, by reading increasingly older works, so that one will get some sense of how things have changed over time, as well as ideas on the rate of change, etc.
Of course, this is mostly me speculating; you are the historian, how did they figure out the older hieroglyphs?
If I recall my history correctly, they had almost no idea what Egyptian hieroglyphs meant before the Rosetta Stone, so it got them started on figuring things out. (Imagine how hard it would be to try to get started without it.) I would not be surprised if there are some Egyptian hieroglyphs that they don't presently understand, and some that they may have gotten wrong. But the Rosetta Stone is something that would be extremely helpful when one was trying to figure out the older writings. Just as a knowledge of modern English would be helpful in figuring out English of several hundred years ago, though the changes would present difficulties. Still, an understanding of modern English would be far more useful in understanding old English than an understanding of Mandarin would be for understanding old English.
If one wants to understand very old English, if one has the time, it might be helpful to gradually work one's way backward, by reading increasingly older works, so that one will get some sense of how things have changed over time, as well as ideas on the rate of change, etc.
Of course, this is mostly me speculating; you are the historian, how did they figure out the older hieroglyphs?
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
