Ancient Egypt with pics

*Egyptian Mythology Corner* Edited by S Suwellam / LondonPhone: (0044) 07 919 021 409

The religion of ancient Egypt was static and traditional, urging that the gods had given a good order and that it was necessary for man to hold firmly to the order. When changes did occur, religion tried to incorporate them into the system as though they came from the creation. By the time Akhenaton took the throne as the fourth pharaoh named Amenhotep, the 18th dynasty (1539-1292 BC) had run for nearly 200 years, and there had been a century of imperial conquest and control of foreign lands. Egypt dominated Palestine, Phoenicia, and Nubia. The nation was powerful, rich, and courted by lesser princes. To maintain these gains, a military and political group controlled the culture. Since the Egyptian state had always been theocratic, ruled by a god or gods, according to traditional beliefs, this group interlocked with the priesthood. The richest and most powerful of the gods, such as Amon of Thebes or Re of Heliopolis, it was held, dictated the purpose of the state. The king had to apply to the gods for oracles directing his major activities. In return for wealth, elegance, and the role of the leading actor in a drama of imperial success, the pharaoh had relinquished his religious (and military) authority to others.

A century before Akhenaton, the energetic pharaoh Thutmose III had conquered the neighbouring parts of Asia and Africa. His successors continued his vigorous method of life, but, when the conquered territories were firmly held, that vigour turned from warfare to sports. Akhenaton's father, Amenhotep III, was a mighty hunter in his youth, but the son was weak physically and could not follow the pattern of outdoor feats. His activities were intellectual.

The sudden spread of empire had excited the Egyptian culture. Architecture became less firmly planted and soared upward in assertiveness. In the visual arts, the predominant heavy, angular style of rendering became softer and rounder. Egyptian soldiers and officials lived in foreign countries, and foreigners lived in Egypt. The sharp differences between the people of the Nile valley and the people abroad were blurred. Egyptian gods had temples in other countries, and foreign gods were introduced into Egypt. Gods and goddesses were concerned about Asia and Africa, as well as Egypt. Hymns before Akhenaton's reign show that the spread of empire meant the spread of religion. Gods became universal. Egypt had already combined gods, with Amon and Re (the sun-god) becoming Amon-Re or even Amon-Re-Harakhte. This permitted the Egyptians to think of the gods as unified forces, which was a prelude to monotheism.

There were other breaks in tradition. The royal line, wherever possible, had been kept pure by marriages of the heirs with princesses of the king's own family. Amenhotep III defied this custom by marrying a commoner named Tiy. She apparently enjoyed unusual power in the palace without abandoning her loyalty to her husband. Akhenaton was a child of this marriage.

Empire was held firmly by garrisons abroad, which assured the favourable flow of trade to Egypt. Near the Nile valley there were rich gold mines, so that the country could dominate both trade and politics. Messengers traveled between Egyptian and foreign cities carrying letters written in Babylonian cuneiform, the international language of the day, on clay tablets. This correspondence shows the imperial power and elegance of Egypt, which seemed to be assured of its unending dominance over all the nearby countries.

also spelled Nefertiit, or Nofretete 14th century BC queen of Egypt and wife of King khenaton (reigned 1353-36 BC) who supported her husband's religious revolution and is thought by some to have adhered to the new cult of the sun god Aton even after the king began to compromise with the upholders of the old order.

Nefertiti is best known for her portrait bust, found at Tell el-Amarna (ancient Akhetaton), the king's new capital. Her parentage is uncertain, but some scholars believe she was an Asian princess from Mitanni. She appears prominently at her husband's side in reliefs found at Tell el-Amarna, and she was a faithful follower of his new cult. Nefertiti had six daughters, two of whom became queens of Egypt. In the 12th year of Akhenaton's reign, or possibly later, Nefertiti either retired after losing favour with the king or, less probably, died. Objects belonging to her have been found at the northern palace in Amarna, suggesting that she may have retired there.

Nefertiti, ancient Egyptian queen who was the chief wife of Akhenaton, the pharaoh of Egypt, with whom she initiated many religious, artistic, and cultural changes. Nefertiti may have exercised the priestly office, a position normally reserved for kings.

Akhenaton, who reigned from about 1353 to 1337 BC, only permitted the cult of the sun god, Aten, of whom Nefertiti was a devoted worshipper. In the 12th year of Ahkenaton's reign, Nefertiti apparently fell from favour and was supplanted by Meritaten, one of her six daughters.

A painted limestone bust of Nefertiti is one of the great works of art surviving from ancient Egypt and is now in the Staatliche Museum in Berlin, Germany. The Amarna letters, which are inscribed cuneiform tablets from the period of Akhenaton's reign, along with other inscriptions and reliefs, also indicate Nefertiti's fame.

Akhenaton was a strange figure, spiritually and physically. Representations of his peculiar, unmanly body have been studied by pathologists with no unanimous conclusions. Some modern scholars have also questioned his ability to father children, but the presence of six daughters would certainly indicate that he was potent. Despite conflicting statements in the literature, it now seems certain that his mummy has never been found. Anciently and modernly he has been a controversial person, but the very fury of the controversy shows that he was a major figure of ancient history. The strong and changing forces of his day shaped his determined nature, and yet he stood estranged from his day in the strength of his ideas and ideals.

The superior Egyptian deity Amon-Ra was a combination of Amon, a local Theban god, and Ra, the Sun god. Amon-Ra is depicted with a hawk's head surmounted by a sun disk in this painting from the Tomb of Sennedjum, in Luxor, Egypt. The painting was created around 13 BC.

Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY

also spelled Amun, Amen, or Ammon, Egyptian deity who was revered as king of the gods.

Amon may have been originally a local deity at Khmun (Hermopolis) in Middle Egypt; his cult reached Thebes, where he became the patron of the pharaohs by the reign of Mentuhotep I (2008-1957 BC). At that date he was already identified with the sun god Re of Heliopolis and, as Amon-Re, was received as a national god. Represented in human form, sometimes with a ram's head, or as a ram, Amon-Re was worshiped as part of the Theban triad including a goddess, Mut, and a youthful god, Khons.

Amon's name meant The Hidden One, and his image was painted blue to denote invisibility. This attribute of invisibility led to a popular belief during the New Kingdom (1539-c. 1075 BC) in the knowledge and impartiality of Amon, making him a god for those who felt oppressed.

Amon's influence was, in addition, closely linked to the political well-being of Egypt. During the Hyksos domination (c. 1630-c. 1523 BC), the princes of Thebes sustained his worship. Following the Theban victory over the Hyksos and the creation of an empire, Amon's stature and the wealth of his temples grew. In the late 18th dynasty Akhenaton (Amenhotep IV) directed his religious reform against the traditional cult of Amon, but he was unable to convert people from their belief in Amon and the other gods; and, under Tutankhamen, Ay, and Horemheb (1332-1292 BC), Amon was gradually restored as the god of the empire and patron of the pharaoh.

In the New Kingdom, religious speculation among Amon's priests led to the concept of Amon as part of a triad (with Ptah and Re) or as a single god of whom all the other gods, even Ptah (see ) and Re, were manifestations. Under the sacerdotal state ruled by the priests of Amon at Thebes (c. 1075-c. 950 BC), Amon evolved into a universal god who intervened through oracles in many affairs of state.

The succeeding 22nd and 23rd dynasties, the invasion of Egypt by Assyria (671-c. 663 BC), and the sack of Thebes (c. 663 BC) did not reduce the stature of the cult, which had acquired a second main centre at Tanis in the Nile River delta. Moreover, the worship of Amon had become established among the Cushites of the Sudan, who were accepted by Egyptian worshipers of Amon when they invaded Egypt and ruled as the 25th dynasty (715-664 BC). From this period onward, resistance to foreign occupation of Egypt was strongest in Thebes. Amon's cult spread to the oases, especially Siwa in Egypt's western desert, where Amon was linked with Jupiter. Alexander the Great won acceptance as pharaoh by consulting the oracle at Siwa, and he also rebuilt the sanctuary of Amon's temple at Luxor. The early Ptolemaic rulers contained Egyptian nationalism by supporting the temples, but, starting with Ptolemy IV Philopator in 207 BC, nationalistic rebellions in Upper Egypt erupted. During the revolt of 88-85 Bc, Ptolemy IX Soter II sacked Thebes, dealing Amon's cult a severe blow. In 27 BC a strong earthquake devastated the Theban temples, while in the Greco-Roman world the cult of Isis and Osiris gradually displaced Amon. Copyright ? 1994-2000 Encyclop?dia Britannica, Inc.

from Egypt, history of

The aftermath of Amarna

Akhenaton had six daughters by Nefertiti and one or two sons, perhaps by a secondary wife Kiya or by his own daughter Maketaton, who may have died in childbirth and whose infant son is shown in the royal tomb at Amarna. His immediate, ephemeral successor was a woman, possibly his eldest daughter Meritaton. Either she or the widow of Tutankhamen called on the Hittite king Suppiluliumas to supply a consort because she could find none in Egypt; a prince Zannanza was sent, but he was murdered as he reached Egypt. Thus Egypt never had a diplomatic marriage in which a foreign man was received into the country.

After the brief rule of Smenkhkare (1335-32 BC), possibly a son of Akhenaton, utankhaten, a nine-year-old child, succeeded and was married to the much older Ankhesenpaaten, Akhenaton's third daughter. Around his third regnal year, the King moved his capital to Memphis, abandoned the Aton cult, and changed his and the Queen's names to Tutankhamen and Ankhesenamen. In an inscription recording Tutankhamen's actions for the gods, the Amarna period is described as one of misery and of the withdrawal of the gods from Egypt. This change, made in the name of the young king, was probably the work of high officials. The most influential were Ay, known by the title God's Father, who served as vizier and regent (his title indicates a close relationship to the royal family), and the general Horemheb, who functioned as royal deputy and whose tomb at Saqqarah contains remarkable scenes of Asiatic captives being presented to the King.

Just as Akhenaton had adapted and transformed the religious thinking that was current in his time, the reaction to the religion of Amarna was influenced by the rejected doctrine. In the new doctrine, all gods were in essence three: Amon, Re, and Ptah (to whom Seth was later added), and in some ultimate sense they too were one. The earliest evidence of this triad is on a trumpet of Tutankhamen and is related to the naming of the three chief army divisions after these gods; religious and secular life were not separate. This concentration on a small number of essential deities may possibly be related to the piety of the succeeding Ramesside period, because both viewed the cosmos as being thoroughly permeated with the divine.

Under Tutankhamen a considerable amount of building was accomplished in Thebes. His Luxor colonnade bears detailed reliefs of the traditional beautiful festival of Opet; at Karnak he decorated a structure with warlike scenes. He affirmed his legitimacy by referring back to Amenhotep III, whom he called his father. Tutankhamen's modern fame comes from the discovery of his rich burial in the Valley of the Kings. His tomb equipment was superior in quality to the fragments known from other royal burials, and the opulent display--of varying aesthetic value--represents Egyptian wealth at the peak of the country's power.

The first king of the 4th dynasty, Snefru, probably built the step pyramid of Maydum and then modified it to form the first true pyramid. Due west of Maydum was the small step pyramid of Saylah, in the Fayyum, at which Snefru also worked. He built two pyramids at Dahshur; the southern of the two is known as the Bent Pyramid because its upper part has a shallower angle of inclination than its lower part. This difference may be due to structural problems or may have been planned from the start, in which case the resulting profile may reproduce a solar symbol of creation. The northern Dahshur pyramid, the later of the two, has the same angle of inclination as the upper part of the Bent Pyramid and a base area exceeded only by that of the Great Pyramid. Both pyramids had mortuary complexes attached to them. Snefru's building achievements were thus at least as great as those of any later king and introduced a century of unparalleled construction.

In a long perspective, the 4th dynasty was an isolated phenomenon, a period when the potential of centralization was realized to its utmost and a disproportionate amount of the state's resources was used on the kings' mortuary provisions, almost certainly at the expense of general living standards. No significant 4th-dynasty sites have been found away from the Memphite area. Tomb inscriptions show that high officials were granted estates scattered over many nomes, especially in the Delta. This pattern of landholding may have avoided the formation of local centres of influence while encouraging intensive exploitation of the land. People who worked on these estates were not free to move, and they paid a high proportion of their earnings in dues and taxes. The building enterprises must have relied on drafting vast numbers of men, probably after the harvest had been gathered in the early summer and during part of the inundation.

Snefru's was the first king's name that was regularly written inside the cartouche, an elongated oval that is one of the most characteristic Egyptian symbols. The cartouche itself is older and was shown as a gift bestowed by gods on the king, signifying long duration on the throne. It soon acquired associations with the sun, so that its first use by the builder of the first true pyramid, which is probably also a solar symbol, is not coincidental.

Snefru's successor, Khufu (Cheops), built the Great Pyramid at Giza, to which were added the slightly smaller second pyramid of one of Khufu's sons, Khafre (more correctly Rekhaef, the Chephren of Greek sources), and that of Menkaure (Mycerinus). Khufu's successor, his son Redjedef, began a pyramid at Abu Ruwaysh, and a king of uncertain name began one at Zawyat al-'Aryan. The last known king of the dynasty (there was probably one further), Shepseskaf, built a monumental mastaba at south Saqqarah and was the only Old Kingdom ruler not to begin a pyramid. These works, especially the Great Pyramid, show a great mastery of monumental stoneworking: individual blocks were large or colossal and were very accurately fitted to one another. Surveying and planning also were carried out with remarkable precision.

Apart from the colossal conception of the pyramids themselves, the temple complexes attached to them show great mastery of architectural forms. Khufu's temple or approach causeway was decorated with impressive reliefs, fragments of which were incorporated in the 12th-dynasty pyramid of Amenemhet I at al-Lisht. The best known of all Egyptian sculpture, Khafre's Great Sphinx at Giza and his extraordinary seated statue of Nubian gneiss, date from the middle 4th dynasty.

The Giza pyramids form a group of more or less completed monuments surrounded by many tombs of the royal family and the elite, hierarchically organized and laid out in neat patterns. This arrangement contrasts with that of the reign of Snefru, when important tombs were built at Maydum and Saqqarah, while the King was probably buried at Dahshur. Of the Giza tombs, only those of the highest-ranking officials were decorated: except among the immediate entourage of the kings, the freedom of expression of officials was greatly restricted. Most of the highest officials were members of the very large royal family, so that power was concentrated by kinship as well as other means. This did not prevent factional strife: the complex of Redjedef was deliberately and thoroughly destroyed, probably at the instigation of his successor, Khafre.

The Palermo Stone records a campaign to Lower Nubia in the reign of Snefru that may be associated with graffiti in the area itself. The Egyptians founded a settlement at Buhen, at the north end of the Second Cataract, which endured for 200 years; others may have been founded between there and Elephantine. The purposes of this penetration were probably to establish trade farther south and to create a buffer zone. No archaeological traces of a settled population in Lower Nubia have been found for the Old Kingdom period: the oppressive presence of Egypt seems to have robbed the inhabitants of their resources, rather as the Egyptian provinces were exploited in favour of the king and the elite.

Snefru and the builders of the Giza pyramids represented a classic age to later times. Snefru was the prototype of a good king, whereas Khufu and Khafre had tyrannical reputations, perhaps only because of the size of their monuments. Little direct evidence for political or other attitudes survives from the dynasty, in part because writing was only just beginning to be used for recording continuous texts. Many great works of art were, however, produced for kings and members of the elite, and these set a pattern for later work. Kings of the 4th dynasty identified themselves, at least from the time of Redjedef, as Son of Re (the sun god); worship of the sun god reached a peak in the 5th dynasty.

from Egypt, history of fl. 25th century BC

also spelled KHUFWEY, OR KHNOMKHUFWEY, Greek CHEOPS second king of the 4th dynasty (c. 2575-c. 2465 BC) of Egypt and builder of the Great Pyramid at Giza, the largest single building to that time.

Khufu's reign and that of his son Khafre (Greek: Chephren) were represented by the Greek historian Herodotus as 106 years of oppression and misery, but this was belied by Khufu's posthumous reputation in Egypt as a wise ruler. Herodotus' story of Khufu's prostitution of his daughter in order to raise money for his building projects is clearly scandalmongering legend.

Although few written sources remain, it is known that Khufu was the son and successor of King Snefru and his queen Hetepheres and was probably married four times: to Merityetes, who was buried in one of the three small pyramids beside his own; to a second queen, whose name is unknown; to Henutsen, whose small pyramid is the third of the group; and to Nefert-kau, the eldest of Snefru's daughters. Two of his sons, Djedefre (Redjedef) and Khafre, succeeded him in turn.

The early dynastic period (c. 2925-c. 2575 BC)

The 1st dynasty (c. 2925-c. 2775 BC)

The beginning of the historical period is characterized by the introduction of written records in the form of regnal year names--the records that later were collected in documents such as the Palermo Stone. The first king of Egyptian history, Menes, is therefore a creation of the later record, not the actual unifier of the country; he is known from Egyptian king lists and from classical sources and is credited with irrigation works and with founding the capital, Memphis. On small objects from this time, one of them dated to the important king Narmer but certainly mentioning a different person, there are two possible mentions of a "Men" who may be the king Menes. If these do name Menes, he was probably the same person as Aha, Narmer's probable successor, who was then the founder of the 1st dynasty. Changes in the naming patterns of kings reinforce the assumption that a new dynasty began with his reign. Aha's tomb at Abydos is altogether more grandiose than previously built tombs, while the first of a series of massive tombs at Saqqarah, next to Memphis, supports the tradition that the city was founded then as a new capital. This shift from Abydos is the culmination of intensified settlement in the crucial area between the Valley and the Delta, but Memphis did not yet overcome the traditional pull of its predecessor: the large tombs at Saqqarah appear to belong to high officials, while the kings were buried at Abydos in tombs without formal superstructures. Their mortuary cult may have been conducted in flimsy buildings in designated areas nearer the cultivation, around which a number of burials of important individuals were grouped.

In the late predynastic period and the first half of the 1st dynasty, Egypt extended its influence into southern Palestine and probably Sinai and conducted a campaign as far as the Second Cataract. The First Cataract area, with its centre on Elephantine, an island in the Nile opposite the modern town of Aswan, was permanently incorporated into Egypt, but Lower Nubia was not.

Between late predynastic times and the 4th dynasty--and probably early in the period--the Nubian A Group came to an end. There is some evidence that political centralization was in progress around Qustul, but this did not lead to any further development and may indeed have prompted a preemptive strike by Egypt. For Nubia, the malign proximity of the largest state of the time stifled advancement. During the 1st dynasty, writing spread gradually, but because it was used chiefly for administration, the records, which were kept within the floodplain, have not survived. The artificial writing medium of papyrus was invented by the middle of the 1st dynasty. There was a surge in prosperity, and thousands of tombs of all levels of wealth have been found throughout the country. The richest contained magnificent goods in metal, ivory, and other materials, the most widespread luxury products being extraordinarily fine stone vases. The high point of 1st-dynasty development was the long reign of Den (flourished c. 2850 BC).

During the 1st dynasty three titles were added to the royal Horus name: "Two Ladies," an epithet presenting the king as making manifest an aspect of the protective goddesses of the south (Upper Egypt) and the north (Lower Egypt); "Golden Horus," the precise meaning of which is unknown; and "Dual King," a ranked pairing of the two basic words for king, later associated with Upper and Lower Egypt. These titles were followed by the king's own birth name, which in later centuries was written in a cartouche.

Writing as a system of signs

Languages are systems of symbols; writing is a system for symbolizing these symbols. A writing system may be defined as any conventional system of marks or signs that represents the utterances of a language. Writing renders language visible; while speech is the alphabet being regarded as the

Rosetta Stone, black basalt slab bearing an inscription that was the key to the deciphering of Egyptian
hieroglyphics and thus to the foundation of modern Egyptology. Found by French troops in 1799 near
the town of Rosetta in Lower Egypt, it is now in the British Museum, London. The stone was inscribed in
196 BC with a decree praising the Egyptian king Ptolemy V. Because the inscription appears in three
scripts, hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek, scholars were able to decipher the hieroglyphic and demotic
versions by comparing them with the Greek version. The deciphering was chiefly the work of the British
physicist Thomas Young and the French Egyptologist Jean Fran?s Champollion.
ephemeral, writing is concrete and, by comparison, permanent. Both speaking and writing depend upon the underlying structures of language.
Consequently, writing cannot ordinarily be read by someone not familiar with the linguistic structure underlying the oral form of the language.
Yet writing is not merely the transcription of speech; writing frequently involves the use of special forms of language, such as those involved in literary and scientific works, which would not be produced orally. In any linguistic community the written language is a distinct and special dialect; usually there is more than one written dialect. Scholars account for these facts by suggesting that writing is related directly to language but not necessarily directly to speech. Consequently, spoken and written language may evolve somewhat distinctive forms and functions.

I INTRODUCTION
Hieroglyphs, characters in any of several systems of writing in which thecharacters are pictorial, that is, represent recognizable objects. The term hieroglyph is, however, most generally associated with the script in which the ancient Egyptian language was written; the ancient Greeks applied the term (meaning "sacred carving") to the decorative characters carved on Egyptian standing monuments. The word hieroglyphic was later used to describe the pictorial writing systems of the Hittites,
Cretans, and Mayans, but their systems are in no way related to one another or to the Egyptian, having in common only that they are pictorial.

II IDEOGRAMS AND PHONOGRAMS
Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions are composed of two basic types of signs: ideograms and phonograms.
Ideograms signify either the specific object drawn or something closely related to it; for example, a picture
of the Sun may mean "Sun" or "day"; phonograms, or sound signs, were used purely for their phonetic
value and have no relationship to the word they are used to spell. The development of the rebus principle,
by which the picture of an object could stand not only for that object but also for a word with the same
sound but a different meaning, made possible the writing of proper nouns, abstract ideas, and grammatical
elements. Phonograms could represent one consonant or the combination of two or three consonants in a
specific order; vowels were not written. A sign might serve as an ideogram in one word and as a
phonogram in another. Most words were written with a combination of phonetic and ideographic signs; a
picture of the floor plan of a house meant "house", but the same sign followed by a phonetic complement
and a picture of a pair of walking legs was used to write the homophonous verb meaning "to go out".
Ideograms written at the end of a word, indicating the category to which the word belongs and thus
signifying the meaning intended (which was not always clear from the context), are called determinatives. A
representation of a papyrus scroll, used as a determinative, indicates that an abstract meaning was
intended.

III ARRANGEMENT OF HIEROGLYPHIC INSCRIPTIONS
Hieroglyphic inscriptions could be written either vertically or horizontally, usually from right to left. The
direction for any given inscription is indicated by the individual signs, which normally face the beginning of
the inscription. The inscriptions are composed of nouns, verbs, prepositions, and other parts of speech
organized by strict rules of word order. The signs spelling individual words were arranged in groups, and
blank spaces were avoided in an inscription. Words referring to the king and gods were often honorifically
transposed, that is, moved forward in writing. The king's two most common names were inscribed in
cartouches or "royal rings", stylized representations of loops formed by a double thickness of rope with the
ends tied at the bottom.

The Egyptians continued to use hieroglyphs from the time of the development of the system, about 3000
BC, until the time of the Roman Empire; the latest hieroglyphic inscription dates from AD 394. The form
and number of signs remained fairly consistent until the Graeco-Roman period (after 332 BC), when the
number of signs, especially phonograms, was greatly increased. But even by the beginning of the Old
Kingdom (c. 2755 BC) the Egyptians had developed a more cursive script that replaced hieroglyphs for the
enormous bulk of writing done with blunt reed pens and ink on papyrus. This script is called hieratic (Greek,
"priestly"), so named by the Greeks because by about the 7th century BC it was largely limited to religious
texts. For all other types of texts an even more cursive and ligatured script called demotic (Greek,
"popular") was used. Although the hieroglyphic script was much more time-consuming to write than either
hieratic or demotic, it continued in use for monumental carved inscriptions. Precisely because it was pictorial,
the Egyptians used it as part of the decoration of the monuments.

V DECIPHERMENT OF HIEROGLYPHS

The Romans believed that Egyptian hieroglyphs were symbolic and allegorical, not phonetic; this theory
prevailed into the time of the Renaissance. The breakthrough came in 1799, when a soldier serving in
Napoleon's campaign in Egypt discovered the Rosetta Stone, a bilingual pillar inscribed (196 BC) with a
decree in honour of Ptolemy V in Greek and in hieroglyphic and demotic Egyptian. A Swedish diplomat,
Johan David ?erblad, made progress in identifying some of the phonetic letters in the cursive version of
the text; the British physicist Thomas Young, also an Egyptologist, went further, including the identification
of some of the proper names. It was not until the work (begun 1821) of the French Egyptologist, Jean Fran
?s Champollion, however, that the two Egyptian scripts were recognized as phonetic. In earlier stages of
the work Champollion had predicted the hieroglyphic spelling of various royal names based on the demotic;
these spellings were confirmed by actual cartouches on the Rosetta Stone and other Ptolemaic monuments.
After identifying the names and titles of the Graeco-Roman rulers, he combined the phonetic values he had
so derived with his knowledge of Coptic, the late stage of the Egyptian language. This achievement enabled
him to decipher earlier Pharaonic cartouches. In 1822 the decipherment of the script was completed.

Although much about ancient Egypt is still imperfectly known,
the wealth of material that has been preserved has made it
one of the best-understood
civilizations of the non-Classical world.

This wooden stele, dating from 950-730 BC
and showing the singer of Amon
playing the harp before the deity Horus,
is but one of many thousands of objects
and documents that provide a fascinating
insight into this extraordinary civilization.