The Riddle of the Rosetta

How an English Polymath and a French Polyglot Discovered the Meaning of Egyptian Hieroglyphs

By: Jed Z. Buchwald, Diane Greco Josefowicz

Narrated by: Christopher Grove

In 1799, a French Army officer was rebuilding the defenses of a fort on the banks of the Nile when he discovered an ancient stele fragment bearing a decree inscribed in three different scripts. So begins one of the most familiar tales in Egyptology - that of the Rosetta Stone and the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. This book draws on fresh archival evidence to provide a major new account of how the English polymath Thomas Young and the French philologist Jean-François Champollion vied to be the first to solve the riddle of the Rosetta.

Jed Buchwald and Diane Greco Josefowicz bring to life a bygone age of intellectual adventure. Much more than a decoding exercise centered on a single artifact, the race to decipher the Rosetta Stone reflected broader disputes about language, historical evidence, biblical truth, and the value of classical learning. The authors paint compelling portraits of Young and Champollion, two gifted intellects with altogether different motivations. Young disdained Egyptian culture and saw Egyptian writing as a means to greater knowledge about Greco-Roman antiquity. Champollion, swept up in the political chaos of Restoration France and fiercely opposed to the scholars aligned with throne and altar, admired ancient Egypt and was prepared to upend conventional wisdom to solve the mystery of the hieroglyphs.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2020 Princeton University Press (P)2021 Tantor

Wildly digressive, indeed!

Thoroughly researched. A wealth of information. More than everything you might want to know about the critical players in the early successful efforts to read the hieroglyphic script. Resurrects Champollion’s character from the more pro-Young impression common in the English speaking world. Read as if by Sergeant Joe Friday.

Fasinating!

Beautifully thorough examination of this momentous recapturing of humanity's story. The narrator took a little getting used to. He seemed to fall often into the cadence of a 1930s radio announcer. But as he is relating such excitement and discovery, it works.

Good introduction

This is a good introduction to T Young and JF Champollion's (and others) attempts at deciphering the Rosetta Stone and Egyptian hieroglyphs. I would have liked more details. The narrator sometimes did an ok job after chapter two but was really weird sounding the first two chapters. I even checked at one point to see if it was a real person or a bot reading. The main problem with this audio book is the narrator's abilities to pronounce French words in a book loaded with French words. "Not even close" often came to mind, and his pronunciation of French oiseau in Chpt 2 made me laugh out loud. Still, I'm glad someone was willing to write this book and someone willing to record it.