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An attempt at understanding hieroglyphs
Greek and Roman authors thought that hieroglyphs were symbols of ancient Egyptian wisdom. They dismissed any phonetic component in the hieroglyphs.
This misguided view of hieroglyphs as 'picture writing' obscured any attempt at deciphering it. Near the 18th Cen...
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Ancient Egypt has exerted power of influence on the world of learning for over two millennia.
The Greek historian Herodotus identified the pyramids at Giza as places of royal burial, but his works did not help 19th Century scholars in understanding ancient Egyptian writing. Greek and R...
- In 1802, a French and a Swedish scholar used similar techniques to unravel the text. They searched for the name Ptolemy, by isolating repeated groups of symbols in about the same position as the Greek inscription.
- They drew up a tentative alphabet and applied it to...
- In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt. Military engineers discovered the Rosetta Stone in July 1799 while rebuilding an old fort in the Nile Delta.
- It was clear that the bottom inscription on the Rosetta Stone was written in the Greek alphabet and the top part in Egyptian hiero...
In 1822, Jean-François Champollion found an essential clue from the newly discovered cartouche (oval rings enclosing certain groups of hieroglyphs, generally names and titles) containing the name of Cleopatra. The alphabet was now mostly correct and allowed him to translate the n...
- Ancient Egypt was conquered, first by Persians, then by Macedonian Greeks under Alexander the Great in 332BC.
- The Ptolematic dynasty, named after Alexander's general, Ptolemy I, ruled Egypt for three centuries. It ended with the death of Cleopatra VII and the Roman occupation ...
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Cats feature in ancient Egyptian art. It reflects the cat's unique status among people who lived along the Nile River.
Cats were first seen as beneficial predators but later became symbols of divinity and protection. While ancient Egyptians did not worship animals, they did see them as repr...
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The first ice cream cup was found in Egypt in a tomb in 2700BC.
It was a kind of mould made from two silver cups, one of which contained snow or crushed ice, and the other cooked fruit.
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published 8 ideas
Some of the first tools for writing were the hunting club and the sharpened stone. Cave dwellers scratched pictures onto the walls of cave dwellings. It represented daily events such as planting crops or hunting victories.
With time, systematised symbols were developed fro...
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