Talk:Rosetta Stone
From Academic Kids
Is this really how big it is, or is this a reproduction? : http://www.slower.net/entries/01235.php Koyaanis Qatsi 00:23, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)
- Yeah, the real thing is over six feet long, according to the British Museum (http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/aes/faqs/rosetta.html). --MIRV 00:27, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC)
When my browser window is a "normal" width, the headline "Use as metaphor" and many lines below it are overwritten by the smaller of the two pictures. Can someone good at tables fix this? Tempshill 05:48, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)
- The larger image was floating (which it shouldn't have been, judging by its size), so I've confined it to its own table. Also spaced things out a little and repositioned the insertion points of both images. If the overlap isn't fixed, I suppose the larger image can be moved up even higher. Failing that, I don't see any harm in removing the smaller image (though I'm not bold enough to do so myself). Hadal 06:05, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Basalt or granite?
Paragraph 1: The Rosetta Stone is a dark granite stone (often incorrectly identified as "basalt")
Paragraph 3: Pierre-François Bouchard (1772-1832) found a black basalt stone when guiding construction works in the Fort Julien...
So... which is it?
From http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/conservation/cleaning2.html -
- Analysis of the stone has shown that it is a granite-like rock and not a basalt as it has previously been described.
Wizzy 16:29, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- I noticed this yesterday, and had planned a cleanup, but (obviously) never got around to it. The section on provenance (I see you've corrected the heading) really should be re-written completely, but at least it the article longer contradicts itself. Austin Hair 17:26, Jul 16, 2004 (UTC)
deciphering of the hieroglyphs
Did modern scientists use computer technologies to check the deciphering for accuracy? The multilingual wikipedia here works like a Rosetta stone too. However, if you read wikipedia articles written in different language on the same topic, you'll notice it is not easy to map the meaning word for word unless the entries are presented in dictionary form. Different language have different sentence structure and grammer. The deciphering was done in 1822 with no help from advance technology. Nowadays, the century old work can easily be checked by computer for consistency. Perhaps many historical accounts will be rewritten if errors are found in the deciphering. Kowloonese 19:32, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)
Importance
I'd like to see more about the importance of the stone. For example, according to one of the linked articles, "For 1400 years, no one knew how to read Egyptian hieroglyphs. Virtually all understanding of this mysterious script had been lost since the 4th century AD..." That really drives home what a special and historic find it was.
