The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone

by Edward Dolnick

Overview

The fast-paced and “engrossing account” (The New York Times Book Review) of “one of the greatest breakthroughs in archaeological history” (The Christian Science Monitor): two rival geniuses in a race to decode the writing on one of the world’s most famous documents—the Rosetta Stone.

The Rosetta Stone is one of the most famous objects in the world, attracting millions of visitors to the British museum every year, and yet most people don’t really know what it is. Discovered in a pile of rubble in 1799, this slab of stone proved to be the key to unlocking a lost language that baffled scholars for centuries.

Carved in ancient Egypt, the Rosetta Stone carried the same message in different languages—in Greek using Greek letters, and in Egyptian using picture-writing called hieroglyphs. Until its discovery, no one in the world knew how to read the hieroglyphs that covered every temple and text and statue in Egypt.

Dominating the world for thirty centuries, ancient Egypt was the mightiest empire the world had ever known, yet everything about it—the pyramids, mummies, the Sphinx—was shrouded in mystery. Whoever was able to decipher the Rosetta Stone would solve that mystery and fling open a door that had been locked for two thousand years.

Two brilliant rivals set out to win that prize. One was English, the other French, at a time when England and France were enemies and the world’s two great superpowers. Written “like a thriller” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis), The Writing of the Gods chronicles this high-stakes intellectual race in which the winner would win glory for both himself and his nation. A riveting portrait of empires both ancient and modern, this is an unparalleled look at the culture and history of ancient Egypt, “and also a lesson...in what the human mind does when faced with a puzzle” (The New Yorker).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501198946
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	11/22/2022
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	178,209
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Edward Dolnick is the author of Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party, The Writing of the Gods, The Clockwork Universe, The Forger’s Spell, and the Edgar Award–winning The Rescue Artist, among other books. A former chief science writer at The Boston Globe, he has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, and many other publications. He lives with his wife near Washington, DC.

Table of Contents

Timeline xiii

Prologue xv

1 The Stakes 1

2 The Find 9

3 The Challenge 15

4 Voices from the Dust 21

5 So Near and Yet So Far 29

6 The Conquering Hero 43

7 The Burning Deck 51

8 Monsieur Smith Makes His Exit 59

9 A Celebrity in Stone 67

10 First Guesses 73

11 The Rivals 81

12 Thomas Young Is Almost Surprised 93

13 Archimedes in His Bathtub, Thomas Young in His Country House 101

14 Ahead of the Field 109

15 Lost in the Labyrinth 115

16 Ancient Wisdom 125

17 "A Cipher and a Secret Writing" 137

18 The Exile 145

19 Here Comes Champollion 155

20 "A Veritable Chaos" 161

21 The Birth of Writing 167

22 The Paduan Giant 175

23 Abu Simbel 181

24 Eureka! 191

25 The Unveiling 201

26 A Duck May Be Somebody's Mother 207

27 Straining to Hear 215

28 Strength in Numbers 223

29 A Pair of Walking Legs 231

30 Clean Robes and Soft Hands 237

31 Out of a Job 247

32 The Lost Pharaoh 251

Epilogue 259

Acknowledgments 265

Notes 267

Bibliography 291

Photo Credits 299

Index 301

Editorial Reviews

08/09/2021

When the Rosetta Stone was discovered by French soldiers in 1799, “the first guesses were that it might take two weeks to decipher,” according to this stimulating history of a linguistic puzzle that took 20 years to solve. Journalist Dolnick (The Seeds of Life) reveals that Thomas Young (1773–1829) and Jean-François Champollion (1790–1832), the two “rival geniuses” who “did the most to crack the code,” had both been child prodigies and possessed “an uncanny flair for languages,” but were “opposites in nearly every other regard.” Polymath Young made contributions to the fields of physics, medicine, and linguistics, while Champollion “cared about Egypt and only about Egypt.” Though Champollion was the first to truly “read” the language of hieroglyphs, in the 1820s, Young made a key breakthrough in 1816, when he proposed that one grouping on the Rosetta Stone spelled out the name Ptolemy (Champollion insisted that he had come to the same conclusion independently). Dolnick lucidly explains the complex steps taken to decipher the relic, and offers brisk and enlightening history lessons on the first appearances of written language, Roman emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in the fourth century, the Scientific Revolution, and Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt. The result is an immersive and knowledgeable introduction to one of archaeology’s greatest breakthroughs. Illus. Agent: Flip Brophy, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Masterful. . . . The Writing of the Gods is an engrossing account of one of the greatest breakthroughs in archaeological history, one that brought a dead language, and a buried culture, back to life.” —Christian Science Monitor

"Dolnick exuberantly captures the frustrations and triumphs of scholars as they puzzle out the meaning of long-dead runes." —New York Times Book Review

"An entertaining account of a great intellectual achievement." —The Economist

“Dolnick treats [Young and Champollion's] efforts like a thriller. . . . entertaining." —Minneapolis Star Tribune

"[Dolnick] has a remarkable ability to explain and contextualize complex topics and create compelling, lucid nonfiction narratives. . . . Dolnick brings this period of history to life in the same way the Rosetta Stone revived ancient Egypt." —BookPage (starred review)



"Stimulating. . . . an immersive and knowledgeable introduction to one of archaeology’s greatest breakthroughs." —Publishers Weekly



"A fast-paced intellectual adventure. . . . Highly recommended." —Library Journal

From the Publisher

10/01/2021

The year 2022 will mark the bicentennial of the modern decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, which unlocked many aspects of that ancient civilization. This new volume by journalist Dolnick (The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World) is an account of the breakthrough. He explains that its key was the 1799 discovery at Rashid (called Rosetta by Europeans) in the Nile Delta of a broken stela, by soldiers from Napoléon's army. The Rosetta Stone, as it has come to be called in the Western world, bears a trilingual text in ancient Greek and Egyptian demotic and hieroglyphic. Copies of the text were made and disseminated among European scholars to attempt to decipher the two Egyptian inscriptions. Dolnick focuses particularly on the intense rivalry between two of those savants: Englishman Thomas Young (1773–1829) and Frenchman Jean-François Champollion (1790–1832). Both compared royal names appearing in the stone's Greek and hieroglyphic texts and discovered that hieroglyphs weren't just ideograms but representations of sounds. For more on Champollion, one might seek out Andrew Robinson's outstanding biography Cracking the Egyptian Code. VERDICT Dolnick presents a fast-paced intellectual adventure for general readers that surveys the invention of writing and the processes of deciphering and decoding. Highly recommended for anyone who relishes challenging puzzles.—Edward K. Werner, formerly at St. Lucie Cty. Lib. Syst., FL

Library Journal

2021-10-20
The story of the Rosetta Stone’s discovery and decoding.

Today, the Rosetta Stone occupies such a prominent role in public interest—not unlike Stonehenge or the Egyptian pyramids—that its actual significance can easily get lost amid the crowds of tourists clamoring for a view. In his latest book, Dolnick, former chief science writer for the Boston Globewho has written for a wide variety of publications, offers a strong corrective, describing not only how the Rosetta Stone was found, but also how, over several long decades, it was deciphered. He creates an engaging portrait of the two men—Jean-François Champollion and Thomas Young—who were mainly responsible for cracking the code of Egyptian hieroglyphs. For centuries, those hieroglyphs had been unreadable. Dolnick provides an exciting narrative of the journey to legibility, and he effectively describes why it was such an important—and excruciating—process. However, the author sometimes goes awry when he strains too hard for wittiness—e.g., describing ancient Alexandria as “Paris to Rome’s Podunk.” Worse are the banalities that stud Dolnick’s analyses. “If you pull the camera back far enough,” he writes, “all cultures look the same. People meet and fall in love; they boast and puff themselves up; they mock their rivals; they pray to their god, or a host of gods; they fear death. The details make all the difference.” Accessibility is no crime, of course, but the author’s desire to make the book accessible to everyone leads him to oversimplify his subject with labored asides: “Imagine how much harder crossword puzzles would be if the answers could be in any language including dead ones.” Despite these flaws, Dolnick makes complicated linguistic challenges not only comprehensible, but also especially vivid for readers new to the subject, and, as in his previous books, his enthusiasm is infectious.

A largely engaging yet sometimes pedestrian look at language and the limits of what we can understand.

Kirkus Reviews