On July 19, 1799 near the town of Rosetta, Egypt, a French officer named Pierre-François Bouchard found a large black basalt stone with writing on it. The stone included three languages that said the same thing in Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics and Egyptian demotic. Scholars thus discovered that the “Rosetta Stone” was the key to interpreting the long-dead written language of hieroglyphics. The stone would eventually become important for interpreting and understanding ancient Egyptian culture.
What Happened to the Rosetta Stone
Napoleon Bonaparte’s armies during the Egyptian campaign took control of the stone. But the British soon took it from the French when they defeated Napoleon in 1801.
The next year, the British placed the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum, where it has remained through today (except for a brief period during World War I), including earlier this year when I visited the British Museum in London and took the photo above.
“And It Stoned Me”
I do not know what Pierre-François Bouchard thought when he first saw the Rosetta Stone. But because of Napoleon’s orders to look for artifacts, Bouchard knew he had found something. I do wonder if he had any idea of the impact the rock would have on the world.
If Bouchard knew how important it was, the discovery surely must have “stoned him,” an expression used by Van Morrison in “And It Stoned Me” from his Moondance
Van Morrison has explained that “And It Stoned Me” is about an experience he had as a twelve-year-old kid on a fishing trip. During the trip, an old man gave him water from a spring, with everything seeming to stand still in the moment.
In its original review of Moondance, Rolling Stone saw the water in “And It Stoned Me” as rain. The magazine recounted that the song is “a tale of boys out for a day’s freedom, standing in the rain with eyes and mouths open, heads bent back.” The review concluded, “The sensuality of this song is overpowering, communicated with a classical sort of grace.”
The magazine described the song in the same way that Bouchard might have felt upon seeing the Rosetta Stone: “you feel the exhilaration almost with a sense of astonishment.” When I visited the Rosetta Stone in London, I felt some of that astonishment too.
In honor of this date’s discovery of the Rosetta Stone, take a moment to feel a little exhilarated from both mystical experiences and for human beings’ ongoing quest for knowledge.
Photo via Chimesfreedom. Leave your two cents in the comments.
(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)
