The top is missing but the lower two inscriptions are mostly intact. The Rosetta Stone is a legal decree written by Ptolemy V Epiphanes in three scripts: Egyptian hieroglyphs on the top, Demotic in the middle, and Greek on the bottom. Our tale actually begins soon after the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. While it is true that Jean François Champollion did use the Rosetta Stone to decipher hieroglyphs, as his critics never failed to point out, to the end of his days he could never read it. We Egyptologists have some good reasons for neglecting it, which I cannot go into here. Don’t you start your study of hieroglyphs with the Rosetta Stone? No, we do not. It would probably shock most of the visitors on pilgrimage to visit that object that most Egyptologists have never read it. It is the most visited object in the British Museum.

The Rosetta Stone was discovered in July 1799 and is now an icon. Egyptology was not yet the settled field it is now or even was by the end of the nineteenth century. It is an indication that Champollion had not yet carried the day. Klaproth, stated in 1827, “Monsieur Champollion does not like anyone to speak about Egypt without his permission, and above all, he does not like anyone to mention those who were engaged in it before him: it is an unpardonable offense.” This is an indication of the disagreements among the various scholars vying for the title of the decipherer of hieroglyphs. The following was a viewpoint from a bit closer to that time: “The theories of Spohn, Klaproth, Goulianof, Riccardi, Jannelli, and others, are forgotten,” said the Reverend Peter Le Page Renouf in 1859, “or at least have ceased to occupy the attention of those who seriously intend to make themselves acquainted with the language, the literature, or the history of ancient Egypt.” One of those mentioned, J. We tend to forget what Egyptology was actually like in Joseph Smith’s day. Only after dealing with these two issues can we accurately assess Joseph Smith’s understanding of Egyptian. The second is figuring out what we can know of Joseph Smith’s involvement in Egyptology. The first is knowing what Egyptology was actually like in Joseph Smith’s day. Whoever would place Joseph Smith in the Egyptology of his day has two hurdles to overcome. In this case, some who follow the conventional wisdom do not think that Joseph Smith knew anything about the ancient world, but they think that he should have. Joseph Smith should have known better but clearly did not. According to conventional wisdom, by the time Joseph Smith ran across Egyptian papyri in 1835, Jean-François Champollion had already deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs a dozen years previously. This is the earliest record of Joseph Smith’s encounter with Egyptian artifacts. He soon knew what they were and said that the rolls of papyrus contained a sacred record kept by Joseph in Pharaoh’s court in Egypt and the teachings of Father Abraham.” As no one could translate these writings, they were presented to President Smith.

With them were two papyrus rolls, besides some other ancient Egyptian writings. Phelps wrote his wife about the recent news in Kirtland, Ohio: “On the last of June, four Egyptian mummies were brought here. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University when this was written. John Gee was the William (Bill) Gay Research Chair at the Neal A.

Egyptian papyrus writing