Hieroglyphics and the Egyptians

 

A scribe is like a journalist or someone who documents things. Demotic script was used for important documents and it was written on papyrus. Egyptians used different natural objects to put these drawings and messages into stone and they used natural ink to write on papyrus. The Rosetta stone was a huge stone that still had some of the Egyptian, Greek, and Demotic writing on it after thousands and thousands of years.

Secrets of the Rosetta Stone

I rate this video four out of five stars because of the great amount of information it gave me. The video told me about the history of the Rosetta Stone. It was found by a French soldier after they had fought the British forcing them out of Egypt. The stone was 3 feet 9 inches high, 2 feet 4 inches wide, and almost 400 pounds, so it is huge! Finding it was the easy part, but translating this stone was hard.

The French could translate some of the Greek and found that the stone was honoring a Greek pharaoh. Unfortunately, the British got the stone back in their possession, but still could not translate any of the Egyptian writing on the stone because the language had not been used for 2000 years. Soon, word got out about the stone and it formed an “international race” to translate it. A man named Thomas Young began to decode it in 1818 and found many patterns with names and other words and letters, so he sent it to another French man, John, who had been obsessed with the stone for a while because of a legend. Together they found other patterns in letters and began connecting them to get whole words. In 1824, John made a book with 21 of the Egyptian letters of the alphabet without giving any credit to Young. So they both decoded the Rosetta Stone, not fully, but most of it.

Cuneiform

Nomadic civilizations are like communities of people who don’t live in one place for long. They travel a lot for food and other resources. Sumerians created cuneiform as their communication because they needed a way to record all their trading and transactions with people. They used a wedge shaped tool or stylus made from reeds

Cave Paintings

Cave Paintings are drawings from thousands of years ago made by native people. It was the first way to communicate from one person to another. These prehistoric people made these paintings by mixing different natural elements like soil, water, charcoal, and plant juices, along with animal blood and hematite. They used small stones, sticks, leaves, and animal hair as brushes to right on the rock walls of the cave. The prehistoric people most likely created these paintings to tell a story or event that occurred, to teach others, or for magical and religious reasons. People use speleology, or the study and exploration of caves, to find these places to study the culture and way of life back then.