Name: ________________________________ Date: __________________________ Period: ______

The Rosetta Stone ___/50

Directions: (1) Use context clues, your background knowledge, the word bank, and the process of elimination to fill in the blanks below. (2) Answer the questions as they occur. (3) Complete the flow map below to make clear what happened after “The inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone were written in 196 B.C....” Use the underlined references to time as a guide. (4) Write a one paragraph summary of this reading.

WORD frustrated armies Ptolemy immense councilBANK inscriptions decrees

The inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone were written in 196 B.C. during the boyhood reign of the Egyptian king Ptolemy V. They record a decree passed by a (1) _______________ of priests. They praise the royal cult of Ptolemy V on the first anniversary of his coronation. In previous years the family of the Ptolemies had lost control of certain parts of Egypt. By 196 B.C. the Ptolemies’ (2) _______________ had put down

opposition in the Nile Delta, but parts of southern Upper Egypt, particularly Thebes, were not yet back under their control. Before the Ptolemaic era (that is before about 332 B.C.), (3) _______________ in hieroglyphs like those on the Rosetta Stone were usually issued by the king. By the time of Ptolemy V priests were the only people who knew how to write in hieroglyphs. The priests who created the Rosetta Stone almost certainly listed the good deeds done by (4) _______________ V on the Rosetta Stone as a way of encouraging his ongoing support.

5 Based upon the information in the paragraph above, provide an adjective that describes Egypt during the period when the Rosetta Stone was inscribed.

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The importance of the Rosetta Stone to the study of ancient Egypt is (6) _______________. Soon after the end of the fourth century, when hieroglyphics had gone out of use, the knowledge of how to read and write them disappeared. Attempts at deciphering hieroglyphics (7) _______________ scholars for centuries. Arab scholars, beginning in the ninth century, made unsuccessful attempts, as did Europeans in the fifteenth century. By then, hieroglyphics had been replaced by the Coptic and Arabic alphabets. Egypt was littered with monumental stone (8) _______________, but no one could begin to translate them.

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WORD temple tool Greek others TreatyBANK three fort

Although it’s likely that the Rosetta Stone was originally displayed within a (9) _______________, it appears to have been moved during the Middle Ages, while Egypt was ruled by the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans used the stone as building material in the construction of a (10) _______________ in the western Nile Delta, near the town of el-Rashid (Rosetta in English). During Napoleon Bonaparte’s campaign in Egypt, between 1798 and 1801, the French occupied the fort, naming it Fort Julien. In

1799, while digging the foundation for an addition to the fort, Napoleon’s soldiers discovered the stone. When the British defeated Napoleon, the stone became their property under the terms of the(11) _______________ of Alexandria.

12 What is the main idea of the paragraph above? _______________________________________

13-14 To whom does the Rosetta Stone rightfully belong? ____________________________________

Explain your answer. _____________________________________________________________

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The Rosetta Stone’s decree is inscribed on the stone (15) _______________ times, in hieroglyphic (suitable for a priestly decree), in demotic (the Egyptian script used for daily purposes), and in Greek (the language the Egyptians used for administration). It was immediately recognized as a(16) _______________ that could be used to decode hieroglyphics. If, as was assumed, the three pieces of writing had the same text, the Greek, which was well understood, could be used to decipher the (17) _______________. The task would not be easy, however. Hieroglyphics combine a mixture of pictograms and phonetic symbols representing sounds - and more than one symbol could be used to represent a sound. Complicating matters, the demotic and(18) _______________ texts were not exactly the same.

19 Consider the picture of the Rosetta Stone on the previous page, then identify one other issue that added to the difficulty scholars experienced when trying to use the Rosetta Stone to decipher hieroglyphics. Explain the issue below.

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WORD word decoded name ChampollionBANK

In 1813 Thomas Young, an English physicist, began studying the Rosetta Stone. He showed that some of the hieroglyphs on it wrote the sounds of a royal name; that of Ptolemy. Meanwhile, the French scholar Jean-François(20) _______________ embarked on the same project. Working with illustrations of the Rosetta Stone and of other ancient Egyptian texts, he recognized that hieroglyphic marks were sometimes pictograms and sometimes phonetic. He wrote, “It is a complex system … symbolic and phonetic all at once, in the same text, the same phrase, I would say in the same (21) _______________.” Champollion realized that hieroglyphics recorded the sounds of the Egyptian language. Soon after he was able to correctly read the names of several rulers, then he was able to identify other names in other texts. Using the symbols for sounds he gleaned from those translations, he was able to identify a word in hieroglyphics that was not a (22) _______________. On September 27 th , 1822 , Champollion announced his breakthrough. Immediately his discovery came under attack from the British, who dismissed his notion that the Egyptians had developed a phonetic-based form of writing. In 1866, however,

another text with Greek and Egyptian writing was discovered and successfully (23) _______________ using Champollion’s approach. Champollion’s insight laid the foundations of our knowledge of ancient Egyptian language and culture. The French scholar could not enjoy this vindication, however. He had died in 1832.

Directions: Complete the flow map below to make clear what happened after “The inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone were written in 196 B.C....” Use the underlined references to time as a guide. Be sure to keep your events in chronological order.

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“The inscriptions on the Rosetta

Stone were written in 196

B.C....”

2 3 4

5 6 7 8

Directions: Summarize this reading in one full paragraph. Your paragraph must include four sentences and most of the key events from the flow map above.

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Reviewer’s Directions: Review the paragraph above. Score each skill area by circling the appropriate number. Use the notes section to further explain your assessment. Sign your review legibly.

PTS IDEAS AND CONTENT PTS ORGANIZATION PTS READABILITY

5fully accomplished task4+ subject-specific facts 5

organized ideas logically5

exceptional word usageexceptional writing technique

effective tone and voice

4accomplished task

at least 3 subject-specific facts 4organized ideas logically

4very good word usage

very good writing techniqueeffective tone and voice

3minimally accomplished task

at least 2 subject-specific facts 3attempted to organize ideas

logically 3attempted to adjust tone and

voice to audience

2partially accomplished task

at least 1 subject-specific fact 2minimally attempted to organize

ideas logically 2ordinary word usage

attempted to adjust tone and voice to audience

1failed to accomplish taskno subject-specific facts 1

failed to organize or organized illogically 1

less than minimal word usage and writing technique

inappropriate tone and voiceLANGUAGE CONVENTIONS PTS

very few or no errors in capitalization, punctuation, spelling, or word usage/very few or no run-on sentences and/or sentence fragments/no errors that impair the flow of communication - errors are infrequent 5 PTS

occasional errors in capitalization, punctuation, spelling, grammar, or word usage/may have run-on sentences, sentence fragments/errors do not impede communication; the writer’s message is not seriously obscured 4 PTS

frequent errors in capitalization, punctuation, spelling, grammar, or word usage/run-on sentences and/or sentence fragments/errors cause the reader to stop and re-read parts of the writing - errors impair communication 3 PTS

many errors in capitalization, punctuation, spelling, grammar, or word usage/run-on sentences and/or sentence fragments/errors are serious and numerous, causing the reader to struggle to discern meaning 2 PTS

many errors in capitalization, punctuation, spelling, grammar, or word usage/errors are serious, numerous, and of a wide variety - it is impossible to ascertain what the writer wants to communicate 1 PTS

NOTES: _________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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________________________________________________________ REVIEWER’S NAME: ______________________________________

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