[He falls in beside her, in fact glad for the chance to elucidate on what in his opinion is an incredibly cool thing.]
The Rosetta Stone was a really key archeological find in my culture's history. It was this decree that'd been carved into a stele in three languages, thousands of years ago -- Greek, which is still well-understood, Egyptian hieroglyphics, which no one had any clue about, and... oh, what was the third one. Sumerian? Demotic? Anyways, something we had some translation for.
[He offers a sheepish shrug for his lapse of knowledge there.]
In any case, because it was the same thing written out three times, it became this kind of figurative codex for sorting out hieroglyphics in particular, which had been very opaque up until then. Pictographs, right? They look like they should parse, but they rely so much on cultural context. It was one of the most illuminating discoveries in archaeological history.
Anyways. [This time he flashes her a grin.] What it means is that you're probably going to have your hands full translating until they fix this little problem, aren't you?
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Date: 2016-08-20 06:37 pm (UTC)The Rosetta Stone was a really key archeological find in my culture's history. It was this decree that'd been carved into a stele in three languages, thousands of years ago -- Greek, which is still well-understood, Egyptian hieroglyphics, which no one had any clue about, and... oh, what was the third one. Sumerian? Demotic? Anyways, something we had some translation for.
[He offers a sheepish shrug for his lapse of knowledge there.]
In any case, because it was the same thing written out three times, it became this kind of figurative codex for sorting out hieroglyphics in particular, which had been very opaque up until then. Pictographs, right? They look like they should parse, but they rely so much on cultural context. It was one of the most illuminating discoveries in archaeological history.
Anyways. [This time he flashes her a grin.] What it means is that you're probably going to have your hands full translating until they fix this little problem, aren't you?