History of Western Civilisation - Wednesday 5th Period: Discussion 2: Egypt and Crete

[prof-methos.livejournal.com]

Greetings and Salutations, class. Now that your hands are throughly exhausted from taking notes on yesterday's lecture, I'm going to make you talk until your jaw is tired as well.

For your homework, due next Tuesday but turned in to this thread, I'd like you to comment in at least 100 words on some aspect of Egyptian or Cretan civilisation. Bonus points for comparing something between the two.

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Comments

Re: HOMEWORK: Egypt/Crete

[janet_fraiser]

For 1400 years, no one knew how to read Egyptian hieroglyphs. Virtually all understanding of it had been lost since the 4th century. The breakthrough came in 1799, after Napoleon's armies captured the Egyptian Nile Delta. A French soldier found the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone was carved with an inscription in three different scripts: Egyptian hieroglyphs, demotic script, and Greek. The Greek inscription was a translation of the other two passages and thus provided the key to translation. Copies of the Rosetta Stone inscription were sent to linguistic experts in Europe. The final breakthrough was made by Jean-François Champollion.


OOC: Your ancient history links section and my ancient history links section are nearly identical. This doesn't surprise me, but it does amuse me. So. Much.