Of all the achievements of human genius, both in art and in science, the deciphering of unknown languages ​​\u200b\u200bmay be called the most perfect and at the same time the least recognized skill. To understand this, you just need to look at a tablet with an inscription in one of the Mesopotamian languages ​​- Sumerian, Babylonian or Hittite. A person who does not have special knowledge will not even be able to determine whether this letter is alphabetic, syllabic or pictographic. In addition, it is not clear how to read the text - from left to right, right to left, or top to bottom. Where does the word start and where does it end? And if we move from the mysterious written signs to the language itself, then the researcher faces the most difficult problems of defining vocabulary and grammar.

Thus, it is clear what a philologist faces when trying to unravel an unknown language, and why so many languages ​​​​still cannot be deciphered, despite the efforts of specialists devoting many years to studying them. The best-known example of such "lost languages" is undoubtedly Etruscan, although its alphabet is well known and some bilingual inscriptions provide some information from the vocabulary and grammar. And when it comes to pictographic languages, like the writing of the ancient Maya, the researcher faces even greater, almost insurmountable difficulties. All that the experts can do is only to guess the meaning of the signs, without being able to read a single sentence. It is even difficult to determine whether we are dealing with a language or a series of mnemonic pictures.

Naturally, the first diggers of the ancient cities of Babylonia and the Persian Empire, who discovered cuneiform writing on the stone columns of the Persepolis palace or on tablets found in the hills of Mesopotamia, could not distinguish the beginning of these inscriptions from their end. However, the most educated among the researchers copied a few lines of Persepolis inscriptions, while others sent back to their countries samples of Babylonian cylinder seals, clay tablets and bricks with inscriptions. European scientists at first could not even come to a consensus about these signs. Some considered them to be just an ornament, but even after it was established with the help of numerous evidence that this was indeed writing, debate continued about whether it came from Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Chinese, Egyptian, or even Ogham (Old Irish) writing. . The degree of confusion caused by the discovery of such an unusual and mysterious type of writing can be judged by the statement of a certain Thomas Herbert, secretary to Sir Dodmore Cotton, the English ambassador to Persia in 1626. Herbert writes about the cuneiform texts that he examined on the walls and beams of the palace at Persepolis :

“Very clear and obvious to the eye, but so mysterious, so strangely drawn, as it is impossible to imagine any hieroglyphic letter, or other bizarre images, more sophisticated and not amenable to reason. They consist of figures, obelisks, triangular and pyramidal, but arranged in such symmetry and in such an order that it is impossible to call them barbaric at the same time.

This Thomas Herbert, who later accompanied Charles I to the scaffold, was one of the first Europeans to visit Persepolis and made sketches of the ruins, as well as some of the cuneiform inscriptions. Unfortunately for the scientists who decided to start deciphering the newly discovered signs, the three lines sketched by Herbert did not belong to the same inscription. Two lines were taken from one inscription, and the third from another. The signs themselves were also reproduced with insufficient accuracy; the same can be said about the copies provided by Italian and French travelers. One can only imagine the commotion caused by the so-called "Tarku inscription" allegedly copied by Samuel Flower, the East India Company's representative at a place called Tarku by the Caspian Sea. In fact, such an inscription never existed. Samuel Flower copied not the inscription, but 23 separate characters, which he considered characteristic of cuneiform, separating them with dots. But over the years, many researchers have tried to translate this series of independent signs as a whole, including such authorities as Eugene Burnouf and Adolf Holzmann. Some even claimed that they succeeded.

Confusion, confusion and errors were, of course, inevitable, since both the language itself and the script remained unsolved. Subsequently, it turned out that the Persepolis inscriptions were made in three languages, which turned out to be important for deciphering, the possibilities of which were identified at the end of the 18th century thanks to the work of two French scientists - Jean Jacques Barthélemy and Joseph Beauchamp. The great Danish explorer Karsten Niebuhr also noted that the inscriptions on the window frames of Darius's palace at Persepolis were repeated eighteen times and written in three different alphabets, but he did not draw the very important conclusion that, regardless of the alphabet, the texts duplicated each other.

It can be argued that until the languages ​​of the inscriptions were determined, all attempts to translate them remained just exercises in cryptography. Gradually, more and more inscriptions were discovered, and thanks to the finds of Bott and Layard, their number increased to hundreds of thousands. About 100 thousand inscriptions were found in the library of the Ashurbanipal palace; another 50 thousand - during excavations in Sippar; tens of thousands in Nippur, and so many in Lagash that the loss of about 30,000 tablets, plundered by local residents and sold at a price of 20 cents per basket, went almost unnoticed. Tens of thousands of tablets still lie in the 2886 known tutuls, or hills, rising on the site of ancient cities.

Obviously, the literature of vanished civilizations is just as important for understanding their customs and ways of life as monuments - perhaps even more important. And the scientists, who were engaged in the unusually difficult task of unraveling the mystery of strange signs in the form of arrows, did no less significant work than the diggers, although it was the latter who got fame, honor and financial support. This is not surprising, since the study of cuneiform began as an exercise in cryptography and philology, and these sciences are not of particular interest to the general public. And even when Professor Lassen from Bonn in 1845 made the first approximate translation of the Persian column of the inscription on the great Behistun relief of Darius, only his colleagues paid attention to this fact. The usual disregard of the public for such specialists sometimes led to the fact that they, in turn, treated their more successful amateur colleagues with distrust and disdain. After all, they knew that while, for example, Layard was becoming rich and famous, Edward Hincks, a pioneer in deciphering the long-extinct languages ​​of Mesopotamia, spent his whole life in one of the church parishes of the Irish County Down and his only award for forty years of hard work was the medal of the Royal Irish Academy. It has been said of Hincks that "he had the misfortune of being born an Irishman and holding the minor office of a country priest, so that, no doubt, from the very beginning he was forced to come to terms with the subsequent neglect and obscurity." The degree of reverence with which he was treated, even in learned circles, can be judged from the single short paragraph allocated to him in the Athenaeum, where he was allowed to explain just one of the most important discoveries in the study of the Assyro-Babylonian language. And yet, as far as our knowledge of Babylonian history is concerned, Edward Hinks has done incomparably more than Henry Layard. Indeed, all those objects and works of art that Layard sent from Nimrud to Europe told the scientific world little that was new. The greatness of Babylon and its monuments has already been described by Herodotus; the Old Testament tells about the power of Nebuchadnezzar's empire. Layard himself also learned almost nothing new for himself, and even identified the name of the city he excavated incorrectly. In fact, it was not Nineveh, but the Kalah (Kalhu) mentioned in the Bible. His mistake is understandable: neither he nor anyone else could read the inscriptions that would explain what kind of city it was.

Edward Hinks was followed by a succession of similar scientists who managed to turn Assyriology into a real science and eventually decipher the mysterious wedge-shaped scripts on the Assyro-Babylonian monuments. It is quite natural that the general public did not know about them and was not interested in their work, since all their discoveries were published in journals published by one or another Royal Academy, obscure to the average layman, and were of interest exclusively to specialists. It is hardly to be expected that the ordinary reader will be interested in the following discovery of Hinks: "If the primary consonant is preceded by "and" or "y", while the secondary consonant has the same characteristic as the primary, and corresponds to this vowel, then one should insert " a, either as a single syllable or as the guna of a vowel.

But nevertheless, such seemingly small and insignificant discoveries made by the village priest paved the way for the solution of what seemed to be an inaccessible mystery. As noted at the beginning of the chapter, a man in the street need only stop in front of the bulls in the British Museum or the Oriental Institute of Chicago and look at the inscriptions with which these monsters are covered in order to realize the greatness of the task that confronted the first researchers of Babylonian writing. Many scientists at first even believed that the unknown language could not be deciphered and the chances of translating the inscriptions were practically zero. Henry Rawlinson himself admitted that all these difficulties led him to such despondency that he was sometimes inclined to "leave the study completely in extreme despair and due to the impossibility of achieving any satisfactory result."

At the same time, as happens in the study of unknown or little-known languages, from time to time various enthusiastic amateurs appeared who, according to their own assurances, had considerable intelligence and sufficient scholarship to provide the public with a ready translation of inscriptions even before deciphering writing, without speaking already about the syntax and morphology of a dead language. A typical example of such "scholars" is William Price, secretary of Sir Gore Ouzley, Ambassador Extraordinary of Great Britain and His Majesty's Plenipotentiary to the Persian Court in 1810-1811. William Price reports that, while on an embassy in Shiraz, he visited the ruins of Persepolis and copied "with great care" many of the inscriptions, including those at such a height that it was necessary to use a telescope. Further he writes:

"There were no details to tell whether these were alphabetic or hieroglyphic characters, but they are composed of arrow-shaped strokes and look like imprints on bricks found in the vicinity of Babylon."

In a note, Price adds that "having discovered some alphabets in an ancient manuscript, the author has great hope that with their help he will be able to read these venerable inscriptions."

It is amazing how often in the history of science such mysterious manuscripts were announced, and, as a rule, in the most remote and inaccessible parts of the world, and only a few initiates managed to read them. Meanwhile, William Price, having acquired an "ancient manuscript" and discarding as superfluous all the rules of philology, presented to the world what he called a "literal translation" of a Babylonian inscription on a clay cylinder:

“The banks of covetousness might overflow if our futility rose above the grape-stone, and our nation, sheathed and divided, would shamefully endangered under the triple crown.

It would be a display of blue beads and an empty throne. Happy is the man who can show a vine stone in this court not corroded by evil: for the sins committed here must be counted in the great court (heaven) ... "

Since Price provides neither the original text nor an explanation of his method of translation, we are left wondering how he came up with these vine stones, which "a happy man can show in a yard not corroded by evil." And since his sources are unknown to us, we can assume that this “translation” of his appeared to him in a state of trance caused by prolonged contemplation of the mysterious wedge-shaped characters of the Babylonian script. Such false translations did not appear all that rare, especially from the pen of amateur cryptographers who dared to fight with such mysterious types of writing as Etruscan script, Linear A, Mohenjo-Daro script, Kassite, Hittite, Chaldean, Hurrian, Lycian, Lydian, etc.

Interestingly, the real breakthrough in deciphering cuneiform was made by the amateur orientalist Georg Grotefend, just as a century later the first steps towards deciphering Linear B were made by the amateur Hellenist Michael Ventris.

The German schoolteacher Georg Grotefend (1775-1853) viewed cuneiform as a cryptographic rather than a philological puzzle, and his approach to finding the "key" was more mathematical than linguistic. He began by examining two inscriptions in Old Persian and noticed that in each of them the same groups of characters were repeated three times. Grotefend suggested that these signs meant "king", since the inscriptions of later Persian monarchs were known to begin with the declaration of a name, followed by the formula "great king, king of kings". If this assumption is correct, then the first words of the inscriptions should mean:

X, great king, king of kings

The full royal formula should have looked like this:

X, great king, king of kings, son of Y, great king, king of kings, son of Z, great king, king of kings, etc.

Therefore, from a mathematical point of view, this formula can be expressed as follows:

where X is the name of the son, Y is the name of the father of X, and Z is the name of the grandfather of X. Therefore, if one of these names is read, then the rest are determined automatically.

From ancient Persian history, Grotefend knew several well-known sequences son - father - grandfather, for example:

Cyrus< Камбиз < Кир.

But he noticed that this sequence was not suitable for the text he was studying, since the initial letters of the names Cyrus, Cambyses and Cyrus were the same, but the cuneiform characters were different. The trio of names Darius did not fit either< Артаксеркс < Ксеркс, потому что имя Артаксеркса было слишком длинным для среднего имени. Гротефенд пришел к мнению, что перед ним следующая генеалогическая последовательность:

Xerxes< Дарий < Гистасп,

and the full inscription probably meant the following:

Xerxes, great king, king of kings, son of Darius, great king, king of kings, son of Hystaspes.

It should be noted that the last name of the three is not accompanied by a royal title in the inscription, and it should not have been accompanied, because Hystaspes (Vishtaspa), the founder of the royal dynasty, was not a king himself, and, therefore, he could not be called "a great king, king of kings."

Grotefend's brilliant guess turned out to be correct, and he became the first person to translate the cuneiform inscription and determine the phonetic meaning of the ancient Persian characters.

Thus, Grotefend was the first of his contemporaries to read the name of the Persian king, whom the Greeks called Darius (Darios), transmitted in cuneiform characters.

But, despite the epochal achievement, Grotefend's contemporaries, especially German scientists, did not attach much importance to this discovery and refused to publish his work in their academic journals. For the first time, he presented a description of his method and the results of research before the Academy of Sciences in 1802. He was refused publication on the grounds that he was an amateur, and not a specialist in oriental studies. Therefore, the scientific world learned about the discovery of Grotefend only in 1805, when his article was published as an appendix to a friend's book entitled "Historical research in the field of politics, communications and trade of the main nationalities of antiquity." In this article, written in Latin and entitled "Praevia de cuneatis quas vocent inscriptionibus persepolitanis legendis et explicandis relatio", Grotefend attempted not only to translate the three royal names (Xerxes, Darius, Hystaspes) and the royal formula (great king, king of kings), but and the next part of the inscription. He offered the following translation:

"Darius, valiant king, king of kings, son of Hystaspes, heir to the ruler of the world, in the constellation Moro."

The correct translation is this:

"Darius, great king, king of kings, king of the lands, son of Hystaspes Achaemenides, who built the winter palace."

Such an absurdity as the "constellation Moreau" arose from Grotefend's ignorance of Oriental languages; without special knowledge, he could not claim anything more serious than deciphering names and some of the most common words, such as "king" or "son." It soon became clear that the dead and forgotten languages ​​of the ancient Middle East could only be understood through the methods of comparative philology. So, the key to the ancient Persian language, which was spoken and written in the time of Darius, Xerxes and other "great kings", could be the Avestan language of Zarathushtra, the great Persian prophet of the 7th century. BC e. Avestan, in turn, is close to Sanskrit, and both of these dead languages ​​were well known. Therefore, an orientalist who knows Sanskrit, Avestan and modern Persian would understand and translate Persepolis and other inscriptions much faster than such a cryptographer as Grotefend, despite all his brilliant insights. Likewise, knowledge of Hebrew, Phoenician, and Aramaic proved necessary to transliterate and translate Assyro-Babylonian inscriptions.

As soon as the texts of trilingual inscriptions in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian arrived in Europe, the great joint work of translating them began, so characteristic of the European scientific community of the 18th and 19th centuries. Even the political, economic and military rivalry of European states during the era of the Napoleonic Wars and the subsequent period of imperialist expansion could not prevent scientists from constantly communicating with each other and exchanging discoveries. German, Danish, French and English philologists formed a kind of international team whose main goal was the search for knowledge. These included the Dane Rasmus Christian Rask (1781-1832), "feeling free among twenty-five languages ​​and dialects"; Frenchman Eugene Burnouf (1803-1852), translator from Avestan and Sanskrit; the Germans Edward Behr (1805-1841) and Jules Oppert (1825-1905), both specialists in Semitic languages ​​of extraordinary erudition (72 books and articles by Oppert are listed in the catalog of the British Museum), Edward Hinks (1792-1866), an Irish priest, and also greatest of all, father of Assyriology, English soldier and diplomat, Sir Henry Rawlinson (1810-1895).

The last of this list of dedicated scholars has rightly achieved great fame, for his contribution to Assyriology, even compared with his contemporaries, was the greatest. Rawlinson's personality, which has overshadowed the names of Rusk, Burnouf, Hinks and Oppert, lies in the fact that he lived an unusually full, fruitful and active life. He managed to be a soldier in Afghanistan, a political agent in Baghdad, an ambassador to Persia, a member of parliament, a member of the board of the British Museum, as well as a copyist and translator of the Behistun inscription of Darius.

Behistun rock! In some respects, it can be called the most breathtaking monument of world history - still one of the most impregnable. One has only to stand at this lofty mountain, rising to a height of four thousand feet, and look up at the legendary monument of Darius, the great king, king of kings, to understand the greatness of the work done by Rawlinson, who "merely" copied a huge inscription. Only the most courageous and experienced climbers could dare to climb the Behistun rock; it is difficult to reach the monument either from above or from below, for the platforms on which the ancient Persian sculptors and carvers stood were cut away, leaving only a short narrow cornice about eighteen inches wide under one of the inscriptions.

On the surface of the rock there are a dozen columns or tablets with cuneiform texts in three languages, which describe how Darius came to power by defeating and executing his ten rivals. One of the languages ​​is Old Persian, another is Elamite, and the third is Babylonian. All three languages ​​disappeared along with the empires in which they were spoken by the beginning of our era. Old Persian was, of course, the language of Darius himself and his followers, son of Xerxes and grandson of Artaxerxes. Elamite (which at one time was called Scythian, and then Susi) was the language of the population of southwestern Iran; Elamites from time to time appear on the pages of the history of Mesopotamia, either as allies or as enemies of the Sumerians, and later the Babylonians. In the XII century. BC e. Elam briefly became a great state and even a world power, but in the VI century. BC e. he became a Persian satrapy. The Elamite language apparently retained its historical and cultural significance, and the Persian monarchs in their inscriptions used it as a kind of Latin or Greek, the inscriptions of which can still be found on English monuments.

Darius, of course, wanted his name and deeds to be remembered as long as people could read, and did not imagine that in less than six centuries after his reign, all these three languages ​​\u200b\u200bwould be dead. For the Persian king, the Middle East was the cultural center of the world, international trade and commerce were concentrated here, cities such as Babylon, Ecbatana, Susa and Persepolis were located here, from here he ruled an empire that stretched from the rapids of the Nile to the Black Sea and from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea to borders of India. And Behistun, the last of the peaks of the Zagros mountain range separating Iran from Iraq, stood, as it were, in the geographical center of his empire. It was here that caravans passed from ancient Ecbatana (modern Hamadan), the capital of Persia, to Babylon, the capital of Mesopotamia. They have been staying here since time immemorial, because at the foot of the mountain several springs with crystal clear water beat out of the ground. Warriors of all armies drank from them on the way from Babylonia to Persia, including the soldiers of Alexander the Great. In ancient times, there must have been an inn or even a settlement here. According to Diodorus, this mountain was considered sacred, and the legend of Semiramis may be connected with this fact. It was believed that Semiramis, the legendary queen of Assyria, was the daughter of a Syrian goddess, and the mountain could be her sanctuary; hence the mention of Diodorus about a certain "paradise", which she allegedly built here. The Sicilian historian, of course, conveys the legend, but in reality this place seemed to King Darius ideal for capturing his victories over the impostor Gaumata and the nine rebels who rebelled against his power. The relief depicts the magician Gaumata, lying on his back and in prayer raising his hands to King Darius, who tramples on the chest of the vanquished with his left foot. Nine rebels, bearing the names of Atrina, Nidintu-Bel, Fravartish, Martya, Chitrantahma, Vahyazdata, Arakha, Frada and Skunkha, are tied to each other by the neck. This scene is typical of that time.

At the foot of the mountain is the usual Persian teahouse, where travelers can sit at a wooden table under a canopy and drink tea (or Coca-Cola), studying the relief with field glasses, just as in 1834 Rawlinson examined it through a telescope. This is how he began to copy the cuneiform signs of the ancient Persian text, which eventually led him to decipher the names of Darius, Xerxes and Hystaspes using approximately the same method that Grotefend used. Rawlinson proved that the inscription was not carved on the orders of Semiramis, the semi-legendary queen of Babylon, or Shalmaneser, king of Assyria and conqueror of Israel; it was ordered to be carved by Darius himself, who became the sole ruler of the Persian Empire in 521 BC. e. Rawlinson also found out that the large winged figure hovering over the images of people is Ahuramazda, the supreme god of the Persians, and not at all a heraldic decoration, as early travelers believed, and not a cross over the twelve apostles, as a Frenchman claimed in 1809, but nor is it a portrait of Semiramis, as Diodorus reported in the following passage:

“Semiramide, having made a platform of saddles and harnesses of pack animals that accompanied her army, climbed this path from the plain itself to the rock, where she ordered her portrait to be carved along with the image of hundreds of guards.”

The claim that the legendary queen climbed 500 feet with the help of her animals is, of course, absurd, but until Rawlinson climbed the rock, no one could copy the relief and inscriptions in all details. The main problem was not even to climb 500 feet, but to stay there and at the same time try to draw what he saw. This is exactly what Rawlinson did in 1844 when he climbed a narrow ledge overhanging an abyss of Old Persian inscriptions.

The monument to Cyril and Methodius, which will be discussed, is located in Moscow (Lubyansky proezd, 27). To get to it, you need to get to Slavyanskaya Square (metro station Kitay-Gorod). The sculptor V.V. Klykov built this monument in 1992.

Equal-to-the-Apostles Saints Methodius and Cyril were outstanding enlighteners of their time, creators of the alphabet. Many years ago, the brothers arrived in the Slavic lands to preach the teachings of Christ. Prior to this significant event, Cyril received an excellent education in Constantinople, then taught at the University of Magnavra, which was considered one of the most serious institutions at that time.

In 862, the ambassadors of Prince Rostislav asked Methodius and Cyril for a high mission - the preaching and teaching of Christianity in the Slavic language in Moravia. Saint Cyril, with the help of his brother Methodius and his students, compiled the alphabet and translated from Greek all the main Christian books. But the Roman Church did not approve of these efforts. The brothers were accused of heresy, because it was believed that true books and worship were possible only in three sacred languages: Greek, Latin and Hebrew.

Returning to Rome, brother Cyril fell seriously ill. In anticipation of the hour of death, he took a vow of monasticism, and after a month and a half he died. Methodius returned to Moravia, where he conducted an educational and preaching service until the last days of his life. In 879, he received official permission to conduct worship in the Slavic language and translated the Old Testament into this language.

The monument represents the figures of two brothers Methodius and Cyril, who are holding Holy Scripture and a cross in their hands. The inscription on the pedestal is written in Old Slavonic: “To the holy Equal-to-the-Apostles first teachers of the Slavic Methodius and Cyril. Grateful Russia.

After carefully examining the inscription, linguists found five grammatical errors. In the name "Methodius" and in the word "apostle" is written "O" instead of "omega". The name "Kirill" should contain the letter "i" instead of "i".

But most of all the indignation was caused by two errors in the word "Russia": instead of "and" there should be "i", and instead of "o" there should be "omega". Incredible, because this monument is a symbol of Slavic writing - and contains such spelling errors! Many consider this curious case rather amusing.

On the day of the celebration of "Slavic writing and culture" in 1992, the opening of the monument took place, and at the foot of the monument an Unquenchable Lampada was installed.

The Rosetta Stone is a slab of basalt, an ancient artifact that emerged from the mists of time thanks to pure chance. This stone block weighing about a ton contains three inscriptions. The texts are written in two languages. One of the inscriptions in ancient Greek was read by cryptographers and scientists - historians without much difficulty.

rosetta stone

The other two, made in ancient Egyptian, represented the greatest mystery. The first was inscribed in ancient hieroglyphs used by Egyptian priests. The second was cursive, or demotic writing, quite common in Egypt during the heyday of the empire.

The end of the 18th century was marked by Napoleon's military campaign against Egypt. The war between England and France was the main reason for this. Napoleon hoped to overwhelm the British army by attacking it from Egypt. Bonaparte equipped hundreds of warships for this venture.

On the ships, in addition to 50 thousand soldiers and horses, were the most talented representatives of French science: scientists, archaeologists, engineers, mathematicians. They had to research and draw up a detailed description of the ancient country, about which practically nothing was known at that time.

Napoleon won brilliant victories, conquering the Egyptian lands. His army, despite being outnumbered by the Egyptians, was better armed and equipped. But suddenly the triumphal procession of the French across the land of Egypt was stopped by the famous English naval commander Horatio Nelson.

priceless find

The battle in the Gulf of Aboukir put an end to the triumphant victories of Napoleon. The British utterly defeated the French fleet in the Mediterranean. And being trapped in the Egyptian lands, the French began to build defensive structures.

During the construction of fortifications around Fort Saint-Julien, near the city of Rosetta, one of the soldiers or scientists discovered an ancient stone under the ruins. The mysterious inscriptions seen on it in unknown languages ​​did not raise doubts that this was an object of great historical value.

The find was immediately sent to the Cairo Institute. Almost immediately, there followed an invitation to French scientists to come in order to investigate the mysterious stone.

Attempts to decipher the inscriptions on the stone

The scholars that Napoleon took with him to study the history of Egypt had by that time dispersed throughout the country in search of ancient artifacts and the study of ancient Egyptian architecture.

French scientists, together with the staff of the institute in Cairo, began to carefully study the basalt slab with mysterious symbols. It was not particularly difficult for Egyptian scholars to read one of the three inscriptions on the stone. It was located below the other two and was written in ancient Greek. The Cairo museum staff knew Greek well. But the two upper inscriptions, inscribed in hieroglyphs and ancient Egyptian cursive, remained an unsolved mystery. No one knew the secret of the language of hieroglyphs. It was lost over a thousand years ago.

Each of the three inscriptions had a different number of lines, but several fragments of them were the same size. Scientists from the Cairo Institute made a quite probable assumption: all three inscriptions contain the same text in meaning. But the assumption for a long time remained an assumption, despite the fact that, seized with a fever of enthusiasm, scientists throughout Europe tried to decipher the ancient hieroglyphs.

Confusion among the learned world of Europe

By that time, Napoleon, personally interested in unraveling the secret of the Rosetta Stone, ordered to make plaster casts and prints of it. All this was quickly spread among the scientific audience of Europe. Excited by the prospect of finding the key to unraveling the ancient mysteries of Egypt, experts throughout Europe tirelessly, but almost to no avail, struggled to decipher the mysterious messages.

Unraveling the hieroglyphs on the basalt slab would be a powerful breakthrough in deciphering the languages ​​of antiquity and the messages of descendants. Having received a clue to hieroglyphic writing, one could lift the veil over the history of ancient times, along with all the secrets hidden in it. But hopes to understand the essence of the inscriptions by comparing them with an inscription in Greek did not materialize. Several pieces were chipped off the stone, which caused great difficulty when trying to compare the fragments carved on it.

The inscription in Greek was quickly guessed. It was supposedly made two centuries ago BC and exalted the merits of the thirteen-year-old king Ptolemy in front of Egypt. According to what is written, the young emperor led the country to prosperity. His main merits were listed: the establishment of a fair system of justice, the restoration of temples, the construction of dams, a ban on military service, and the announcement of amnesties.

Journey of the Rosetta Stone

The hieroglyphs of the Rosetta Stone remained undeciphered, despite numerous erroneous assumptions, until the beginning of the 19th century. For many years, the mysterious stone was in the British Museum. It came to England along with other historical values ​​after Napoleon signed the capitulation.

The British inflicted a crushing defeat on the French army that remained in captured Egypt. Rumors about a mysterious artifact found by the French have long been circulating in Europe. Therefore, the British, who wanted to take possession of the stone, made a clause in the conditions of surrender that France should give them all the historical, antiquarian finds collected on Egyptian soil during the years of their stay.

The merits of T. Young and Champollion in deciphering the inscriptions

Scientists continue to work on the secrets of the Rosetta Stone

An invaluable contribution to the deciphering of hieroglyphic symbols was made by the British physicist Young and the French scientist Champollion. T. Yang managed to decipher some of the signs that denoted the names of the Egyptian kings. Champollion went much further: during his life he compiled a huge dictionary of the ancient Egyptian language, and was also the creator of the ancient Egyptian grammar.

The Rosetta stone, accidentally found under the ruins during the Egyptian campaign, has since become not only a priceless relic that gave the key to the restoration of ancient writing. It is also a unique historical document. In addition to the decree in which the priests of Memphis pay tribute to Ptolemy for his contribution to the development of the country, the stone contains fragments of the emperor's appeal to his people.

From his address it is clear that the life of the Egyptians in 205-181 BC. e. was unsweetened. Egypt was torn apart by internecine wars, the fields were not cultivated, the peasants were suffocating from the oppression of debts, arbitrariness and robberies. The water supply system was practically destroyed. In gratitude for the fact that the young king tried to improve the situation in the country with a number of important reforms, the priests ordered that their decree be imprinted in stone in Greek, hieroglyphic and demotic writing.

Wandering the Internet or the streets of your hometown, you can often find hierographic inscriptions. "Chinese" - the majority thinks and does not take a steam bath. But not only the Chinese use hieroglyphs. How to recognize what language the inscription is in (why do you need this is another question)?

It is not difficult at all, each language has its own characteristics.

In ancient times, Koreans used Chinese characters. But in the 15th century, its own script, Hangul, was developed specifically for the Korean language. Letters-blocks were invented from which hieroglyphs-syllables (from two or three blocks) are formed by a bizarre connection. This is best illustrated in this video:

But it's all lyrics, the main thing is CIRCLES. Only in Korean characters can you find the circle element.

inscription in Korean with characteristic circles in hieroglyphs

So the rule

There are circles - this is Korean!

Japanese writing consists of three parts: kanji - borrowed Chinese characters, katakana and hirogana - syllabary modified kanji. In writing, it is customary for the Japanese to use all 3 methods at once. The main part of the word is written in hieroglyphs, suffixes in katakana, foreign and borrowed words in hirogana. Kanji characters are highly simplified (usually consisting of 2-3 strokes) and are easily distinguished from complex and cumbersome kanji characters.

The inscription is in Japanese - simple kan symbols are clearly visible

There are very primitive hieroglyphs - this is Japanese!

Chinese script is the mother of the two previous scripts. Chinese characters are complex and fit into a square. Each character represents a syllable or a morpheme. To recognize hieroglyphs as Chinese, it is enough to make sure that there are no signs that this is Korean or Japanese.

The inscription in Chinese - only traditional characters

If not Korean or Japanese, then Chinese!

By the way, due to the need to write words in other languages, as well as mathematical expressions, all 3 languages ​​switched from a vertical and right-to-left writing system to a horizontal one from left to right (while the page order was preserved from right to left).

"What language is this?" - you ask yourself when you see the sign in the supermarket or on Facebook. Sometimes you only need to know a few things to get an answer. Many use the Latin alphabet, but they differ in a combination of unique features.

Here are some features of writing Latin letters in different languages ​​...

• Ã, ã. When you see the sign of the nasalized a, you are probably looking at the text in Portuguese, especially if the language is similar to Spanish in general.
• Ă, ă. Such a with a cup on top - a distinctive feature of the Romanian language (if it is not Vietnamese, but more on that later). To be sure of this, look for Ț/ț and Ș/ș .
• Ģ, ģ; Ķ, ķ; Ļ, ļ; Ņ, ņ. Romanian has commas under T and S, and in Latvian - as many as four letters with commas.
• Ő, ő; Ű, ű . Such vowels, which seem to stand on end, are a clear sign that the text in front of you is in Hungarian. Smart Hungarians just connected ó and ö to get long ö, and did the same with ű .
• Ř, ř . This is a classic selection of letters in the Czech language. It makes the sound so complex that Czech children take years to learn the correct pronunciation. Other characteristic letters of the Czech language - Ů/ů . (Familiar ring? Do not confuse with å - read below.)
• Ł, ł. If you see such letters (as in the word Lodz, reads like English w) is most likely Polish. To make sure it's really him, look for Ż/ż . Incidentally, Polish has many other letters with diacritics, including ź (not the same as ż ).
• I, ı; İ, i. Certainly, I and i commonly used in, but in Turkish it is not the same. I- is a capital letter ı (without the dot above), and i- it's small İ . Therefore the word istanbul Turkish will be Istanbul. By the way, if you're wondering ı pronounced like and but more deeply, almost like s. Only Turkish has such an orthographic division. Another sign of the Turkish language - ğ , which is not pronounced (as in Erdogan).
• Å, å . Such å looks like a seal holding a ball on its nose. It reads like o v or and is a typical Scandinavian letter, even if it actually occurs only in Norwegian, Danish and Swedish. How do you tell them apart? If there's å, ø and æ is Norwegian or Danish (more on these languages ​​below). If you see ö and ä (with crowns, like the Swedish kings), it's Swedish. To get from Kobenhavn(Copenhagen) in Denmark in Malmo(Malmö) in Sweden, you will have to cross Oresund(Øresund) if you are Danish, or Oresund if Swedish.
• Ø, aa. letter ø used not only by Norwegians and Danes, but also by Faroese speakers. And all of them, together with the Icelanders, actively use æ . By the way, the Danes, unlike the Norwegians, prefer aa(how in Kierkegaard), but not å . You can recognize Faroese and Icelandic by one of the key letters described below.
• Ð, ð; Þ, þ. These letters, which were present in English a thousand years ago, replace the sounds that are now written in English as th(for example, in this or thin). This is a hallmark of Icelandic and Faroese, although to be honest, you are unlikely to see the latter anywhere. If it does happen, you will recognize it by the use of the letter ø . Icelanders use instead ö (how in jokull which means "glacier").
• If you see a sentence made up of short words, and there are so many diacritics above the letters that it looks like you are looking at a person who loves piercings, you are in Vietnamese. Here's an example from Wikipedia: Hà Nội là thủ đô của nước Cộng hoà Xã hội chủ nghĩa Việt Nam và cũng là kinh đô của rất nhiều vương triều Việt cổ.

There are those using the Latin alphabet and not having characteristic features. Here are a few ways to tell them apart.

French, Spanish and Italian

Spanish is the only one of these languages ​​that uses ñ (although other languages ​​outside this group also have this character). In Italian, words are often found è (this) and e(and). In French this est and et, and in Spanish - es and y.

Dutch, German and Afrikaans

Of these three languages, only German is used Ä/ä , Ö/ö and Ü/ü . Common only in Dutch ij. In Afrikaans they use instead y(Dutch mij(me) in Afrikaans as my). German ist(this) and und(i) in Dutch and Afrikaans - is and en.

Irish, Scottish and Welsh

Welsh is very different from the other two. It has a lot ll and ff, a w denotes a vowel sound (for example, in cwm). The two Gaelic languages ​​(Irish and Scottish) are easily identified by their abundance bh, ch, dh, fh, gh, mh, ph, sh and th(and none of these combinations are pronounced the way you're used to in English). Also, both languages ​​use diacritics over vowels, but only in Scots are these marks slanted to the left, for example à in a word Gaidhlig.

Finnish and Estonian

Finnish has long words and many double letters (as in moottoripyöraonnettomuus, which translates to "accident involving a motorcycle"). You won't be able to recognize a single word in it.

If you see , which looks a lot like Finnish but has words that end in b or g, as well as characteristic õ , this is Estonian.

Albanian and spit

These two languages ​​are not related in any way, they sound different and generally from different continents. But both have xh, and if you don't know any of them, you can get stuck trying to recognize them. Albanian uses a lot yo(how in Tirana, the capital of Albania). Lots of. But not in the braid. On the other hand, Xhosa and Zulu look very similar, and if you're not sure which one has the text on it, just ask someone.

Chinese and Japanese

There are three writing systems in Japan, one of which is very similar to . But the Japanese often use the character の, which is a grammatical particle and does not exist in Chinese (Chinese characters cannot be round).