Friday, November 25, 2005

Rosetta Stone first translated by Mediaeval Arabic Scholars

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/770/he2.htm
"Since 1822 it had been thought that Champollion was the first person to break the hieroglyphic code, but a recent analysis made by an Egyptian Egyptologist based in London, Okasha El-Dali, on some mediaeval Arabic manuscripts buried among other works in libraries in Paris, Ireland, London, Istanbul and India has proved that Arabic scholars decoded hieroglyphs 1,000 year earlier. This is still more notable, as El-Dali points out, since at a time when mediaeval European scholars thought that the hieroglyphic signs were magical symbols, each representing a concept in itself, Arab scholars had grasped the fundamental principle that this writing represented sounds and ideas."
See more about Okasha el-Daly's widely discussed conclusions at the above URL on the Al Ahram website.

No comments: