The Hunt for Hieroglyphs

<p>July 15, 1799 (approximately).&nbsp;In the town of Rashid on the Nile Delta, French soldiers and Egyptian laborers are rebuilding an old, falling-down fort, when someone spots something&nbsp;unusual. It’s a jagged black rock, inscribed with what looks like three different types of writing. This stone—the Rosetta Stone—will become the key to deciphering a language that had been lost for thousands of years. Today: the race to unlock the secrets of hieroglyphs. How did two scholars manage to decode a language that no one in the world spoke? And when modern people could finally read the messages left by a long-dead civilization, what were we able to learn?</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Special thanks to our guest, Edward Dolnick, whose book, <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Writing-of-the-Gods/Edward-Dolnick/9781501198939" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone</em></a>, comes out in October 2021.</p> &#10;&nbsp;<br /><hr><p style='color: grey; font - size: 0.75em; '>See <a style='color: grey; ' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for privacy and opt-out information.</p>