[Northkeep] Speaking of birthdays

[Miles Grey]

On 7/19/2012 9:47 AM, Adalia wrote:

> 213 years ago today, the Rosetta Stone was discovered by scholars under
> Napolean Bonaparte

It was actually uncovered by soldiers who were re-building 
fortifications.  One of their officers noticed the inscriptions on the 
stone, ordered it set aside, and notified his commander, who told his 
general, who then notified the scientific mission in Cairo.  The officer 
was just an engineer lieutenant, Pierre-François Bouchard.

Luckily, when the French lost Egypt to the English, the stone fell into 
English hands.  I say "luckily" because it may well have been lost or 
destroyed in the turmoil that would follow in France.  When it arrived 
in England, four plaster casts were made and sent to different 
universities in Great Britain.  Prints of the inscriptions were made and 
circulated to scholars throughout Europe.  While Champollion made the 
final breakthrough, it was the result of the contributions of others, in 
sequence, from across Europe, each building upon the last.

The whole story of the Rosetta Stone was a truly Pan-European effort. 
Because it was a French soldier who noticed it when it was pried from 
the wall of an Ottoman fort, it seems fitting that it was a French 
scholar who made the final breakthrough over twenty years later.  But 
that French soldier should remind us how much ordinary people matter.

Especially in archaeology, it is often the normal person, going about 
daily life, who makes the important discovery.  While it then requires 
the scholars to really understand the discovery, this is why everyone 
should be as well-educated as possible.  I shudder to think how many 
discoveries have been lost forever just because the person who uncovered 
it didn't think, "That's odd.  I should tell someone."  Or worse, 
chooses to loot the site to profit from the artifacts.

Often, context (all the details of location of the find) matters as much 
as the item(s) discovered.  If you should be so lucky as to make a 
discovery, do your best to prevent any further disturbance of the site. 
  If possible, don't even remove the items.  Instead, protect the site 
as best as possible, try not to tell anyone where it is (to prevent 
looting), and send pictures to archaeology professors at the nearest 
university.  Even here in the United States, there are a lot of 
discoveries waiting to be made.

   Miles Grey
   Not an archaeologist