Hi there.

Welcome to this history lesson.

My name is Ms. Roberts, and I'll be your teacher today.

In this lesson together, we are going to be learning about an important historical artefact called the Rosetta Stone, and we'll be finding out how it's helped historians to understand more about Egyptian writing.

This lesson builds on knowledge that you already have about the ancient Egyptian civilization.

You will encounter a lot of new information and quite a few facts today.

But don't worry, I will be guiding you through the lesson step by step, and I will explain everything along the way.

By the end of the lesson today, you will be able to describe what ancient Egyptian writing looked like, and you'll be able to explain how it changed over time.

We're going to start by looking at five key words that you will be using a lot in this lesson.

At the end of the lesson, you'll be able to use these words yourself to talk about certain aspects of the ancient Egyptian civilization.

Listen carefully to each word and repeat after me, then we'll look at the meanings together.

Our first word, you have seen this already today, and that word is, Rosetta.

Can you say Rosetta? Well done.

Our second word is a verb, and this verb is to translate.

Can you say translate? Good job.

Our next word is scribe.

Can you say scribe? Well done.

The next two words are very similar.

First we have the word religion.

Can you say religion? Well done.

And then we have the word religious.

Can you say religious? Great.

Okay.

We'll look at the meanings now and we'll see what is different between those two words as well.

Okay, so the first word we encountered there was Rosetta.

Now, Rosetta is a city in Egypt, and that's where the Rosetta Stone was found.

So the artefact is named after that place.

The second word was that verb, to translate.

Translate is when someone changes from one language into another.

That's the process of translating.

The next word is scribe.

Now, a scribe was the name for a person in ancients Egypt.

A scribe is a person that is trained to write things or to copy things that have been written.

Now, these last two words, they are very similar.

First, we had the word religion.

And in ancient Egypt, which is the context we are looking at religion in, religion was a set of beliefs about their gods, about the afterlife, and about how to behave while you're alive.

Something that is religious is something that concerns religion, so religious beliefs or beliefs about religion.

So, this lesson will have two parts.

In the first part of the lesson, we are going to find out what happened in Rosetta.

And then later on, we will be finding out about how Egyptian writing changed over time.

Are you ready? Let's go then.

Take a look at this map.

On the map, you can see the River Nile running through Egypt.

Rosetta is a city that is situated at the end of the river Nile.

So because it is on a coast at the end of the river, it is a port.

A port is a place where boats come and go and lots of trade happens.

They're very busy places.

Here in Rosetta, the River Nile flows into the Mediterranean Sea.

And that position and the fact that it's a port, made it a very important city throughout history.

Now we're going to go back to the year 1799.

Now that's a long time before the archaeologist, Howard Carter was doing his excavations in Egypt.

At this point in time, there were some soldiers in Rosetta, some French soldiers, and they actually made this amazing discovery completely by accident.

Let's find out what happened.

Near to Rosetta, there was an old abandoned building called Fort Julien.

The French soldiers decided that they were going to use Fort Julien as a base.

So, before they moved in there, they sent some soldiers ahead to inspect that building.

One of the soldiers that was inspecting it noticed that there was something unusual about one of the walls.

There was something different, so he decided to take a closer look.

There, hidden within the wall, was one of the most important historical artefacts that would ever be discovered.

Jacob knows what it was.

It was the Rosetta Stone that was hidden there in the wall.

What an amazing and unusual find.

Now, before we move on, let's have a quick check to make sure that you're following the story so far.

I'm going to read a question and three possible answers.

You need to decide which answer you think is correct.

So the question is, "What happened in 1799 near a town called Rosetta in Egypt?" Was it A, French soldiers set sail for a war, B, French soldiers started to build a new town, or C, French soldiers discovered the Rosetta Stone.

Have you decided? Did you choose option C? Yes, C was the right answer.

In 1799 near Rosetta, those French soldiers discovered what is now called the Rosetta Stone.

Good job.

So let's find out some more about why this discovery was so important.

This is a picture of part of the Rosetta Stone itself.

The Rosetta Stone is a stele.

Now, a stele is a slab of rock that has had some information carved into it at some point in the past.

Many civilizations all around the world used stele as a way to record important information.

They did it in China, in Asia, the Mayans in South America, and in this case, the ancient Egyptians.

The Rosetta Stone is a stele made from a type of rock called basalt.

The Rosetta Stone was an unusual example of a stele because the information that was carved into it was not all the same language.

Some of it was Greek writing, and some of it was Egyptian hieroglyphic writing.

Historians believed that the part of the Rosetta Stone that the French soldiers discovered, was actually a small part of a much, much larger stele, but unfortunately, the rest of it has never been found.

At the time it was discovered, ancient Greek had been studied a lot more widely than ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing had done.

In fact, not a lot was known about hieroglyphics at all before the Rosetta Stone was discovered.

Because the stone had this writing in two languages, it meant that archaeologists now had the key to unlock the mystery that was the ancient Egyptian writing system.

They were now able to begin to build their understanding of hieroglyphics and of ancient Egyptian communication.

And like Sophia says, "How exciting that must have been when they realised that they could use the Greek as a key to help them to translate the ancient Egyptian writing." It actually took more than 20 years for archaeologists to translate all of the writing that was on that stone, and eventually, they realised that the text on the stone was an important religious message, and it was written to honour a great ancient Egyptian King called Ptolemy.

We're gonna pause here now and try some activities about what we have just been learning, starting here with another multiple choice question, but the answers in this case are all pictures.

I want you to decide which of these pictures shows an example of a stele made from basalt.

Picture A is the death mask of Tutankhamun.

Picture B is the Rosetta Stone, and picture C is a monument called, The Great Sphinx.

Have you chosen an answer? Okay, let's have a look together.

Now, Tutankhamun's death mask that was found in his tomb with him is a very shiny material.

You can see there, it's made of gold.

It's certainly not made of rock.

Picture B on the other hand, does look very much like a slab of rock, and that is what steles were made from.

The Rosetta Stone in the middle, is the example of a basalt stele.

You've been learning a lot about the Rosetta Stone today, so let's use that information for the next activity.

I hope you've been listening very carefully to the information because you're going to need to recall some facts.

You're going to see six sentences, but they are incomplete.

You need to decide which word from the options given is the best to complete each sentence.

I'm going to read the sentences now for you.

So listen closely.

Sentence one.

"The Rosetta Stone is an example of a basalt stele or a wooden stele." Question two.

"It was discovered in 1799 by French soldiers who found it in a house or in a wall." Question three.

"It was covered with a text that was carved in two languages or in two colours." Number four.

"Archaeologists translated the Greek writing, or scientists translated the Greek writing." Number five.

"Then they used the Greek translation to work out the meanings or the size of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing." And finally, number six.

"The translation showed an important birthday message or religious message written in honour of an ancient Egyptian king." Pause the video now while you complete the activity, and then we will look at the answers together.

Are you ready? Well done.

Let's have a look through those answers together now.

Answer number one, it was a basalt stele.

Basalt is a type of rock.

Steles were not made from wood, they were made from rock.

The Rosetta Stone was discovered in the wall of an abandoned port.

It wasn't discovered in a house.

Number three, the Rosetta Stone was carved with a text in two languages.

Number four, it was archaeologists who translated the writing on the Rosetta Stone.

Number five, they used the Greek translation to work out the meanings of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

And number six, the Rosetta Stone showed an important religious message which was written to honour an ancient Egyptian king.

Great work.

Well done for remembering all of that information.

So, now, we've seen that the Rosetta Stone was the key to unlocking understanding of ancient Egyptian writing.

That writing was called hieroglyphics.

In the second part now of this lesson, we are going to investigate how hieroglyphics changed over time.

Remember, the ancient Egyptian civilization lasted for 3,000 years.

That is a long time.

And during that time, certain aspects of their writing system changed.

We're going to find out why and how that happened.

Take a look at this picture.

Here, you can see an example of some ancient Egyptian writing.

Hmm, that doesn't look like the writing we use today, does it? I can see pictures.

Can you see the pictures that look like birds? I can see pictures that looks like eyes as well.

Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics did not have letters or an alphabet like we do today.

Instead, the writing system was made up of more than a thousand of symbols, like the ones you can see here, and they were called hieroglyphs.

Each hieroglyph represented either a sound or an entire word.

And some certain specific combinations of hieroglyphs together were used to represent names or common everyday phrases.

Look at the hieroglyphics in this picture.

Can you see that there is a ring drawn around these hieroglyphs? Hieroglyphs that represented the names of a Pharaoh had rings drawn around them.

The ring is called a cartouche.

The special ring surrounding their name was said to protect them from evil spirits, both while they were alive and during the afterlife.

These hieroglyphs represent the name of a pharaoh called Seti, and they were discovered in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

Izzy and Laura are talking about the purposes of hieroglyphics.

Izzy says that "Hieroglyphs were pictures that represented words and sounds," and Laura says that "In ancient Egypt, hieroglyphs were a way of communicating," and they're both perfectly correct.

Well done Izzy and Laura.

What I would like you to do now is to write a sentence of your own to describe what hieroglyphs were.

What do you think? When you've written your sentence, you could share your ideas with a partner like Laura and Izzy.

Pause the video now while you complete this activity.

Are you ready? Well done.

Here's my sentence as an example.

I have written a sentence that says that "The ancient Egyptians wrote using a kind of writing called hieroglyphics, and each symbol or picture was called a hieroglyph." Let's continue and find out more about the ancient Egyptian writing system.

This is a picture of something called a granary.

The arrow is pointing to some people you can see in the corner there.

They have what looks like pieces of paper on their laps.

They're called scribes.

A granary is a place that produces grain.

You might know that ancient Egypt made a lot of money from farming, so there were lots of granaries in ancient Egypt, and their job was to turn the crops like wheat into grain that could be sold.

Scribes were the only people in ancient Egypt that could read and write in hieroglyphs.

It wasn't something that the everyday population could do.

Scribes were responsible for recording all of the written information in ancient Egypt.

Everything, from the amount of grain produced here in places like granaries, to much more important things like declarations made by the Pharaohs.

Scribes had to train for an amazing seven years to be able to master the art of understanding and writing using hieroglyphs.

This is a statue of a very famous and well-known ancient Egyptian scribe called, Minnakht.

Scribes were of great importance in ancient Egypt, especially to the Pharaohs.

For this reason, the scribes were paid a lot of money for their skills, and the Pharaohs never made them pay taxes either.

The Pharaohs trusted their scribes greatly to write their religious messages for them to the gods, and to decorate their tombs where they would be buried with the certain messages that only the Pharaoh approved of.

Let's have a quick check now on what you've just learned about scribes.

I'm reading you a sentence in a moment, and you need to decide if you think that sentence is true or false.

Listen closely.

In ancient Egypt, scribes were some of the most important people.

Is that true or is that false? Have a think and make your decision now.

Have you decided? Excellent.

Did you choose true? Well done? Yes.

Scribes were indeed some of the most important people in ancient Egyptian society.

Now, in history, we can't just make statements unless we have some evidence or some explanation, or a fact to back up how we know that the statement we're making is correct.

We can't just say this is true.

So, I'm now going to read two possible sentences that we can use to explain how we know that this statement is definitely true.

I want you to choose which of those sentences is the best in this situation.

Is it sentence A? "Not a lot of people could read or write hieroglyphs, so the scribes were essential for recording information." Or is it sentence B, that "The Pharaoh paid scribes a lot of money to write religious messages for them, and they did not tax them"? Have you decided which of those sentences you think is the best one? I chose sentence A.

Did you? Well done? Scribes were some of the most important people, and that's because they were essential for recording information, because not everyone could read and write in hieroglyphs.

Sentence B is true that the scribes were paid a lot of money and they did not have to pay tax.

But that sentence itself doesn't actually explain why they were some of the most important people.

Let's have a look now some more about the job of a scribe in ancient Egypt.

In ancient Egypt, there were no pencils, or pens, or crayons like you have today, so writing was done in a very different way using the equipment that you can see in this picture.

As scribes didn't have writing equipment like pens, they had to use natural things that they could find in the environment around them.

Pens were made of a grassy type of plant called a reed that grew plentifully along the banks of the River Nile.

Reeds have got very strong hollow stalks, so scribes could remove one end of the reed and then carve it to shape it into a point like the point of a pen.

Scribes also made their own ink from natural materials, and they could make it different colours as well.

For example, they would use soot from fires to make black ink, or natural soil to make brown ink.

Over time, more and more and more information needed to be recorded.

Scribes needed the hieroglyphs to become easier and quicker to write.

Because the pictures took such a long time when they were very artistic and detailed, eventually over time, that the scribes began to use very simple shapes and even basic lines instead of those lovely artistic pictures that you've already seen.

Look at this chart, which shows how the hieroglyphs changed over time.

Look more closely at the second row.

Can you see the hieroglyph that looks like a bird on the left? Follow that line across and you can see how eventually it changes to become just one curved line.

The only line that remains is the line of the wing of the bird.

However, although all of those changes were happening in everyday writing, the original artistic hieroglyphs did still continue to be used in some situations.

The main situation they were used was for those important religious messages given to them by the Pharaohs.

They had to use the most detailed hieroglyphs for those message, because they were seen as the most important writing in all of ancient Egypt.

It was because the Rosetta Stone had those very detailed and artistic hieroglyphs, that the archaeologists knew straight away that the message contained on the Rosetta Stone must have been a very important and religious message.

It's so interesting to see how those changes happened over time.

Let's have a quick check now on what we know so far.

Here's another true or false statement for you.

You know how these work now, so I will read this statement and you decide if you think it's true or false.

In ancient Egypt, hieroglyphs became more detailed and less artistic over time.

Is that true or is that false? That statement is false.

Now, remember, we need to back ourselves up with some factual information to explain why we know it is false.

Here's two possible sentences we could use.

Which one is best in this situation? A.

It took seven years for scribes to learn hieroglyphics, so they wanted simpler hieroglyphs to speed up that process.

Or is it B, that as time passed in ancient Egypt, detailed hieroglyphs were only used for the most important religious messages? Have you made a choice? Good.

Did you choose sentence B? Yes, me too.

The hieroglyphs didn't become more detailed and artistic over time, they became less detailed and artistic over time so that they were easier to write for the scribes who were recording lots and lots and lots of everyday information.

But for those important religious messages, the artistic and detailed hieroglyphs remained exactly the same across the whole period of ancient Egypt.

Those beautiful pictures were still inscribed for religious messages like the ones we saw in tombs of Pharaohs.

Now, here's a chance for you to try being a scribe.

This picture shows some interpretations of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, and we have matched them to some letters of the English alphabet.

You're going to answer a question first about how hieroglyphs were used, and then you can have a try at some tasks to do with writing in hieroglyphs for yourself.

Okay.

So, first of all, I want you to explain whether these hieroglyphs that you see here, are they artistic or are they simple hieroglyphs? Think about the chart you saw before about how the hieroglyphs changed over time.

Would you describe these hieroglyphs as being artistic or simple? And what type of messages do you think that these hieroglyphs would've been used for in ancient Egypt? When you've answered that question, then go on and try some activities writing in hieroglyphs for yourself.

Try writing your name.

Try writing the phrase "Ancient Egypt." And then for an extra challenge, try writing the name of an animal and ask a partner to work out what it is.

Pause the video now while you complete the activity.

All done? Good job.

June is here and he is sharing with us his answers.

To explain about hieroglyphs, June says that these hieroglyphs are very artistic and detailed.

I agree with June, because we have pictures, for example, of birds, and we can see their feathers, and their wings, and their feet, and their different colours.

So because they were very artistic and detailed, June thinks this means that they were probably used for important religious messages from the Pharaoh.

And I agree.

They remind me a lot of the hieroglyphs that have been found in the tombs of many Pharaohs.

June has also then tried the activities to write in hieroglyphs.

He has spelt his name.

The first letter of his name is a hieroglyph that looks like a snake.

He has then spelled out "Ancient Egypt." A for ancient is the hieroglyph that looks like a bird with green wings.

And then he has spelled out monkey.

His animal was monkey.

And the first hieroglyph there is also a bird, and that type of bird there is an owl.

Did you enjoy trying to write in hieroglyphs yourself? Me too.

But that does bring us to the end of our lesson.

So we're now going to have a little review of what we have learned today.

You've learned a lot of new information today about the Rosetta Stone and Egyptian writing.

Let's have a quick look back through everything we've covered.

We know that Rosetta is a port city in the northwest of Egypt, and that in 1799, French soldiers discovered a stele there, and that became known as the Rosetta Stone.

The Rosetta Stone had writing in both Greek and Egyptian carved into it.

Archaeologists used the Greek writing to help them to translate the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing.

In ancient Egypt, scribes were responsible for recording all the written information.

Most importantly, they recorded religious messages for the Pharaohs.

Over time, hieroglyphs became less detailed.

Until eventually the most artistic hieroglyphs were only used for those important religious messages.

I found it so interesting to discover how the archaeologists could use another language to translate the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Did you? I hope you join me again next time for another history lesson to find out more about the ancient Egyptian civilization.

See you then.

Bye.