New
New
Year 3

The Rosetta Stone and Egyptian writing

I can describe what Ancient Egyptian writing looked like and explain how it changed over time.

New
New
Year 3

The Rosetta Stone and Egyptian writing

I can describe what Ancient Egyptian writing looked like and explain how it changed over time.

Lesson details

Key learning points

  1. In Rosetta, some hundred years before Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun, some soldiers dug up a large black stone.
  2. It was covered in both Greek and hieroglyphic writing; archaeologists used the Greek to translate the hieroglyphs.
  3. These hieroglyphs were pictures, rather than words, and there were more than 1,000 of them.
  4. Scribes would write in hieroglyphs to record things the pharaohs said or did and to compose religious messages.
  5. Over time scribes wanted to make hieroglyphs simpler and eventually they were only used for religious writings.

Common misconception

That there was one hieroglyph (picture) equivalent to each letter of the English alphabet.

The Ancient Egyptians did not have an alphabet in the same way we do today. Hieroglyphs represented sounds and sometimes whole words. There were a lot more hieroglyphs than there are letters of the alphabet.

Keywords

  • Rosetta - Rosetta is a city in Egypt where the Rosetta Stone was found

  • Translate - when someone changes one language into another, they translate it

  • Scribe - a scribe is someone who is trained to write or copy things

  • Religion - in Ancient Egypt, religion was a set of beliefs about gods, the afterlife and how to behave

  • Religious - something that concerns religion is described as religious

You can extend Task B in many ways for example by asking pupils to write longer sentences as messages for others to solve, or by giving pupils sentences from stories for them to translate to hieroglyphic writing, just as the archaeologists translating the Rosetta stone did!
Teacher tip

Content guidance

  • Depiction or discussion of sensitive content

Supervision

Adult supervision recommended

Licence

This content is © Oak National Academy Limited (2024), licensed on Open Government Licence version 3.0 except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).

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6 Questions

Q1.
The River flows through Egypt and was very important to the Ancient Egyptians.
Correct Answer: Nile, nile
Q2.
Complete the sentence. Howard Carter was excavating in the Valley of the when he discovered a hidden door.
Correct Answer: Kings, kings
Q3.
What type of people have a job that involves digging things up to find evidence about the past?
history teachers
Correct answer: archaeologists
historians
tour guides
Q4.
What did the Ancient Egyptians use hieroglyphs for?
eating
drinking
wearing
Correct answer: writing
Q5.
Order the letters to make the word for a place where the Egyptians put the bodies of pharaohs after death.
1 - t
2 - o
3 - m
4 - b
Q6.
What was special about the door that Howard Carter discovered?
it was made of gold
Correct answer: it was covered in hieroglyphs
it was extremely small
it was extremely large

6 Questions

Q1.
In which country is the port city Rosetta?
England
Correct answer: Egypt
Ecuador
Eswatini
Q2.
What was discovered hidden in the wall of a fort near Rosetta?
The Rosetta Boulder
The Rosetta Stele
The Rosetta Rock
Correct answer: The Rosetta Stone
Q3.
Complete the sentence. When you change a sentence from one language to another, you it.
Correct Answer: translate, Translate
Q4.
In Ancient Egypt, whose job was it to record all written information?
Correct answer: scribe
pharoah
farmer
soldier
Q5.
In Ancient Egypt, what did scribes do with reeds?
ate them for lunch
Correct answer: made them into pens
played music with them
made furniture from them
Q6.
Put the events in the correct order, starting with the earliest.
1 - French soldiers wanted to use Fort Julien as a base
2 - some French soldiers were sent to inspect Fort Julien
3 - a French soldier discovered the Rosetta Stone in a wall
4 - archeologists used the Greek writing on the Stone to translate the hieroglyphs

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