The Rosetta Stone and Egyptian writing
I can describe what Ancient Egyptian writing looked like and explain how it changed over time.
The Rosetta Stone and Egyptian writing
I can describe what Ancient Egyptian writing looked like and explain how it changed over time.
These resources will be removed by end of Summer Term 2025.
Lesson details
Key learning points
- In Rosetta, some hundred years before Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun, some soldiers dug up a large black stone.
- It was covered in both Greek and hieroglyphic writing; archaeologists used the Greek to translate the hieroglyphs.
- These hieroglyphs were pictures, rather than words, and there were more than 1,000 of them.
- Scribes would write in hieroglyphs to record things the pharaohs said or did and to compose religious messages.
- Over time scribes wanted to make hieroglyphs simpler and eventually they were only used for religious writings.
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
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.
To help you plan your year 3 history lesson on: The Rosetta Stone and Egyptian writing, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...
To help you plan your year 3 history lesson on: The Rosetta Stone and Egyptian writing, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs.
The starter quiz will activate and check your pupils' prior knowledge, with versions available both with and without answers in PDF format.
We use learning cycles to break down learning into key concepts or ideas linked to the learning outcome. Each learning cycle features explanations with checks for understanding and practice tasks with feedback. All of this is found in our slide decks, ready for you to download and edit. The practice tasks are also available as printable worksheets and some lessons have additional materials with extra material you might need for teaching the lesson.
The assessment exit quiz will test your pupils' understanding of the key learning points.
Our video is a tool for planning, showing how other teachers might teach the lesson, offering helpful tips, modelled explanations and inspiration for your own delivery in the classroom. Plus, you can set it as homework or revision for pupils and keep their learning on track by sharing an online pupil version of this lesson.
Explore more key stage 2 history lessons from the Ancient Egypt: what stayed the same across 3,000 years? unit, dive into the full secondary history curriculum, or learn more about lesson planning.
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- Depiction or discussion of sensitive content
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Adult supervision recommended
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