Rosetta
{roh-zet'-uh}

The Rosetta Stone is a block of black basalt bearing inscriptions that eventually supplied the key to the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphic script. The stone was found accidentally in August 1799 by a group of soldiers in Napoleon's army while they were conducting engineering works at Fort Julien, near Rosetta (Arabic: Rashid), approximately 56 km (35 mi) east of Alexandria. Under the Treaty of Capitulation, signed in 1801, the stone was ceded to the British military authorities and taken to England for preservation in the British Museum. Its inscriptions, which record a decree issued in 196 BC under Ptolemy V Epiphanes, are written in two languages, Egyptian and Greek. The Egyptian version is written twice, once in hieroglyphics and once in demotic, a cursive development of the hieroglyphic script.

At the time of its discovery, it was accurately conjectured that the contents of the three different texts were identical; only the Greek, however, could be understood, as all knowledge of hieroglyphic writing had been lost since the 4th century AD, and of demotic shortly afterward. Two distinct, but interrelated, problems confronted the many scholars who worked on the inscriptions: the first was to discover whether the hieroglyphic signs represented phonetic sounds or were merely pictorial symbols; the second was to determine the meanings of the individual words. Only Thomas YOUNG, a British physicist and medical practitioner, made any substantial progress in 20 years, but his achievement fell short of true decipherment. The distinction of making the final breakthrough in 1822 belongs to the French scholar Jean Francois CHAMPOLLION.

SACRED LAKE AND MIDDLE PORTION OF THE TEMPLE

Temple of Amon, Karnak

Beyond the sacred lake, a significant part of the temple complex, is the hypostyle hall and to the left Pylon I. Pylon VII is on the far left, part of the processional avenue between the temple of Amon and the temple of Mut. On the far right are the obelisks of Tuthmosis I and Queen Hatshepsut.

Saqqara
{suh-kahr'-uh}

Saqqara, or Sakkara, was the necropolis, or burial place, for the ancient Egyptian city of MEMPHIS. It comprises remains from almost every period of Egypt's history. Among the most important monuments of the Old Kingdom is the Step Pyramid (see PYRAMIDS), erected about 2630 BC by IMHOTEP for King Zoser of the 3d dynasty, which rises in six layers to a height of 61 m (200 ft). Its underground passages and chambers contained thousands of stone vessels as well as beautiful reliefs representing Zoser performing religious rites. The structures around this pyramid are translations into stone of earlier wattle-and-daub buildings, and as such they constitute an invaluable record of early Egyptian architecture.

To the northwest of this complex is the Serapeum, a vast subterranean passage dating from the New Kingdom, containing niches in which the APIS bulls were buried. Among the private tombs, those of the nobles of the 5th and 6th dynasties are noteworthy for their painted scenes of daily life. The best of these belong to the tomb of Tiy, a high court official of the 5th dynasty. The Monastery of Saint Jeremiah, founded by the Copts in the 5th century AD, includes two churches, a refectory, and various workshops.

Scarab beetle
Scarab beetle or scarab, heavy-bodied, oval, often brightly colored or iridescent BEETLE. Some, called dung beetles, feed on animal dung and are important in recycling organic matter and disposing of disease-breeding wastes. Another group, which feeds on living plants and includes the Japanese and June beetles, are major crop and garden pests. Representations of scarabs, carved in stone or other materials, were popular in ancient Egypt and Rome.


Schematic diagram of TT99

Theban tombs of the New Kingdom are thought to have three fundamental levels by function:

1.Upper level: niche or superstructure, the realm of the sun god 2.Middle level: the offering chapels, the realm of the living 3.Lower level: the burial chambers, the realm of the dead and of Osiris

These three levels are shown in this diagram. The least obvious, in the 18th dynasty at least, is the Upper level. In the 19th dynasty pyramids, or pyramid-like structures, are often found in this location in the larger tombs, and this practice certainly goes back to around the time of the Amarna period. The earliest candidate for a pyramid on top of a tomb comes from TT131, of the first half of the reign of Thutmose III. However, it seems that most tombs were not so endowed, but a few had something like a small statue shrine above the tomb, while considerably more (like TT99) certainly have a niche immediately over the entrance, and probably no further superstructure. So this niche, which could have held either a stela or a small stelaphorous statue, may have served as the Upper level at this date.

Bibliography:

Superstructures in general:

K.J. Seyfried, 'Entwicklung in der Grabarchitektur des neuen Reiches als eine weitere Quelle für theologische Konzeptionen der Ramessidenzeit', in Assmann J, Burkard G, and Davies V (eds), Problems and Priorities in Egyptian Archaeology (Studies in Egyptology, London 1987), 219-53.

F. Kampp, Die thebanische Nekropole, 2 vols (Theben 13, 1996), 95-109

The superstructure in TT131:

E. Dziobek, 'Eine Grabpyramide des frühen NR in Theben', Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Abteilung Kairo 45 (1989), 109&endash;32