lemy's name, which appears in the Rosetta Stone's Greek text (read text) as Ptolemaios, was the firs
lemy's name, which appears in the Rosetta Stone's Greek text (read text) as Ptolemaios, was the first word recognized in hieroglyphics (see the two encircled words above). But early attempts to interpret its eight symbols were stymied by the traditional belief that all hieroglyphics could be translated as pictures of words. Even after English scientist, Thomas Young, assigned sound values to several symbols, Champollion held to the belief that the lion symbolized the Greek word for war --p(t)olemos--anagrammed in the word Ptolemaios.

Champollion, finally deciding that Ptolemy might be read phonetically, patiently reconstructed the name, sound by sound,rosetta stone language, from the Greek and Coptic into demotic, then into an earlier hieratic script and finally into hieroglyphics. It came out p-t-o-l-m-y-s, or Ptolmis, and could be spelled both right-to-left and in other directions. This discovery opened his eyes to the rest of the hieroglyphic text on the Rosetta Stone.

In 1822, a copy of the inscription from an obelisk at Philae,rosetta stone spanish, excavated seven years earlier, was made available to Champollion. He was stunned to see confirmed in its hieroglyphics a name he had reconstructed many times from a demotic papyrus: the cartouche of Cleopatra.

The rosetta stone (below) resides at the British Museum in London.

http://xiaowenwen.insanejournal.com/21976.html