Text Leveling System

The Riddle of the Rosetta Stone

RDQ:	3090	Max Word/Sent	42	Total Words	1685		Diff Words	653
Lex	1080	Ave Word/.Sent	16	Hi Freq occurs	988	58.6%	Hi freq	211	32.3%
AR	9.0	Long Sentences	34.3	Low Freq occurs	233	13.8%	Low freq	167	25.6%

The Mysterious Hieroglyphs
The scene: The egyptian Sculpture Gallery of
the British Museum in London. The time: Now.
Near the entrance to the long high-ceilinged
room stand two magnificent granite statues of
Pharaoh Amenophis I I I who ruled Egypt about
1400 B.C. Farther on is a colossal head of Pharaoh
Ramesses I I dating back to 1250 B.C. And beyond
it resting on a simple base is a slab of black
basalt a volcanic rock.
Next to the statues and the head the slab
seems unimpressive at first glance. It is roughly
the size of a tabletop - three feet nine inches
long two feet four and a half inches wide and
eleven inches thick. But many experts would say
that this rather small piece of rock was more
valuable than any of the larger objects in the]]
room. For it is the famed Rosetta Stone which 
gave nineteenth-century scholars their first key 
to the secrets of ancient Egypt.
What makes this stone so special? Step closer 
and you'll see. Spotlights pick out markings 
carved into the surface of the stone and close 
up you can tell that these marks are writing. At 
the top are fourteen lines of hieroglyphs - 
pictures of animals birds and geometric shapes. 
Below them you can make out thirty-two lines 
written in an unfamiliar script. And below that 
at the bottom of the slab are fifty-four more 
lines written in the letters of the Greek alphabet.
Before the Rosetta Stone was discovered in 
1799 no one knew how to read Egyptian hieroglyphic 
writing. Its meaning had been lost for 
almost 1400 years. But countless visitors to 
Egypt over the centuries had tried to decipher 
the mysterious symbols. This is the story of their 
attempts and of how the Rosetta Stone finally 
enabled scholars to unlock the Egyptian past.
The story begins in the seventh century A.D. 
when Greek scholars visiting Egypt first called 
the symbols "hieroglyphs." They gave them that 
name which means "sacred carvings" in Greek 
because they found so many of them on the walls 
of Egyptian tombs and temples.]] 
As the Greeks sailed up the Nile River to the 
ancient cities of Memphis and Thebes they 
asked native after native what the hieroglyphs 
meant. Not even the oldest Egyptians could tell 
them for the language expressed in the hieroglyphs 
had already been dead for several hundred 
years. It had been replaced by Coptic the 
language spoken by Christian Egyptians. And 
Coptic in turn was replaced by Arabic after the 
Arabs conquered Egypt in A.D. 642. By the time 
the visitors from Greece arrived no living Egyptian 
knew how to read the hieroglyphic writing 
of his ancestors.
Frustrated in their attempts to get someone to 
translate the hieroglyphs for them the Greeks 
decided on their own that the symbols must be 
a kind of picture writing. Some thought the 
pictures were mystical devices used in ancient 
religious rites whose meaning was known only to 
long dead Egyptian priests.
Others stumbled on the correct definitions of 
a few hieroglyphs. No one knows exactly where 
the Greeks obtained this information. Some  
think it came from craftsmen who made good-
luck charms based on ancient Egyptian designs 
and still knew what those symbols meant.
However they obtained it the Greeks couldn't]] 
resist adding their own original "explanations" 
to the definitions. For example a Greek writer 
named Horapollo said correctly that the picture 
of a goose stood for the word "son." But then he 
explained that this was because geese took 
special care of their young which was completely 
inaccurate. He wrote that the image of a rabbit 
meant "open" because a rabbit's eyes never 
close - an equally false statement.
Horapollo offered an even more unlikely 
explanation of a hieroglyph drawn in the form of 
a vulture.
First he said that it stood for the word "mother" 
which happened to be correct. Then his imagination 
took over and he claimed that the hieroglyph 
also meant "a sight or boundaries or 
foreknowledge." He went on to explain why.
"The vulture means a mother since there is 
no male in this species of animal" Horapollo 
wrote. (Of course this was untrue!) "It stands for 
sight since of all animals the vulture has the 
keenest vision. It means boundaries because 
when a war is about to break out the vulture 
limits the place in which it will be fought by]] 
hovering over the area for seven days. And it 
stands for foreknowledge because in flying over 
the battlefield the vulture looks forward to the 
corpses the slaughter will provide it for food."
The writings of Horapollo circulated widely 
throughout Europe and influenced the study of 
hieroglyphs for centuries to come. No one questioned 
the Greek writer's explanations. Instead 
European scholars accepted them as truths and 
put forward their own mistaken interpretations 
of the mysterious symbols.
Some of these scholars made otherwise 
significant contributions to the world's knowledge 
of ancient Egypt. A German priest of the l600s 
Athanasius Kircher wrote the first grammar and 
vocabulary of Coptic the language of Christian 
Egypt. These books were to prove of great value 
when the hieroglyphs were eventually deciphered.
But Kircher's ideas about the hieroglyphs 
themselves were even farther off the mark than 
those of Horapollo. Looking at a certain group 
of symbols - which actually stood for the name 
of a pharaoh - Kircher let his imagination run 
wild. Without any evidence to support him he 
said that the hieroglyphs meant "The blessings 
of the god Osiris are to be procured by means of]] 
 sacred ceremonies in order that the benefits of 
the river Nile may be obtained."
 From 1650 onward Kircher produced several volumes of such nonsense. It earned him a reputation for being an expert on the hieroglyphs - a reputation that lasted unfortunately long after his death in 1680.
A few genuine advances in understanding the hieroglyphs were made during the. 1700s. The French scholar C. J. de Guignes observed that groups of hieroglyphs in Egyptian texts were often enclosed by an oval outline which he called a cartouche. "Cartouche" is a French word that originally meant a cartridge and the line around the hieroglyphs had a similar shape. De Guignes guessed rightly that the cartouches in hieroglyphic inscriptions were intended to draw attention to important names probably the names of Egyptian rulers.
Along with such insights de Guignes advanced other ideas about the hieroglyphs that were as silly as any that had been proposed by Kircher or Horapollo. After comparing some Egyptian hieroglyphs with examples of Chinese picture writing de Guignes announced that settlers from Egypt must have colonized China in
 ancient times. English students of the 1700s]] 
went the Frenchman one better. They declared that it had happened the other way around: The ancient Egyptians had come from China!
None of these theories brought scholars any closer to a true understanding of the hieroglyphs. As the 1700s came to an end their meaning was as much of a mystery as ever.
Travelers to Egypt gazed in awe upon the pyramids. But because they could not decipher the hieroglyphs neither they nor the natives had any idea when the gigantic structures were built or how. The travelers saw the ruins of ancient cities and palaces. But they did not know who had lived in them or what their lives were like.
All the secrets of ancient Egypt - its history its literature its religious beliefs - remained hidden behind the lines of the mysterious hieroglyphs. And it looked as if they might stay there forever. Then in 1798 something happened that seemed at first to have nothing to do with the puzzle of the hieroglyphs. The French general Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt with an army of 38000 soldiers.
France was at war with England and Napoleon's main goal was to occupy Egypt and then attack British-held India. But like many Europeans of the time Napoleon was also interested]] 
in learning more about Egypt itself. So along with the soldiers Napoleon brought with him to Egypt a party of 167 scholars and scientists. Their assignment: to study every aspect of the country and its history.
What neither Napoleon nor the scholars could guess was that their most important discovery would be an odd-shaped black slab with three different kinds of writing on it.]] 
The French invasion was a great success at first. Napoleon's army captured the city of Alexandria by storm on July 1 1798 and rapidly overran the Nile Delta. As they marched past the pyramids Napoleon turned to his men and said "Soldiers forty centuries are looking down upon you."
Napoleon entered the Egyptian capital Cairo on July 21. There he took over an elegant palace to serve as the headquarters for his scholars and scientists. They began work immediately and acquired the nickname "the donkeys" because of the donkeys they rode on their expeditions into the countryside.
While the scholars pursued their studies the tide was turning against Napoleon. On August 1]] 
the British surprised the French fleet at anchor near Alexandria and completely destroyed it. Now Napoleon his army and the scholars were trapped in the land the French had conquered.
For the next year the army fended off attacks by the Turks who had formerly ruled Egypt. The scholars took measurements of sphinxes gathered botanical specimens and made copies of the still-mysterious hieroglyphs they found everywhere. Then in August 1799 Napoleon evaded the British naval blockade and returned with a few companions to France to deal with problems there.
The French army stayed behind in Egypt - and so did the scholars. In late August shortly after Napoleon's departure a large heavy package arrived at the scholars' palace in Cairo. When they opened it they found it contained a black stone slab covered with writing in three different scripts.
A note from a French army officer accompanied the package. He told the scholars that the stone had been unearthed in an old fort near the town of Rosetta thirty-five miles north of Alexandria. French soldiers were tearing down a ruined wall in the fort when they came upon the slab. The top right and left corners were missing]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: Little support

Simple graphics supplementary to text comprehension

Vocabulary: Some difficult words

Language: Few descriptive words

Sentences: Many Long Complex

Text structure: Formal

Inferences: Required

Complexity: Several unrelated ideas

Captions

Concepts: Abstract/Complex Social

Table of Contents

Index

Chapters

Headings

Prior Knowledge: Familiarity

Features

Topic

Writing

Alphabet

Language

*Communication

Problem Solving

Foreign Country

Discovery

*Language Arts

*Global Issues

Reading

Low Frequency Words

accepted	accompanied	acquired	advances	amenophis
ancestors	anchor	announced	arabic	aspect
assignment	athanasius	awe	basalt	blockade
botanical	boundaries	cartouche	cartouches	cartridge
ceilinged	ceremonies	circulated	colonized	colossal
companions	contributions	corpses	countless	craftsmen
dating	decipher	deciphered	definitions	departure
drawn	egyptian	egyptians	elegant	enabled
enclosed	european	europeans	evaded	eventually
evidence	expeditions	explanations	expressed	fended
fleet	foreknowledge	formerly	frenchman	frustrated
gazed	general	geometric	german	gigantic
glance	grammar	granite	greeks	guignes
headquarters	hieroglyph	hieroglyphic	hieroglyphs	horapollo
hovering	image	imagination	immediately	inaccurate
influenced	inscriptions	insights	intended	interpretations
invaded	invasion	keenest	kircher	kircher's
knowledge	language	limits	literature	magnificent
markings	measurements	memphis	mistaken	mysterious
mystical	napoleon	napoleon's	natives	naval
nickname	nineteenth	objects	observed	obtained
occupy	onward	original	originally	otherwise
outline	oval	overran	palaces	pharaoh
priest	priests	procured	proposed	prove
pursued	pyramids	questioned	ramesses	religious
reputation	resist	rightly	rites	rosetta
roughly	sacred	sculpture	seventh	shortly
significant	similar	slaughter	specimens	sphinxes
spotlights	statement	statues	structures	studies
symbols	tabletop	tearing	theories	throughout
tombs	translate	turks	understanding	unearthed
unfamiliar	unfortunately	unimpressive	untrue	valuable
vision	vocabulary	volcanic	volumes	vulture
writer	writer's